Where is balance Academic priorities 254

I have an experiece quite contrary to this. I do not have such a strong theoretical background in formal math, and have had to read up on subjects in around 20 situations. Examples like making stock exchange indices manipulation-proof when issuing derivatives, analyzing scaling properties in networks, optimizing a satellite broadcast system's power-bandwidth footprint. Even interpreting sail polars vs wind patterns in a sailing regatta is a problem you need a mathematical understanding of; not just to trust the computer.

Many of these are problems that are completely intractable if faced head-on computationally, either because they truly are computationally unbounded, or because you aren't even close to having all the data.

It is said about economists that when they cannot handle the formula they derivate it and try again. Repeat until success. This has more than a sliver of truth in it; you often need to reformulate the problem in other numerical spaces.

Handling "skill management" is valuable indeed.

I get that.

I just say that you shouldn't dismiss overdoing basic skills in languages and math at early stages; some of these are best studied at a young age due to the way the human brain functions.

But the motivation has to be there. I am doing some show-and-tell stories, and present some of the problems above as challenges. Exchange history has literally thousands of such math challenges that directly affect a large number of people's lives immediatly.

I took a lot of school children on Stock Exchange tours, and always gave them a lot of challenges in the figures that are everywhere in that location. You wouldn't stand a chance in the derivatives market without a very clear knowledge of some basic statistics.

Kids need that kind of views into the adult business world to get an understanding of why they are doing the math and languages.

-- mrr