[defrost]

I'll second guerrilla - you can absolutely benefit from mathematical thinking without pushing into territory higher than undergaduate studies.

You can even benefit from the thinking taught in good high school coursework (or studying online).

At an arithmetic, bookkeeping level you can better appreciate handling finances and the seductive pitfalls surrounding wagers (gambling, betting, risk taking).

[quus]

My claim isn’t really that there’s no benefit or utility to math — that’s obviously false — but that maybe its benefits to regular people are more modest than the cheerleaders want to admit.

[defrost]

What are the costs (in your estimation at least) to "regular people" (regular by your metric) of not engaging in easy bake low level "mathematical thinking".

* How many have a lower return on { X } through not understanding compound interest, tax brackets, leveraging assets, etc.

* How many have steady net losses through "magical thinking" wrt gambling, betting, hot stock tips.

[quus]

You’re sort of making my point — there are people out there who think math education sets the mind free and opens the gates of higher cognition, and then others talking about hum drum stuff like tax brackets and compound interest. If the benefits really just amount to a few units of pre-algebra content, that would be disappointing.

[defrost]

> If the benefits really just amount to a few units of pre-algebra content, that would be disappointing.

They don't though - there are benefits all the way up.

Giving a few examples of benefits from low order mathematical thinking (understanding concepts of compounding, etc) does not equal a statement that these are the only benefits.

[quus]

Great, so what are those benefits all the way up?

[defrost]

At least a finite countable lists worth, there's something for everybody really.

Some of us are satisfied with, say, dimensional reductions of spectral geophysical surveys to improve imaging and train that against existing production records to highlight potential mineral leases.

Others might like to leverage symbolic algebra systems to crack quantum encryption candidates.

A good number like to get rich via high frequency trading, some like to sail satellutes against the magnetic currents of the planet, there's a world of optimisations in logistics that have been implemented and are still being fine tuned to improve throughput efficiency and fuel consumption.

But you're not really asking in good faith here, are you?