Originally Posted by JonLaw
I can't recall a single time that I used anything that I recalled from geometry class, itself in the engineering undergrad.

Trigonometry, sure.

Geometry, no.

I'm going to attempt to tread lightly here and suggest, with all due respect, that learning to construct mathematical proofs (and I mean authentically learning it, not filling in blanks with the right theorem/postulate, but actually constructing the logical progression one's self); results in a kind of global learning of a different way of thinking or approaching material.

It's that mindset which is most directly utilized in every physical science. Less so, certainly, in engineering disciplines than in their companion sciences, because of the difference between engineering and science. Still, it's that gestalt that is what students should be getting out of math instruction. It's a metaphorical toolbox to keep things in. While it may not seem as though one uses the tools labeled "geometry" one may well use other tools in that box-- as you note, trigonometry, for example. All of that belongs in that toolbox; what students gain from working proofs isn't a single, simple skill such as "the ability to use algebraic concepts to compute vector quantities with precision." It's more about the toolbox.

In short, I believe you when you say you haven't used any THING that you learned in geometry. But I'm also a bit skeptical that nothing you got out of geometry was even indirectly useful in support of other study.

It's rather like learning literacy. "Reading" is such a roomy toolbox that at some point it ceases to be a thing of its own, and becomes a box to hold all kinds of other specific tools.


Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.