The Math Myth
This largely matches my experience - as a software engineer, I spend probably &lt; 1% of my time doing math more complex than arithmetic and simple mathematical logic - but it&#x27;s missing something crucial:<p>In a market economy, basically all returns come from <i>marginal</i> gains.  The vast majority of your lifetime income will come from a dozen or fewer opportunities that you happen to be in a position to take advantage of, whether it&#x27;s a new job offer or a high-profile project you volunteer for or a startup that takes off.  You will qualify for those opportunities based on the skills you have <i>that other people don&#x27;t have</i>.  They will make money for the organization because of features or insights that your competitors lack.  Your customers will buy it because it lets them do things that they couldn&#x27;t otherwise do.<p>The stuff that you and everyone else spends 99% of your time doing is economically irrelevant.  You probably still need to do it (though if you can program a computer to do it, you have a huge leg up on competitors), but it doesn&#x27;t get you anywhere.<p>Ironically, this is one of those insights that a good understanding of math will give you.  The common-sense understanding is that we should be teaching what the majority of people are doing; the data says that we should be teaching what the majority of people are <i>not</i> doing but desire the results of.