{"id":75823,"date":"2024-06-02T08:25:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-02T07:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=75823"},"modified":"2024-06-03T14:03:51","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T13:03:51","slug":"do-we-really-need-to-learn-trigonometry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/06\/02\/do-we-really-need-to-learn-trigonometry\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we really need to learn trigonometry?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my YouTube short of the day<\/a> - based on my frustration that schools teach maths that is irrelevant to 99.8% of the population and ignore budgeting and tax:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The transcript is:<\/p>\n

\n

Do we really need to learn trigonometry at school?<\/em><\/p>\n

It's a question I've been asking since I was about 17 when I was asked to calculate the surface area of a slice through a cone.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why did I need to know how to do it then?<\/em><\/p>\n

No idea.<\/em><\/p>\n

Have I ever used it since?<\/em><\/p>\n

Never.<\/em><\/p>\n

Was I taught about anything useful, like how to calculate VAT?<\/em><\/p>\n

No.<\/em><\/p>\n

Did I ever get taught about how to calculate my tax affairs?<\/em><\/p>\n

No.<\/em><\/p>\n

Was I ever taught how to do lots of other really useful things in life, like a percentage markup on a product which I was going to sell?<\/em><\/p>\n

No.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was taught useless trigonometry.<\/em><\/p>\n

Are we being taught the right maths in schools?<\/em><\/p>\n

Ask your politicians at this election because I bet most of you have got a story similar to mine.<\/em><\/p>\n

You didn't learn what you needed to know. You did learn what you didn't need to know.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maths is failing us if it teaches us nonsense that we're never going to use.<\/em><\/p>\n

Make it an election issue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my YouTube short of the day – based on my frustration that schools teach maths that is irrelevant to 99.8% of the population
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,204,35,122,16,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economic-data","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-election","category-ethics","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75825,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75823\/revisions\/75825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}