As you sit in yet another math class, you might be wondering

“Exactly what am I going to use this for in real life?”

Even if you have a handy calculator and Google in your phone, you are learning skills relevant in so many life situations.

Work:

• A Cashier making change
• A business owner creating budgets, spreadsheets, doing taxes, applying for bank loans, analyzing yearly sales, tracking employee hours.
• A professional sports team analyst that creates computer programs using logarithms to analyze the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Buying and selling player contracts. Budgeting. Ticket sales and concessions.
• An artist using programs that deal in pixels, artwork dimensions, focal lengths and composition rules.

Fun:

• Games that need addition and subtraction, money skills, or logic jumps.
• Calculating how much your night out with friends will cost.
• Splitting the taxi ride with friends, or the restaurant bill between people.
• Estimating time, distance, cost. How long will it take to get somewhere, how much gas will it take, and how often will we need to stop?
• Calculating the odds or probability in games of chance.

Everything else:

• Calculating a household budget.
• Working out a loan for a car, or a mortgage.
• Baking and cooking using measurements, time, and temperature.
• Decorating your home, calculating how much carpet to buy, or how high to hang those pictures.
• Saving for college, retirement, or another big expense.

Now you may never pull out that advanced calculus graph ever again, and you will probably be ok to forget about imaginary numbers, but the logic and decision making skills you are building while learning these concepts in mathematics will help you make better decisions every day. Math really is universal.