The PC police are alive and well and interfering in higher education. We took Master P to an open evening at a local 6th form college and on the wall outside one of the rooms was a display with the title: “Equality and Diversity in Mathematics.”
Taking the equality bit first, but doesn’t 2+2 always equal four? Unless you ask an accountant, of course, when the answer is “What do you want it to make?” And the square root of three is not diverse at all. It is always 1.7320508075688772 or thereabouts and doesn’t get diverse much as far as I can tell.
What they were driving at is that mathematics is not exclusive. It shouldn’t matter what your sexuality, skin colour, religion or social upbringing should not matter a jot in the pursuit of sigils and cyphers that mostly leave me cold.
It must be great to see numbers in the same way I see the alphabet as a jumble of the above that can be placed and ordered to create meaning out of chaos.
How bloody pretentious is that!
A better slogan might be, “Boredom and Confusion in Mathematics”. Getting my O level in Maths was especially delightful because I knew I would never have to waste brain power on that shit ever again. Haven’t they heard of calculators?
I didn’t even manage an O level. As far as maths was concerned, I was a blank blackboard and remained unchalked upon on leaving.