Who says you don't use Higher Mathematics every day??
 

http://thesaurus.maths.org/mmkb/media/png/Lambda.png

You use it every time you hit that "Google Search" cgi.

We hit up eigenvectors in Linear Algebra today, and I realized that search engines such as Google operate in eigenspace, using dominant eigenvalues in page ranking.

It's nice to begin to see how these things work.
:pimp