Why do we teach math that won’t ever apply in the real world?

This has been such an unflattering question i have gotten from students who don't major in maths and from those who major in maths uncountable number of times. I think it's time i write a short anecdote on this "rhetoric". 




I think mathematics is underrated in terms of real-world applications.

I hear many say, “why do we bother find $x$, when we can't apply it in the real world”.

Now take a moment to imagine the world without mathematics, imagining the world without mathematics is imagining the world without all the technologies that has made life easy and comfortable, its imagining the world without the computers, phones, planes, jets, cars, internet and so much more. The ancient mathematicians, the likes of Aristotle, al-khwarizmi, Euclid, Euler, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Bhaskara II, Sind ibn Ali, Abū Sahl al-Qūhī, Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi etc. Their works made modern mathematical research more interesting and accomplishable. 

The application of mathematics seems to be hidden from the real world because of its abstract nature. The modern world we live in today wouldn't be possible without the efforts of mathematicians who lived their lives studying  geometry, calculus, algebra, down to optimization. Mathematicians have contributed 75% in the theories of technology. Theorems and proposition have been transformed over time to enhance technological production, but a lay man is blind to this because all abstractions are hidden and he is only meant to see the front-end.

Image processing theories have enhanced advanced pixel production and has helped in taking photos of the black hole, satelite imagery. Mathematical calculations sent humans to space in 1960s in the USA and to date more research are been carried out to enhance space research, telecommunications and ICT. Imagine telecommunications without theories from wave equations or imagine machines and robotics without theories from computational theories. Mathematics is highly underrated and that's why Everybody needs to be a mathematician.