Some of us at DZone develop scientific/engineering/research code. And to people like us, an elegant and simple mathematical function can be a powerful tool. We might not use it today but it's nice to have in the toolbox!
Too many programmers think SQL is a bit of a beast. It is one of the few declarative languages out there, and as such, behaves in an entirely different way from imperative, object-oriented, or even functional languages (although, some say that SQL is also somewhat functional).