[tsuyoshi]

Well, I majored in both political science and computer science. I don't think the two cases are different at all. I find it very irritating to deal with both political people who don't understand any math, and computer people who can't write a coherent sentence.

However, if I had to pick one mathematical subject everyone should learn, it wouldn't be algebra, it would be statistics.

[throwawayjava]

> However, if I had to pick one mathematical subject everyone should learn, it wouldn't be algebra, it would be statistics.

This isn't algebra in the "groups and rings" sense, it's algebra in the "use the quadratic equation", "is this a graph of x or x^2 or x^3?", "FOIL" sense. Think middle school or early high school.

It's basically impossible to do any statistics past a bit of hand waving if your students can't identify the difference between a graph of x and a graph of x^2...

[tnecniv]

How do you teach statistics in any meaningful way other than with algebra?

[nonbel]

This is common:

Plug into SPSS/etc -> p-value calculated -> result = ifelse(p<0.05, success/trueTheory, failure/falseTheory)

[tnecniv]

I said meaningful :P