Mathematicians, Onward and Upward!

Can you remember the last time you saw in the newspaper a story that focused on the area under a curve, or the slope of a line? Yeah, neither can I. If you ever stumble upon such a story, then calculus might be your best friend.

To most students, however, statistics will be of far more use than calculus, especially if they select career paths that require them to analyze risk, evaluate trends, confront randomness, deal with uncertainty or extract patterns from data.

- Dave Gammon, from Statistically speaking, we don't use calculus much

This editorial brought a tear to my eye (in both good and bad ways). I'll leave deciphering the reasons why as an exercise for the reader.

Hint: reread the passage quoted above to realize the bad way. And keep reading the rest of the article. It just gets worse.

Gammon is a biology professor at Elon University, a "selective private liberal arts university in North Carolina renowned for engaged and experiential learning." (From Elon's website.)

And researchers like him are why mathematicians / computer scientists / physicists / (real) statisticians will soon colonize the life and social sciences.