quote:

Originally posted by Tn226:
Graduated years ago with a mech engineering degree. I had no trouble with advanced math. In fact, I enjoyed it.

My granddaughter is about to receive a degree in actuarial science. The math she does (and tutors) may as well be written in Martian.

I had to look it up:
“Actuarial science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance, pension, finance, investment and other industries and professions. More generally, actuaries apply rigorous mathematics to model matters of uncertainty and life expectancy.”
–Wikipedia

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
Until this thread, I had never heard of an actuary.

Have you seen/read Fight Club? The protagonist spends a decent amount of time towards the beginning talking about what his actuarial job entails (calculating and assessing risk probability for an insurance company).

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
I actually had to stop and think about how to do long division with paper and pencil. (My BS is math major )

Producing a square root with paper and pencil would give me pause nowadays.

^^^Are you talking about the grouping the digits of a number in pairs to the left and right of the decimal method that is setup similar to long division? I’m fairly sure I’ve never seen that before today.