College, and working on computer games, but out of school for me it’s almost never been in the typical forms of “oh look, a polynomial equation that means something I care about, just like in an algebra problem, and I need to factor it or solve for X”. But using things like polynomials because they actually represent something, yes.
The best semi-recent example, was trying to develop a formula for calculating what the fair value of various animals was based on their attributes, in a way that would give values that seemed right and made sense based on a combination of factors, with various drop-off points and so on. That did end up being a polynomial equation, and I did end up factoring it out to re-express it in much simpler terms and so on. I think it ended up being harder than any school problem like that that I’d ever done, even just doing the simplifying of it. And, I would have balked if I hadn’t developed a fairly strong skill at doing those sorts of problems in high school. And the result was quite useful professionally.
BUT, my boss ultimately ended up not being able to really get it, or like it, and THAT was actually the last straw that lost me a job!
So one could either blame that on my willingness to dive into that kind of math instead of doing something that didn’t require math, OR one could blame it on HIS lack of math fluency, OR his (very reasonable) expectation that the math would be a problem for others. Maybe.