The context that gets forgotten when people bring this up is that the essay initially appeared in the New Yorker in 2002, where "eigenvalue" was spelled correct

The context that gets forgotten when people bring this up is that the essay initially appeared in the New Yorker in 2002, where "eigenvalue" was spelled correctly. All the controversy about whether he understands incidental math seems to come from his book publisher having a less careful copy editor than the New Yorker. Maybe people could blame him for allowing the error to appear in the book, 7 years after it had been corrected in the magazine. Shrug.