German here. It's actually true that you see a lot of "public intellectuals" that publicly tell how bad they were at math. I only realized that when Merkel as

German here. It's actually true that you see a lot of "public intellectuals" that publicly tell how bad they were at math. I only realized that when Merkel as chancellor back in Covid times, after numerous meetings with other politicians and non-scientists, found herself explaining exponential growth on a press conference with her fingers. Not sure about the 1970s hypothesis, though.