Yesterday afternoon (as promised), Michael Jennings and I duly had our conversation about mathematics, which, as I said at the end, I found really really interesting, and really really, if Michael will pardon the word, fun.

There was a bit towards the end when we both completely lost it and said almost nothing for about a minute aside from “um” and “er”, and this I removed.  Otherwise, it is all exactly as it was.  There is lots more I could say about what we said, but what we said will, I hope, suffice.  Neither of us was at our most fluent, both of us having done other quite stressful and tiring things earlier in the day, but I truly believe we made up for that by talking, albeit often rather hesitantly, about really interesting stuff.  Our conversation lasted about 45 minutes, which is somewhat longer than I had expected, but then again, it turned out to be somewhat more interesting than I expected, and I expected it to be very interesting.  I am truly delighted by the hope-stroke-thought that in several years hence, I will still be able to listen to it.  Do I sound proud of this thing?  Probably, because I certainly am, and I am already pondering further conversations about educational matters.

At regular intervals in this conversation I referred to one or other of the excellent comments on the posting I did on Samizdata earlier in the week, entitled What use is maths?.  As I hope was clear from the start of this exercise, I always knew that there was a world of good answers to this question, and those comments alone, now approaching a hundred in number, will prove this to anyone who ever doubted it.  If you want a fairly exhaustive list of all the particular things that maths in its various forms and facets is useful for, along with other ruminations about the value of having studied maths (which is not quite the same thing), then I strongly recommend reading those comments.  A few of the later ones express exactly the same admiration and gratitude for all the other comments that I feel myself.