When I was in college and grad school, I noticed that students who couldn't hack Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and Statistics were also the

When I was in college and grad school, I noticed that students who couldn't hack Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, and Statistics were also the ones struggling with science courses. In my undergrad years, this came to a head in General Physics where understanding the concepts of derivatives and integrals are crucial to seeing it as anything but disjoint plug and chug memorization of equations. In grad school, these were the ones booted with a masters after candidacy exams or even sooner. These days, getting a B in all those courses and reading a book on Python or Java is sufficient to get a six figure position in the tech industry(1) whilst the remainder of science grads I know struggle through endless post-docs and non-tenure track positions hoping things will get better. I only know one fellow student (out of hundreds) who eventually made tenure. I learned long division in elementary school. If the ability to grasp long division has become the new dividing line between the haves and the have-nots, we IMO are in deep doodoo as a nation. And as others have posted here, between Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity and a bajillion blog posts, it's never too late to learn, and at some point we ought to stop making excuses for people who can bootstrap their way out of innumeracy(2). It's not that much to ask here, is it? 1. And yet live below the poverty line in SF or NYC 2. Assuming they can even read, and if they can't, we need a frickin' Manhattan Project to change that