When you mentioned the quadratic formula the other day, I reached deep into the recesses of my memory and tried to recall it without googling. This is about as far as I could remember...
Considering that I haven't
used the darn thing in at least ten years, I'd give myself a passing grade.
The
one thing I absolutely remembered without a doubt was the "something - 4ac" under the radical; the rest of it was pretty sketchy, but I could picture the "shape" of it in my head... like I knew there was something left and beneath the radicand, but I couldn't see what. Weird how things like that stick around in the old noggin.
I loved taking math classes when I was in school, but a few years into college, I really struggled through engineering calculus 2 and 3. That coincided with my "don't give a fuck" period and I dropped the ball on any more math. I kept
all of my stupidly expensive calculus and linear algebra textbooks, though, and after graduating I used to tell myself I'd open them back up one day for a refresher. Hasn't happened yet! But they're still sitting RIGHT OVER THERE in the corner of my room.
I actually kind of wish I had a way to stretch those stills and apply some mid-level maths in my daily life. A few years ago I got to play around with matrices and FFTs for a brief problem-solving period at work, and it was a lot of fun. Those were good times.
Good luck, Papa Ken!
