Zack Hill by John Deering and John Newcombe for May 23, 2024

He has a point, this time.

Hang in there, Zack. Get a job in the software industry and you may even find yourself using the algebra you’ll learn a few years down the road.

All through grammar, high school, and my first 4 years of college, I thought I hated math. But it was computation that I didn’t like (long division still gets my blood pressure up). But in my 5th year of college (I had changed colleges and majors, adding to the time needed to graduate), I had an inspirational professor for a required math course, and discovered (to my astonishment) that I actually liked the calculus course I was auditing (just to enjoy the teaching style of that inspirational professor). So I ended up changing my major from Art Education (after all, art teachers are the first to be laid off) to mathematics. I was miserable as a math teacher, but I later found my dream (and higher paying than teaching) job (my title was Junior, and later Senior, Math Analyst) where I happily programmed computers for Navy missile testing for 40 years, using math daily, until I retired at 75. So hang in there, Zack, you never know what surprises Life will throw at you.

Yes, I can see using long division on a desert island. Sure helped Gilligan. (Maybe the Professor used it).

I had to learn long division. There were seven kids in the family.

Addition, subtraction, multiplication – easy as if I’d just learned it yesterday. But I tried doing long division by hand a few years ago just to see if I could still do it after having gone decades without ever doing it without a calculator. I managed, but I had to think about it for a bit first before it came back to me.

She wants the kid with glasses to fall off the cliff.

First time ever I hear about long division. I had to look it up.

Will I use math? See Saturday morning breakfast cereal 11/5/17.