If present trends continue, our country may soon find itself far behind many other nations in both science and technology nations where, if you inform strangers that you are a mathematician, they respond with admiration and not by telling you how much they hated math in school, and how they sure could use you to balance their checkbooks.
Interpretation
The quote highlights concerns about the declining appreciation for science and mathematics in society.
Martin Gardner emphasizes a worrying trend where the societal value placed on science and mathematics is diminishing. He contrasts this with other nations where mathematicians are admired rather than viewed with disdain, suggesting that if current educational trends persist, the U.S. may fall behind in scientific and technological advancements.
In practice
In a speech to students about the importance of STEM education.
Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.
Debunking bad science should be constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science. In the long run, good science drives out bad.
If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime.
In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.
There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: "Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities."
Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses.
Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read.
We shouldn't be profiting from our students who are drowning in debt while giving a great deal to the banks. That's just wrong.
I could not think without writing.
The extreme sophistication of modern technology - wonderful though its benefits are - is, ironically, an impediment to engaging young people with basics: with learning how things work.
I'm spending more time at this library in four days than I did at the Eureka College Library in four years.
We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
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