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<p>Even though an English major may not need any calculus or higher math for his/her major, wouldn’t it make sense for the student, if required to take a math course anyway, to take some potentially useful course like statistics (even calculus can be useful in some contexts)? Given the amount of statistics thrown around in general contexts, some knowledge of statistics would be quite useful to avoid being misled in daily life.</p>
<p>Indeed, psychology and behavior experiments described in Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow and similar books often use simple math and probability problems to find examples of irrational “fast” thinking, presumably because math and statistics knowledge is weak enough that most people do not even realize that their first impression may be mathematically incorrect.</p>
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<p>Yes, he was, if you mean he had to take precalculus in college. Fortunately, it did not prevent him for excelling in math afterward.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, for a lot of students (unlike your example), poor math instruction in high school causes them to lose interest in math, shutting the door to many possible areas of study and occupation.</p>