My intention was to pose the following questions for arguments sake:
In a world with solid coverage of mathematical theory presented informally to appeal to a larger laymen audience, will the world produce more amateur mathematicians that make great contributions to science or less? Will would-be amateur mathematicians be less motivated to learn formal notation given that they can more easily read and understand the same material presented in an informal manner? If they did pick up a base level of formal notation, would they be less motivated to learn how to understand or write rigorous proofs using formal notation for the same reason?
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe there are studies out there that attempt to answer these questions.
It seems like there could hardly be fewer amateur mathematicians making great contributions to science.
The number of potentially great mathematicians who stop learning because they're satisfied with the informal coverage has to be absolutely dwarfed by the number of potentially great mathematicians who are scared away from mathematics entirely at an early age by excessive formality.
In a world with solid coverage of mathematical theory presented informally to appeal to a larger laymen audience, will the world produce more amateur mathematicians that make great contributions to science or less? Will would-be amateur mathematicians be less motivated to learn formal notation given that they can more easily read and understand the same material presented in an informal manner? If they did pick up a base level of formal notation, would they be less motivated to learn how to understand or write rigorous proofs using formal notation for the same reason?
I don't know what the answer is. Maybe there are studies out there that attempt to answer these questions.