On: US Army applying new areas of math

[bradford]

A common joke among students when I was in my computer-science program:

when asked a how-many or how-much question that involved basic arithmetic, one would reply:

"Yeah, I can't do that. That's applied math".

[ska → bradford]

The math equivalent was "I'm a mathematician, not an arithmetician", or a variant.

It's true though, lots of mathematicians are lousy at arithmetic.