> The core of math, as GP mentioned, is learning proofs.
Well it may be the core but it's not the purpose. As an engineer and later quant I actually use math for practical purposes in everyday life. It wasn't like this in the beginning, I remember primary school was a torment of being fed math olympiad-style problems and hating it. Then somewhere in gymnasium I discovered electronics and everything changed. Math became not just useful but inevitable and from then on learning of math for my own purposes went hand in hand with practical applications in electronics, from simple equations to matrices to differential equations, numeric calculus etc.
Of course there's also always the "standard math" (for passing the SAT/baccalauréat) and entering the good schools, that's inevitable. One can say that "Learning Math Ahead of (the vast majority of) Others" is the way to get ahead :)
Well it may be the core but it's not the purpose. As an engineer and later quant I actually use math for practical purposes in everyday life. It wasn't like this in the beginning, I remember primary school was a torment of being fed math olympiad-style problems and hating it. Then somewhere in gymnasium I discovered electronics and everything changed. Math became not just useful but inevitable and from then on learning of math for my own purposes went hand in hand with practical applications in electronics, from simple equations to matrices to differential equations, numeric calculus etc.
Of course there's also always the "standard math" (for passing the SAT/baccalauréat) and entering the good schools, that's inevitable. One can say that "Learning Math Ahead of (the vast majority of) Others" is the way to get ahead :)