Because hurr durr math hard

Because math is abstract and difficult to relate to. We should be taught practical applications of the abstract concepts, and the exam questions should be more practical.

Always a good day when you have to break out arcsine

You're also technically using them if you merely play games. Edit: You also use cos when making or viewing a jpg, so the author of the meme did in-fact use at least cos on that day.

It’s like having a pocket knife. Once you start carrying sin/cos/tan around everything looks like a trigonometric relationship

What for?

You use it, but it's all preprogrammed into the software you use, so you can focus on the bigger problems.

It's a bit like how microprocessors are designed modularly using programming language. No one physically lays out a transistor on a 7nm die, that's all dictated by code, where at the higher levels you just see "memory block" and "arithmetic block" or whatever.

Finite Element Analysis is some funky shit, though, and often that's done using bespoke software. You need to know the maths to build that, and it helps to have an understanding when interpreting the results. At least, it helps the person writing the report make a good report, though it's not like anyone else will know if they get it wrong.

Also, the smart kids in class sure use them often enough.

The same vain is people arguing that schools should be teaching important things like budgeting, interest rates, taxes etc.

These things a trivial if you have the maths skills. These things are also subject to change, the maths doesn't.

Worst of all, these things are all taught (in Scotland), the people complaining about school not teaching them weren't paying attention.

My dnd group has pulled it out a time or two when cliffs are involved to figure out if you could get line of sight on someone.

We're all engineers of some kind.

"No John, you probably won't ever have to use trigonometry in your life. But some of the smart kids probably will"

The thing is, without learning basic math and physics in school, most people would probably be flat earthers or some other type of degenerates.

Without knowing/understanding that it's possible to go the moon, or understanding why rubbing a stick against another stick makes fire, all the nonsense ideas that are the "easiest" to accept would prevail.

Let's say I tell you that 2+2=5. If you know that 1+1=2, you can reasonably deduct that what I'm saying is false. If you know or atleast have seen how to do calculations with gravity, you can reasonably understand that it's possible to figure out how to put a rocket in space. You probably won't be able to do it yourself, but you understand that it's possible.

I always yearned to understand a practical reason to learn calculus.

I use my understanding of second and third derivatives and the risks and how they affect the likelihood of black swan events - to choose (strongly influence) who loses when playing a game of "Liars Dice". So there is that, I guess.

On a more serious note, lots of things in personal finance are a bit easier to understand with a functional understanding of derivatives and integrals. It's not critical, but it makes stuff like the compounding time effect of interest more accessible, I think.

Edit: If I could change one thing about pubic schools, I think everyone should get a chance to take stats or probability for free. It helps so much with so many areas of life.