The following pages of his book, pp. 19, 20, should be part of every calculus course which includes Taylor's series.
===== QUOTE:
Sometime in 1919, after
arriving in a nearby village, while Odesa was occupied by the
Reds, Tamm was negotiating with a villager as to how many chickens
he could get for a dozen silver spoons. He was captured by one of
the Makhno bands who were roaming the country, harassing the Reds.
Seeing his city clothes, his captors took him to the ataman,
a bearded fellow in a tall black fur hat, with machine gun
cartridge ribbons crossed on his chest, and a couple of hand
grenades hanging on his belt.
"You miserable communist agitator, undermining our Mother
Ukraine! The punishment is death!"
"No, no," answered Tamm. "I am only a professor from the
University of Odesa and have come to buy some food."
"Rubbish," said the ataman. "What kind of professor are you?"
"I teach mathematics," responded Tamm meekly.
"Mathematics," sneered the ataman. "Then you should be able
to give me a bound on the error one makes by truncating McLaurin's
series at the n-th term. If you cannot answer, you will be shot."
Tamm gasped to hear this question in higher mathematics
come out of the mouth of the ruffian leader. With shaking hand,
under the muzzle of a gun, Tamm was able to present an answer
to the ataman.
"Correct," bellowed the ataman. "You may go free."
Who was this ataman? No one will ever know. If he
was not killed in the battles of the time, he might have
gone on to be a professor of mathematics in some Ukrainian
university.
=====ENDQUOTE
For anyone who has taught mathematics and has had to
answer that plaguing question "What use is this stuff?" one
answer could be that it could save your life (if you are ever
captured by a member of the Makhno bands).