Math is hard

Having encouraged everybody else to post short posts with links to other cool stuff, I should follow my own advice! Here's four very interesting and different responses to XKCD's Forgot Algebra comic:

• helens78 talks about the fact that loads of people commented on the comic agreeing with the attitude it's supposed to be satirizing... I loved every second of math I took in high school and college, and I use algebra on a daily basis (Her post also contains a detailed text description of the comic, so I'm not going to repeat her transcription.)
  
• yvi (who lives and was educated in Germany) is annoyed by people who are smug about not being able to do maths: These are subjects that belong to "general education" and somehow, sciences beyond maybe grade 6 or 7 aren't
  
• petra observes that anti-intellectual attitudes to languages can be just as bad: Americans are not in the least bit shy about how much of their time they have spent learning skills that they do not presently use
  
• rho gives a great example of how maths is useful in real life: It isn't the specific knowledge that's useful; it's the way of looking at the world

All very much worth reading, including the comment discussions attached. There, how's that for a brief pointer rather than a long essay (which might never get posted)?