I am really bad at math. I have, like, no math. Like I'm weak on sophomore year high school math. Factor a cubic? I barely know how to ask Wolfram Alpha. I have to say "SOH CAH TOA" out loud to remember trig functions. I have *zero* calculus (x^2 => 2x, that's as far as I go.)
The thing is, though: there is one form of srs math that is relevant to my career: linear algebra. If you want to understand cryptographic exploits, you need some nuts/bolts linear algebra. So I can't take derivatives, I can't integrate, I can't convert degrees to radians, but I can orthogonalize a basis!
The reason I bring this up:
Both my kids know this.
And so both my kids TOOK LINEAR ALGEBRA, which was a prereq for NEITHER OF THEIR MAJORS, on the premise that I would get them through the class.
Long story short: my daughter's linear algebra final is tomorrow afternoon. Once she's done with it, I will have a new answer for "did you go to college". It was "I took UIC poly sci 101 and psych 101". It will be "I took UIC poly sci 101 and psych 101, and UIUC math 415".
Ask me for opinions on computing eigenmatrices for complex matrices! I have opinions!
FUCK complex matrices.
(For what it's worth: cryptography gets about 1/3 through Math 415 and says "yeah that's enough we can be done with this”, so I'm sitting up working out proofs for complex inner product spaces FOR NO GODDAMNED REASON)
After-action report: we did not in fact need to spend a bunch of time drilling Cramer's Rule, or converting polar to rectangular coordinates.
I know there are higher-math reasons for teaching Cramer's Rule, explicit formula for the determinant, &c &c, but Cramer's Rule is stupid.
