I think you're missing one important consideration, here: they're saying "make math simple enough for regular people to understand when your audience is regular

I think you're missing one important consideration, here: they're saying "make math simple enough for regular people to understand when your audience is regular people." Scientific American is targeted at educated laypeople. The author's job is to communicate with that target audience. And it absolutely is a tease to use a headline that, to that audience, will come over as a bizarre indication that they're actually clueless.