“Will I really use this in life?” This is a question asked by many students when confronted with a subject they find difficult or uninteresting. It is a fair question – albeit an easily answered one – especially when dealing with the subject of mathematics.

Nearly everyone uses basic math on a daily basis – when they glance at a clock, receive change at the store, and estimate traveling time.

People use math on the job, whether they’re working the drive-up window at McDonald’s or designing a skyscraper. Carpenters use math to measure, build, and estimate needed materials. Doctors and nurses calculate medicine doses, and bankers figure interest and loan payments.

Math is not only a fact of life – it’s simply inescapable. While surfing the Web, have you ever done a Google search? Type in a search phrase and Google instantly returns thousands of results, from a search pool of over a billion Web pages. Google’s complex mathematical algorithms use over 100 factors to obtain relevant results in a split second.

Not even sports can provide an escape from math. Baseball fans are familiar with statistics like batting average and earned run average (ERA). In football, stats include quarterback rating and yards per carry. For every sport, dozens of statistics are tabulated and analyzed.

The short answer? Yes, you will use math. The good news is that math can be enjoyable, especially when applied to something you find interesting. Because math is everywhere, it covers just about every subject under the Sun!