I told my freshmen they could go home and tell their parents they learned “dimensional analysis” in math today. We’re just converting units — meters to miles, etc. — but it sounds awesome. Your parents’ll be impressed, I said.
In terms of math obsession, I’m somewhere in the bottom quartile of math teachers. I’m low. There are those with the posters that show how every one of the high school math standards — even DeMoivre’s theorem! — is essential to some working sector. It’s phony. You need less math nowadays than ever before.