INTRODUCTION
Those who Know seldom Care.Those who Care rarely Know.When Know meets Care,And teams with Dare,Then Mt. Constipation will blow! (jh)
Is it smart to flaunt Mathematical incompetence? Peopledon't flaunt reading incompetence.We owe every significant advance in Civilization toMathematics, including writing. The earliest known writingartifact is a wolf bone found in Europe, dating from the periodof 30,000-25,000 B. C., showing fifty-five cuts in groups offive. Certainly, tallies provided the earliest form ofbookkeeping. In Sumeria, icons inventoried stores of wheat,wine, etc. Later these icons became part of general writing.We all pay a daily educational tax in buying items andservices -- even children pay tax for toys or candy. Why? Ourcollege graduates are so poorly trained in Mathematics thatthey must be re-educated, and costs passed on to us. Do youenjoy paying this tax?I predicted breakdown of General Motors seven years ago,forewarned by Lester Thurow, MIT economist: "Americanspeople are not used to a world where ordinary productionworkers need mathematical skills." Toyota uses a just-in-timeproduction system, coordinating car production with demand,to avoid over-stocking. (GM overproduces, shuts downfactories, lays off workers, until inventory decreasesenough.) In Japan, high school graduates could apply theformula for the just-in-time system. When Toyota set up aNorth Carolina plant, only American students on universitymaster degree level could apply the formula.But mathematicians and collectivist teaching are also atfault. Mathematician, Richard Bellman (1920-1984), developed
Dynamic Programming
to
minimize
the cost or time spent onDepartment of Defense projects. (Lobbyists and politiciansended his system, but it could be restored if enough citizenscared and dared.) Bellman said this about some of his
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