We spent at least two terms learning how to measure the area of circles. Many's the time since I've stood in the middle of huge circular fields, logarithims in hand, waiting for someone to say "So how big is this thing, anyway?" But no.

I don't think I've made the Vulcan Hand Fanny since the Fourth Year, either.

by the look of things.

Left Hand Rule.

Right Hand Rule.

= ut + (1/2)at^2

= u^2 + 2as

We didn't have multigym at school, but apart from that I have used all of those. And regularly use the Vulcan hand gesture. Probably a give away that I became a scientist.

Now that I think back, school seems remarkably useful - including how to stand up to bullies and talk to girls.

But it makes life a better place to hang around in.

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/useful-poems-know-heart
for starters

George, is the implication that trigonometry, poetry, long division, the periodic table, algebra and calculus are a waste of time, or somehow without practical application?

Oh, and I used trigonometry this week, when working out the angle at which to cut new spindles for my stairs.

I actually can't think of anything I learned at school that I'm not glad I learned. Some of the facts, figures and dates we crammed in did stick, permanently. Most didn't. But in learning them, I learned how to think, which no amount of tutting about oxbow lakes can take away.

/sense of humour failure about education

We spent at least two terms learning how to measure the area of circles.

Blimey, how difficult is Πr²?

Also, if three pints of beer costs you £8.10, then working out the price of one pint is an algebraic operation, is it not?

Mainly because all I learned there was making toasted cheese and explaining shops to aliens. Seriously. There was nothing about running a home taught.

Also classical studies, in which we were asked to draw pictures of naked greek gods.

God my school was shit.

"I know - let's go to Zambia. They've got lots."

I learned real world skills such as how to use a VHS video recorder and how to program a Sinclair ZX-81 computer. I wished I learned a bit of poetry instead.

and the rivers that run therein. Geography: total waste of time.

What I don't know about oxbow lakes is nobody's business.

Throwing the discus, putting the shot.

Still, if the Spartans do attack one day, we'll be ready.

was how to bend not break the rules.

Which, with hindsight, was a very useful skill. It's kept me out of prison, anyway. So far.

"The town hall is opposite the Cathedral" in German.

Stupid Teutonic town planners.

I learned how to spell 'floccinaucinihilipilification'.

The only time I have ever used this word is when I boast somewhat pointlessly that I learned it when I was 11. It's not the kind of word you just slip into conversation, sadly.

I seem to remember learning to spell 'business' and 'necessary' on the same day, which have been rather more useful.

the British collective ignorance towards learning foreign languages is alive and well.

(Das Rathaus ist gegenüber den Dom, btw.)

"The Real World" is mathematics, chemistry and physics not how to get your car fixed for a cheaper price.

There for my benefit, not yours.

practical everyday stuff - how government works, how the tax system works, how to run your personal finances, the possible pitfalls of credit, basic car/bike safety checks/maintenance, how to change a wheel, how to build an IKEA flatpack, how to put out small domestic fires, etc etc.

Stuff that REALLY prepares you for adult life.

...what colour shoes would they be wearing?

The only thing I've used maths for is adding up rounds of drinks and tax percentages.

And the only I know about physics is from a Billy Bragg song: 'The laws of gravity are very, very strict'.

NaCl (Sodium Chloride).

This song is just wonderful.

It's just badminton with a football.

Except at a remove, as an aid to literature, art appreciation and trying to understand wars.

test tubes and bunsen burners.

Even doing 'A' level physics and maths I could find no use for the bloody things.

Oddly, I've found the ability to solve simultaneous equations rather useful. Particularly when my wife was doing one of the Professor Layton games on her DS. Lots of the cunning puzzles could be solved by expressing them as simultaneous equations.

and give someone a wedgie.

I felt the need to refresh my memory.

What did I learn at school that hasn't been of any use since?

Chemistry - Totally dumbfounded me. I was suspended once for setting fire to the laboratory gas taps.
Biology - well apart from a rudimentary understanding of certain bodily functions and most of that was learned ex-curriculum.
most Mathematics - except basic arithmetic
Religious Education - I've been an atheist since late teens
Metalwork and Woodwork - taught by dimwits
Art - I couldn't draw or paint very well. My Dad taught me how to emulsion a wall and gloss a skirting board.

What did I learn which was of some use?

English - thank goodness I was good at something
History - in which I took a degree later on.
French and German
Standing up for myself
A natural suspicion of people in authority
Guile, cunning, capacity for self preservation - it was the only way to get through a boys grammar school for seven years without having a nervous breakdown.

courtesy of Alloway Primary School - and therefore, as a result, also a lot, and I mean A LOT, about Robert Burns.
From south of the border, though, logarithms particularly spring to mind.

Moves forward by using it's cilia in a Metachronal Rhythm (TMTFL).

Bearing in mind that I did a vocational degree, I would say that geting on for 80% of the stuff I absorbed for exams was of absolutely no use whatsoever in my professional career. It was a case of learn on the job. From the patient's perspective, would you rather know that your dentist knows differential diagnosis of the various types of calcifying epithelial odontogenic cyst, chance of seeing in practice 1:100 over a 40 year career, or that your dentist knows how to accurately diagnose and effectively treat your toothache, chance of seeing 3:1 per day in practice?

Equal emphasis was placed on these things. The problem with degrees is that they're taught by academics.

The "those who can, do, those who can't, teach" saw is a huge slur on teachers. For lecturers at dental schools, however, it is 100% bang on the money. The academic staff are all people who have failed to make the grade in practice or, alternatively, people who were wise enough to realise that they weren't cut out for the thrash and grind of life at the toothface.

Not just for working out change in the pub but for putting an abstract bunch of things together and getting some order and logic behind it.
It helps you work out what's missing as well.

Mr "Bummer" Langley's "OUCH" ruler and wandering hands and I haven't needed it in the real world as the last I heard he was residing at Her Majesties pleasure hopefully being forcefully buggered by fellow inmates.

I have used algebra (or a sub-set of it) all my professional life, but then I'm a programmer by trade so that probably doesn't count. I haven't used a multi-gym in probably 20 years (but did for a while, post education).

Haven't used pretty much any of my A level maths, or most of the O level maths since I left school, but I did happened to use simultaneous equations, just the once when I was in my mid 30s. Damn but that was a weird little struggle to a) remember what technique was required, and 2) how to use it.

And I finally got to use long division recently....when my son started doing it for his homework. I'm warming up for calculus and trigonometry for the same reason. God help me if he asks anything about chemistry.

Can't remember the French I took.

FWIIW, I have always thought that maths is the universal language, & when we eventually meet up with ET, maths will be the language then.