Because the daily world has much less math in it than we care to admit. You don't need calculus to understand which elevator button needs to be pushed.

Since I'm between jobs, I've been taking the time to relearn geometry, trig, calc, and linear algebra. I've finished the first two and it's both humiliating and really fun to relearn some math. As an adult, I feel a very different appreciation for how much fundamental math we take for granted. I definitely recommend https://www.khanacademy.org/ and pauls notes (https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/).

Comment as a song https://mariedavidson.bandcamp.com/album/work-it-soulwax-rem...

There is no easy way out, you have to rest but you simply can't stop. Your body will rot, your mind too.

PS: song isn't an ode to the grind culture or how to slave away in an office, as lyrics say "you’ve got to work for yourself - Love yourself, feed yourself".

Even if you don’t know or remember the basics of combinatorics you can solve the problem with basic dynamic programming : start with the unit grid and then expend it.

> this is just me fantasizing. At work I would just give it to an AI and continue with my day

I'm sure ~4 yrs ago i would have loved the thought of this. It's so boring. My job is so, so boring.

Professional mathematicians and computer scientists use AI as well. Maybe that's not very reassuring from the standpoint of skills regression in modern adult work culture, but at least it demonstrates that skills and tool usage aren't mutually exclusive.

This is why you still work on open source and do coursework for fun. The same reason you go for a jog

I noticed the same with me after a few years working; my solution was to take all hard mathy online MS degrees/grad certs available one after the another. Now I can understand how does the generative AI math work while designing an electric motor for my own robot. Though the latest AI can do it all better than me.

I think it's due to calibration - practical work related problems are never that simple & easy so naturally people might start from DP formula.

D[A,B] := number of ways to navigate from grid sized AxB = D[A-1,B]+D[A,B-1]

and the aha moment is realising this is just a binomial coefficient.

The more i think about math these days, the more i see it as a muscle one must constantly train to achieve its potential.

Give it too long a rest and you have to go back at full blast for weeks on end to hope to ever achieve past performance.

I am very bad at math and have always been in awe of those who can do it well.