That was a strange article to read. As I parsed his words, it seemed like Michael J. Barany is responding to someone else's essay or policy opinion but we don'

That was a strange article to read. As I parsed his words, it seemed like Michael J. Barany is responding to someone else's essay or policy opinion but we don't know who or what it is. If we had that, it would fill in the blanks of what he's arguing against. For example, he mentions "math" repeatedly but doesn't put boundaries around it. Is he talking about Algebra not being everywhere? Or Calculus is not necessary for everyone? Well, if you magnify the photo at the top of the article, you'll see books such as: + number theory + theory finite elements + topology + Navier-Stokes equation It's possible that the photo was a random clipart but it does seem to be the type of "math" he's talking about. Therefore, "math isn't everywhere" should be translated as "advanced university math isn't everywhere". So yes, it seems reasonable that we don't have to convince every part of society that they must learn to derive public key cryptography from first principles of number theory. But the question is, who was pushing that agenda? Because of my tech background, my first pass at his essay made me think it was a variation of arguing against the "coding is for everyone -- everyone should learn programming". However, I don't think Barany's opinion about math is an equivalent analogy.