Is Algebra Necessary?

[Jon Stratis]

I find it difficult to say this... but I actually understand the point he's trying to make.

To help illustrate his point, a personal story. Just a couple of weeks ago, I went back home for a long weekend (one of my cousins was getting married), and while there I went to a "trivia night" with my sister and some of her friends. They're all working on PhD's in psychology, so needless to say, they're pretty smart people. However, none of them could answer a fairly simple math/physics problem that night: "What is the name of the curve that an arrow, shot into the air takes, discounting friction?" When I told them the answer, they took my word for it and wrote it down... but they asked me if I was sure about a half dozen times before we turned in the paper.

The work incredibly smart people like that do every day doesn't require any more math then they would need to balance a check book. It can be hard for engineers and other STEM related fields to remember that. After all, we use equations and force diagrams all the time in robotics.