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I think the author is both right and wrong. Maths skills is a litmus test that reflects the scientific education in general among the population. Given the ant
by kpil 10y ago
I think the author is both right and wrong. Maths skills is a litmus test that reflects the scientific education in general among the population.
Given the anti-intellectual and antiscience trends in US and Europe - where US seems to lead the way, it's at least one way of monitoring the situation.
As a practical skill, anything beyond 5th grade is rarely used, except if in rather specialized professions, but learning math most probably gives you tools for abstract reasoning, and probably changes how you look at the world.
- notahacker 10y agoI think the author is mostly attacking a straw man. The argument that mathematics skills in the US (or many other Western countries) are inadequate usually isn't a complaint that there aren't enough graduates familiar with advanced pure mathematical theorems. It's usually a complaint that after years of compulsory education the masses struggle to do basic arithmetic and understand basic statistics, and plenty of people whose jobs do entail working with figures or making calculations from time to time lack the "eighth grade level" numeracy to spot the figures in the Excel output table are out by two orders of magnitude because someone screwed up inputting the formula.