Talk:Seddie/@comment-4730219-20140320173602/@comment-14284535-20140322001431

First, an update - Stosh has a 10% probability of having his growth become a polyp, which would allow him to have a comparatively longer life span. Considering the chance of him living a year went from 0% to 10%, I will take that every day of the week.

Speaking of math...

As a trained mathematician and former math professor, I have strong opinions on what you should know how to do. IMHO, by the time you exit high school, you should be able to handle simple problems in the following topics.

1. Logarithms. I think everyone should be able to figure out how to make up a payment schedule for a loan.

2. Combinatorics. Just knowing how to find how uncommon things are would be nice whenever people get into arguments about things like "infinite complexity" when the universe is definitively NOT infinitely complex.

3. Sadistics, erm, statistics and probability. Everyone should know that for every dollar you spend on a lottery ticket, your expected payoff is about 80 cents. And everyone should know what that means. Plus people would not be as able to misuse statistics.

4. Logic. Very useful around political analysis. You also have noticed when I post things, I am pretty clear about my assumptions and how I draw conclusions for them. Granted, you are not happy about one big one, but at least you can see the consistency of thought.

I also should mention that you need math for every science and engineering discipline. Even if you don't like it, you use it all the time.