Re: Math and all that

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J. McCreery is right that math can be important to anthropologists, and
that most of us can learn more math than we might think, given
sufficient motivation (as A. Petto stressed). I was unable to make any
sense, really, of calculus when I had a semester of it as an
undergraduate. But when I returned to it around fifteen years later, I
had a strong motivation because I thought it could help formulate
population-pressure theories of cultural evolution in rigorous terms.
With a bit more maturity and a lot more motivation, I was able, this
time around, to grasp and use it at an elementary level. Einstein is
said to have assured a frustrated young physicist that whatever the
latter's difficulties with math, his own--Eistein's--were greater yet.
--Bob Graber

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