The writer is a visiting scholar at Stanford Graduate School of Education and director of Sociality Mathematics, a community interest company. Professors Alexandre Borovik, Whitfield Diffie and Michael Short also contributed to this article.
Upskilling and reskilling have become buzzwords in the debate over challenges facing the UK. One CBI report suggests that, by 2030, more than 30mn people will need to be reskilled. The question is how to do it. And the answer lies with mathematics.
Mathematically educated people are akin to the stem cells of a technologically advanced society; they can retrain themselves quickly as needed, stepping into new roles and managing new crises as these arise. Their training and continued professional development are thus matters of national significance. Informatics, what many call computer science, is mathematics’ modern — and equally crucial — companion.
Mathematical thinking may be applied to many (seemingly) non-mathematical situations, for example by technicians operating energy networks who need to be able to build mental images of big complex systems and use them when working with real systems.
