When I was working as a barista at a local cheesecake café in high school, one of my responsibilities was ordering various types of cheesecake from the main distributor. I estimated how much of each flavor would be sold based on past sales records and placed the order a week in advance. The calculation seemed simple: a variable, x (representing the projected daily sales for a particular flavor), multiplied by 7 to get the weekly supply. However, managing cheesecake orders became one of the greatest challenges of my short-lived barista career. I struggled to account for all the factors that could influence x. For example, there were times when it seemed like everyone in the city suddenly lost interest in hazelnut, and I’d be left with chocolate hazelnut cheesecakes sitting untouched in the fridge. Other times, I'd get a call from a customer requesting 20 blueberry cheesecakes for a catering event, only to realize I didn’t have enough stock. Missing out on such a large sale was frustrating (especially because it could’ve earned me a promotion to manager!).
Reflecting on this experience reminds me of how different real-life situations are from textbook math. In school, math was my strongest subject, and I excelled at it. Yet, when faced with real-world decisions, my judgment wasn’t always spot on. All the neat tricks I learned in math class—like calculating probabilities—felt almost useless in these unpredictable, practical scenarios. As Robson pointed out, applying textbook knowledge to real life isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes, I wonder: in a world full of endless possibilities and unexpected outcomes, how can my math education truly help me succeed both professionally and practically?
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A very interesting story about the ways that the many contingencies in our lived experiences might not be easy to model mathematically! (Still, I'm glad you tried...) Your story relates tangentially to the reading on Babylonian word problems, but I'll accept it here.
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