The author in 1885: "People say that we should train people for factory jobs, but everyone I know is gainfully employed in agriculture, and we don't have any f

The author in 1885: "People say that we should train people for factory jobs, but everyone I know is gainfully employed in agriculture, and we don't have any factories where I live." As a college professor, let me assure the author that statistics and programming is not a standard part of an eighth graders program. In fact, the ones I teach have passed the 12th grade, and most are woefully unprepared in algebra, statistics, probability and programming. For me, understanding slightly advanced math (the type discussed in Taleb's Fooled By Randomness) helped me realize that Financial academic math is complete B.S. (in its use of the Gaussian Dist. in non-Gaussian processes). Yes, that's how learning more math has benefited me: it helped me discover how math is used to support complete B.S.