[lutusp]

> WRT the headline's boast of using math as a "secret weapon against wall st," the article said "Frenkel blames the global economic crisis of 2008-09 on inadequate mathematical models used by bankers and traders to predict the financial markets..." My reading of this is that if people weren't so math illiterate, they could have seen the crash coming and perhaps taken steps to protect themselves.

Yes, and to be more specific, if decisionmakers and stockholders at financial institutions were more math-literate, they would have realized their institutions were taking huge risks based on sloppy mathematical reasoning. A higher general level of mathematical knowledge and skill would likely have prevented a crisis in which the entire economy teetered on a foundation of unsustainable mortgage debt -- obligations in which the property borrowed against was worth less than the debt, encouraging the borrower to simply walk away.