Check out this answer from 1957! This valuable forum post has reminded me of a passage from Conrad Hilton's great little autobiography, Be My Guest:
<<Instead of Dartmouth, I now entered the New Mexico School of Mines...what I learned at Socorro has been invaluable to me. I learned really to understand higher mathematics. I'm not out to convince anyone that calculus, or even algebra and geometry, are necessities in the hotel business. But I will argue long and loud that they are not useless ornaments pinned onto an average man's education. For me, at any rate, the ability to formulate quickly, to resolve any problem into it's simplest, clearest form, has been exceedingly useful...I found higher mathematics the best possible exercise for developing the mental muscles necessary to this process. In Later years I was to be faced with large financial problems, enormous business deals with as many ramifications as an octopus has arms, where bankers, lawyers, consultants, all threw in their particular bit of information... but in the end someone has to pull them all together, see the actual problem for what it is, and make a decision- come up with an answer. A thorough training in the mental disciplines of mathematics precludes any tendency to be fuzzy, to be misled by red herrings, and I can only believe that my two years at the School of Mines helped me to see quickly what the actual problem was- and where the problem is, the answer is. >>
