I think (and I believe the parent poster does too) that math becomes relevant when things are starting to scale. Sure, creating an MVP of FB can be done quickly

I think (and I believe the parent poster does too) that math becomes relevant when things are starting to scale. Sure, creating an MVP of FB can be done quickly with minimum knowledge of maths. However, if it starts attracting a lot of users, suddenly algorithms and theory becomes very very important to minimize cost while optimizing performance.