At the level of individuals, this article is complete bullshit. There is a WORLD of difference between an average mathematician/physicist/engineer and an averag

At the level of individuals, this article is complete bullshit. There is a WORLD of difference between an average mathematician/physicist/engineer and an average English literature graduate solving the same problem with the same tools. Those disciplines teach and/or reinforce A) critical thinking (question assumptions, look for counter-examples), B) decomposing problems to smaller problems, C) pattern recognition. The average software engineer would be somewhere in the middle, he's probably as good as a mathematician at A) and B), but probably not C). Even amongst reasonably mathematically educated people (say physicists), you see a difference in C) depending on the depth of their math education. There is a difference between people who know eg fractions, and people who know eg fractions AND integrals, and people who know eg fractions AND integrals AND group theory, in how often these individuals look at a situation and go "I've seen something like this before". Acquiring some areas of more advanced maths isn't a quantitative increase like doing bigger sums. In terms of the patterns that you see around you, it's a qualitative jump. It's like being able to use your eyes AND having IR goggles: you will see some aspects of the world very differently. At the level of societies, maybe. Can a poor society with lots of mathematicians "beat" a society with lots of wealth and infrastructure and comfortable niceties but whose individuals can only use Excel? Probably not, certainly not in < 1 generation. It certainly didn't turn out great for the soviets.