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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

a lot of people use concepts from advanced math routinely

For example?

My experience is biased since I work in technology, but:

- the actuaries and economists I worked with used calculus, statistics, and linear algebra (even if software did the calculations)

- the mechanical and electronics engineers I worked with used calculus, control theory, and signal theory (even if software did the calculations)

- SDEs use type theory and category theory (and the equivalence of them), as well as implementing the math above (even if libraries did the calculations) and things such as discrete math and graph theory to reason about data structures

For people I haven’t worked with, but know:

- biotech workers use calculus concepts and statistics

- Boeing engineers use calculus, statistics, and complicated simulations

- physicists have a whole bucket of mathematics they use

"A lot of people" is going to have a mushy definition, but to me, aerospace engineers + physicists, + biotech workers (probably a small subset) + actuaries + the rest you mentioned = not many people. Like <1% of of the US population?

My estimates are in the 1-5% range of US adults for those added together, but sure:

That non-exhaustive list of my personal experience only covers a few percent of the adult population.

How many people do you believe use any particular skill?

- - - - -

Fun aside: according to the BLS, around 1% of working adults are software developers. (A little over, actually.)

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/work.pdf

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

The article author includes “Excel” in their “basic” math definition. That covers a whole lot of stuff past eighth grade.

For example, I use multivariate regressions in Excel quite frequently to help us understand some data I’ve gathered. Yes, it’s just a few keystrokes, but if I didn’t have a basic understanding of what it were doing, it would just be magic, and I’d never be able to tell if the output was bogus or not.

Knowing the basic ideas behind complex numbers helped when I was doing some computer graphics work on a game a few years ago.

Having a basic intuition about what a derivative is comes up all the damn time when doing just about anything involving stuff that changes over time. I don’t use a lot of calculus, and I especially don’t calculate things by hand much, but knowing the general concepts helps a lot.

Statistics I use massively and I think is super important. Every single day, I need to at least understand what a standard deviation is, how basic probability works (I like poker), bayes theorem, etc.

Boolean logic and discrete math comes up quite a bit when I write code.

Non-Euclidian geometry came up a lot when I was writing code related to mapping and calculating distances on a curved Earth.

All that being said, I still can’t remember how to do long division :)

I don't doubt many of HN readers use some advanced math daily or weekly, but I'm skeptical that more than 1-2% of the general population does.

I probably use math all the time. Even when writing the sentence before this, I was thinking in statistical terms. Your statement above makes a similar estimate for the upper bound for people who use math, itself a mathematical statement.

People who don't learn statistics, are doomed to think in terms of anecdotes, or to trust some authority. Math is necessary to do a proper independent evaluation about a lot of questions in our world, be they political, economical or scientific. In the office, you cannot double check the work of the "experts", making it very hard to lead effectively, handing them all the power. In elections, those who don't understand statistics and science (that require math) are vulnerable to charlatans and demagogues. Economically, not knowing math means you have trouble evaluating risks and expected benefits of investments and exposures.

A favorite example of the peril of being unfamiliar with advanced math and using concepts from advanced math:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9602/rediscover...

everytime you wad up a piece of paper and Kobe Bryant it into the rubbish bin, you're doing differential calculus in your head. The starting velocity and trajectory of the paper wad is decided upon based on the parabola's first and second derivatives.

You may not know it, but you're definitely using the calculus "intuitively" - that's why the paper doesn't land right in front of you, or into the next room over, even if you miss the basket.

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