Some questions are so rarely asked that we are astonished anyone
would ask them at all. The entire world seems to agree that
knowing mathematics is the key to something important, they just
forget what. Benjamin Franklin asked this question in 1749 while
thinking about what American schools should be like and
concluded that only practical mathematics should be taught. The
famous mathematician G.H. Hardy asked this question (A
Mathematicians's Apology) and concluded that while he loved the
beauty of mathematics there was no real point teaching it to
children. Today, we worry about the Koreans and Lithuanians
doing better than us in math tests and every "education
president" asserts that we will raise math scores, but no one
asks why this matters. Vague utterances about how math teaches
reasoning belie the fact that mathematicicans do everyday
reasoning particularly better than anyone else. To anyone who
reads this and still is skeptical, I ask: what is the Quadratic
Formula? You learned it in ninth grade, you