I was once fired because I gave (in my book on Matrices) a short proof of a weak version of Perron-Frobenius' theorem (the spectral radius of a non-negative matrix is an eigenvalue, associated with a non-negative eigenvector), by using Brouwer's fixed point theorem. In my mind, that was to give students an occasion to illustrate the strength of Brouwer's theorem. Of course, there are more elementary proofs of the Perron-Frobenius theorem, even of the stronger version of it.

I was once flamed because I gave (in my book on Matrices) a short proof of a weak version of Perron-Frobenius' theorem (the spectral radius of a non-negative matrix is an eigenvalue, associated with a non-negative eigenvector), by using Brouwer's fixed point theorem. In my mind, that was to give students an occasion to illustrate the strength of Brouwer's theorem. Of course, there are more elementary proofs of the Perron-Frobenius theorem, even of the stronger version of it.