Memes

Yeah it was a middle school thing in Finland too, at least in the 90's.

I did an exchange year in the US in my 2nd high school year, and I was honestly a bit surprised at how… well, simple it all was. I was a senior in the US and I'd learned just about everything they taught that wasn't specific to the US or the English language (and even some of those…) either in my 1st year in high school or in middle school.

Yes, that's standard at least in Germany

Idk what middle school really is because it's not been a thing at any of the schools I've been to, but it's definitely something you do a lot earlier than calculus. If calculus comes in in your last three or four years of high school, quadratics are what you're doing for at least two years before that.

In Hong Kong too, though the dividing is a bit different. High school is like the last 3 years of secondary school, and middle school is like the 3 years in primary school and 3 years in secondary school.

We also have vector and matrix on top of calculus in high school if you take the elective course. The compulsory part contains geometry, complex, probability, etc.

If you want, we have some samples. I took module 2. Compulsory Module 1: Calculus + Statistics Module 2: Algebra + Calculus

I'm American, I definitely learned this stuff in 7th or 8th grade. Granted, I didn't use it past high school, and I forgot it before I finished college, but that's definitely when I learned it.

Yeah seriously WTF, I didn't even learn basic Algebra until freshmen year of high school! We never even got to the math with the fancy letters in it. I have no idea what those cursive f, d, and w characters mean.

My middle school student worked on them last year

In senior year at my high school depending on what math track you go in you can be doing AP Calculus

Anecdotal, but I grew up in the US and I learned this in middle school as a gifted student. Others have mentioned it depends on the state/curriculum. I imagine in other countries they also divide their students between standard/honors/gifted-type tiers; they certainly do in the Netherlands, which is where I did my graduate studies.

I guess you can see this earlier but in Europe you cover it in middle school

AcTuArIe

Same here, I still do a lot of complex problem solving and modeling but excel/python handles a lot of the dirty work for me.

As an engineer, doubt.

As an engineer I don't get to use any of it very often. I'm always excited when I get to do any actual engineering instead of project management.

Dang, I was really hoping this would be one of those stories that goes like:

"How long will that take?"

"It's a lot of data...like a month?" (But I actually wrote a Python script that compiles and formats it perfectly in like 5 minutes.)

"You're such a hard worker!"

Yup this is every job now. Wrangling numbers. The actual job or calculation could be done in days if less. But dealing with dirty information and playing detective which isnt even part of it is the sink hole of every job right now.

That's software development for you. Why is that weird value there? Because some guy, at some point, had checked for that and somehow it's still relevant.

I know of a system that churns through literally millions of transactions representing millions of Euros every day, and their interface has load bearing typos (because Germans in the 90s were really bad at the Englishs).

don't let yourself get discouraged, math isn't everything ^^

You might also have discalcula, which is a real but somewhat uncommon thing where you're absolutely shit at math. I have no idea how to get tested for it though.

Which math?