
Calling a spade a spade: Mathematics in the new pattern of division of labour [pdf] - ColinWright
http://www.borovik.net/selecta/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Spade_31Dec14.pdf
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j2kun
This quote resonates with me

> I am old enough to have been taught, in my teenage years, to write computer
> code in physical addresses, that is, sequences of zeroes and ones, each
> sequence referring to a particular memory cell in the computer. My
> colleague, an IT expert, told me recently that he and people who work for
> him passed in their lives through 6 changes of paradigms of computer
> programming. In many walks of life, to have a happy and satisfying
> professional career, one has to be future-proof by being able to re-learn
> the craft, to change his/her way of thinking. How can this skill of changing
> one’s way of thinking be acquired and nurtured? At school level—mostly by
> learning mathematics.

------
j2kun
A lot of his arguments are backed by the assertion that "The majority of
British math major graduates can't do X." As I can attest at the US
polytechnic university I graduated from, graduation is not necessarily the
best measure of the success of an education system. This is especially true
for math majors, most of whom decide partway to disengage from the thinking
part of mathematics and turn to teaching. It's no secret why: they thought
math in university would be a continuation of math in high school, and when
they are instead asked to think hard about linear algebra or topology or
analysis, they decide they don't like math after all. Such students have
special, easier courses and yet get the same degree as the top students in
their department.

~~~
dev1n
In support of this, in high school I didn't quite find math interesting. Once
I got into the higher level courses in college I became enthralled in linear
algebra and probability theory. Unfortunately it took until my senior year
before this occurred (graduated bs in cs). This article helps provide a basis
for greater variety of math courses in high school IMO.

p.s.

j2kun your blog is awesome! Your introduction to the math behind PageRank
introduced me to the world of linear algebra and I have truly enjoyed the
adventure it has set me on. Thank you!

~~~
jeffreyrogers
This was my experience as well, though fortunately I found out math was
actually interesting my junior rather than senior year.

------
wwweston
> banks and insurance companies clamour for “numerate” workforce, but prefer
> to deal with innumerate customers

And, honestly, they also prefer to isolate numerate expertise in a few "cost
centers" inside their operation.

Years ago I held a number of bonds my grandparents had bought for me as a gift
(and educational tool) when I was a young child. I'd studied enough
mathematics that I could derive compounding interest formulas and enough
finance I thought I understood the instrument. But the bond values I
calculated and the values my bank would redeem them for diverged enough that I
wondered.

So I asked if I could talk with anyone at the bank about why their calculated
values were different from mine. I wanted either higher redemption values or
an education.

I had a brief conversation with a customer facing local officer where I
_started_ to explain. It was over quickly; the officer was polite, but clearly
uninterested in following (much less enlightening) any conversation about the
specific computation of bond values. And very sure that whoever had done it
had done it correctly, and that was all that was necessary.

~~~
ky3
Illegitimi non carborundorum. Write a letter to HQ. Write a letter to the
newspapers. Persist and publish their formula.

That may not have been the exact path of education that your grandparents had
in mind. But if you muster the derring-do for the task, you'd make them very
proud and blessed that they had you as a grandchild!

------
varelse
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

------
ajuc
Very good analysis.

I think free university education is part of the solution.

It forces people to get over the neck of the hourglass (because all the
competitors will have a degree). Yes it leads to worse level of university
education, you cannot avoid that, but as long as it's over the neck - it will
allow people to learn more on their own (we have internet after all), and they
will have motivation.

This works in Poland (big unemployement 20 years ago might have been a big
factor too - everybody knew that your kids must learn English and get M.A. if
they want to have a job).

We had period where "you aint gonna need it" approach to math education was
winning (they even made math optional in the final high-school exam), but in
the end everybody realised it was a mistake.

The only problem with this model is - it's hard to get the best scientists to
teach math to everybody. And hard to make public universities be able to
afford the best scientists at all.

So this model produces huge amount of reasonably educated engineers,
programmers, economists, analists etc, but it produces few world-class
scientists.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _This works in Poland (big unemployement 20 years ago might have been a big
> factor too - everybody knew that your kids must learn English and get M.A.
> if they want to have a job)._

A sad side-effect of this is that we have tons of unemployed M.A.s of
humanities - everybody knew that their kids need to get _an_ M.A., but not
much thought was applied towards what kind of M.A. could be useful. But this
can be attributed to a generation of people discovering for the first time how
the whole capitalism thing works. It's a problem with social expectations, not
with free universities, of course.

~~~
theorique
That tends to be one of the challenges with credentialism and inflation. In
the 1960s or 1970s (at least in the USA), the mindset among employers tended
to be "you've got a degree? you're HIRED!" \- they just needed reasonably
smart people and university acted as a filter.

The parents of Millennials were among this cohort and internalized this
mindset (along with the society at large). The idea of "more education =
better job opportunity" has lasted for the past 40-50 years and even been
escalated.

~~~
chetanahuja
umm.... No. It's not just some "mindset". There's lot of factual evidence to
show that college degree is clearly and positively correlated with higher
lifetime income. E.g.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/29/w...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/29/want-
proof-college-is-worth-it-look-at-this-list-of-the-highest-paying-majors/)

~~~
theorique
Agreed, but I bet you'd also agree that there's more competition for most
post-college jobs nowadays, than there was in the big expansion years of the
1960s and 70s. At that time, the mere fact of a college degree (never mind the
specific discipline) was enough of a distinction that companies would hire BA
holders relatively casually. A generic "college degree" is still a good bet to
make over a lifetime, but getting one's foot in the door is harder, since a
greater percentage of the population does some post-secondary credentialing.

------
MatrixGroups
Funny/sad part is that we are not even talking about _" real math"_ as
practiced by mathematicians, rather down-to-earth utilitarian kind that lets
you get by in your day-to-day activities. I blame the parents who, of course,
know better than everyone else and the "experts" that engage in populist
games.

------
graycat
The OP sees countries around the world and essentially all of current
civilization as neglecting math and regards this situation as unfortunate.
Mostly I don't and for the following two reasons:

(1) Learning Math?

Whatever K-12 or four years of college do in math, it's quite possible to
learn quite a lot of math. So, I see no big _disaster_ here.

That is, if someone wants to learn some math, they can go for it. E.g., there
is an outline of how in

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998893)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998922)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998938)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269324)

Further, the Internet is just awash in materials for learning math, the best
of which are just terrific.

Further, there is no shortage of really good math expertise in at least the
top two dozen or so US research universities. And there are engineering
schools with programs in the _mathematical sciences_ with optimization,
probability, statistics, numerical analysis, and more. Some EE departments are
deep into stochastic processes, signal processing, stochastic integration, and
more.

Since I did a lot of such learning, it's doable.

(2) Math for the Economy?

If some math has some economic value, then do a start up where the crucial
core, _secret sauce_ of the start up is the math. Right: As the OP makes
clear, in principle and with some examples, and with more being possible, the
founder of the start up can do the math, and millions of user/customers can
make use of the results without being aware of the math at all.

Since I'm trying to do just such a start up, maybe such is doable.

For the role of math, don't see any biggie problems, for national security,
economies, countries, or civilization.

There are a lot of really good mathematicians. In part what's missing are
their $40 million houses, 300 foot yachts, private Gulfstream jets, two dozen
Ferraris, drop dead gorgeous trophy _spouses_ , etc. So, right, there's James
Simons. And Andrew Viterbi. But, we need many hundreds more. I'm working on
it, and one thing the OP might do that would be more effective would be to
show how he used math to get a 300 foot yacht, etc.

