>>Now if programmers are not taught numeric maths... well, they should be.
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>Talking about Excel and programmers not taught maths, sometimes I despair that people aren't taught, or don't remember, the order of precedence of maths ops, as I learned it - BODMAS (brackets, of, divide, multiply, add, subtract). I used to teach Excel and I always gave my students the following equation:
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>2 + 4 * 6.
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>9 out of 10 would answer 36 (and even those who'd already done an Excel course). It seemed I was the only trainer who checked this and I shuddder at the thought of all those spreadsheets out there giving erroneous results.

I was once sitting next to a programmer, and actually quite a skilled one, whose education was entirely in humanities. Hadn't seen maths since 10th grade. His app was a water billing, and the new requirement was to adjust for the case when price changed mid-month (on 21st, for example). Knowing I was a mathematician, he asked me what's the best way to do it, and I said "just use regular proportion"... completely unaware that to him it was as if someone told me "it's the same as the relation between King Uroš and King Uglješa" - I'd know who they were, even (roughly) when, but what were their main traits...

He struggled with it all afternoon, and eventually got it almost right, except it was upside down, i.e. he'd apply the price for first part of month to the other and vice versa.

I know that all the numeric analysis we had to learn then is now contained on the processor or inside the compiler, so it's pretty much a knowledge that doesn't find much practical use anymore, but I strongly believe we, as professionals, should know how these things work. Just not to be surprised :).