Math needs better marketing

     "What is your measure for support of science? Is it what anybody says, or is it where money gets spent? Basically, in Washington, it's where money gets spent. Sensibly.... the only point of Congress is to spend the three trillion dollars of the budget each year, and how you spend it is the portfolio of what defines this nation. Period." That's Neil deGrasse Tyson speaking about how important science is to America. The video is titled "Who's More Pro-Science, Republicans or Democrats?"
     Dr. Tyson goes on to explain that, historically, Republicans have been kinder to science than Democrats. He states, specifically, that under the Bush administration, different science communities received more money from the government like NASA who received a 20% increase. Under Clinton, however, NASA's budget dropped by 25%. However, Dr. Tyson reveals his disdain for the Republican party when he explains that increases to science education on behalf of the party usually include creationism which is ultimately more deadly to education than a small budget.

     "The innovations and creativity in science, engineering, technology, and math will be the drivers of tomorrow's economy— jobs.” In a separate interview with CNN, Dr. Tyson explains why math and science are so important in education despite some scholars “never using math again”; "Whether or not you ever again use the math that you learned in school, the act of having learned the math established a wiring in the brain that didn't exist before, and it's the wiring in the brain that makes you the problem solver... Even if you don't want to become a scientist, the minimum you should ask of yourself is that you become scientifically literate... and mathematically literate because therein are the engines of problem solving in the world... Now you're valuable to an employer [who seeks to innovate]."

     It appears that those, like me, who have busied themselves so much with argumentation, logic, reasoning, and progressivism and left math and science as a field of "other study", as a non-facet of the issues at hand, are gravely mistaken and lacking in our endeavor for answers and solutions. And it saddens me that this makes out to be the most sound argument I have ever made. 

     I draw out the example of showing one's work in affirmation of an answer. Any and all arguments made without the structure required for proof aren't good enough even if it provides the correct answer. What Dr. Tyson is saying that math and science can do is help us understand all the "why's". A socialist can be so convinced that heavy tax on the rich and national social programs reaching into the hundreds are what will save this nation and, similarly, a libertarian can be so convinced that stepping completely out of peoples' lives is the ultimate solution for prosperity, but without a body of evidence and proof between the introduction and conclusion for each argument, all we have is a sales pitch. 

     Without further ado, I shorten Dr. Tyson's argument to a single, simple statement: "Math and science directly lead to the innovated and perfected world of tomorrow," but as Dr. Tyson puts it, "math needs better marketing."
~Joe