YOU’RE DOING QUADRATICS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL?’

Yes, that’s standard at least in Germany

In Spain too, it’s also needed in vocational training (FP1, FP2) for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., because it involves necessary calculations in their work, such as trigonometry, spheronometry, vector forces, flow calculations, among others. For office workers, naturally, percentage calculations are not overcome, but even there second degree equations can arise…

Wow. In America, trades people use a chart to look up literally anything that requires math. If you’re lucky.

Most of the time “it looks good enough” is enough.

I’ve had an economics teacher in the Netherlands who had interest tables and wanted us to them too. For those before calculators, those are tables that list the years on the left, and the interest on top, and then the multiplier in the table.

So, 10 years at 6.5% = 1.877

Could you use a slide rule for that kind of multiplication?