I am sure that there are many jobs where mental math makes a huge difference.
I manage a team of engineers, and though pretty much all of them are head and shoulders above me in their specialisation, they think I really know my stuff because I find errors in their work and zero-in on them on the fly. The skill that I have is doing rough approximations in my head. Then from experience: a factor-of-two difference is commonly confusing kg and lb, a factor of 10 - confusing kg and N, a factor of fifty—mistaking degrees and radians (usually in Excel, where radians are the default mesurement), etc… I get a LOT of mileage from this :). If they did the same, their already good work would be even better. And I imagine any calculation intensive job (finance, economics, science, business...) is similar.
If you don’t have to do these kinds of rough calculations many times a day I don’t see this as a worthwhile skill (you could simply ask Siri/WolframAlpha, for example), other than perhaps to consolidate one’s authority (if you really have to play that game).
What kind of work do you do that being able to do mental math makes a huge difference?
I am sure that there are many jobs where mental math makes a huge difference.
I manage a team of engineers, and though pretty much all of them are head and shoulders above me in their specialisation, they think I really know my stuff because I find errors in their work and zero-in on them on the fly. The skill that I have is doing rough approximations in my head. Then from experience: a factor-of-two difference is commonly confusing kg and lb, a factor of 10 - confusing kg and N, a factor of fifty—mistaking degrees and radians (usually in Excel, where radians are the default mesurement), etc… I get a LOT of mileage from this :). If they did the same, their already good work would be even better. And I imagine any calculation intensive job (finance, economics, science, business...) is similar.
If you don’t have to do these kinds of rough calculations many times a day I don’t see this as a worthwhile skill (you could simply ask Siri/WolframAlpha, for example), other than perhaps to consolidate one’s authority (if you really have to play that game).