THE SOURCE OF OUTSOURCING? This Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story presents a few superficial reasons for learning algebra. (Everybody uses the term "mathematics" to refer to "algebra." Computations are part of mathematics, but one can be a competent skilled worker with no head for the higher mathematics such as calculus and analysis). Here are a few more practical reasons, inspired by something I saw recently, about a student who failed a test for putting a decimal out of place. (I forget where, it will probably turn up later tonight, in which case expect a Second Section.) Anyway, student was in engineering, set the problem up right, made the right substitutions, screwed up on the decimal point, probably a minor error in algebra but the bridge fell down! The student had no estimating skills. Henry Petroski has written about that (no cite, I have one chance in three of guessing which book without my library at hand) as a criticism of the teaching of calculation with the aid of machines. Students get no sense of magnitude. You want to have a sense of magnitude to keep the bridge from falling down, or the drawbar from snapping. Hypothesis: lots of outsourcing of technical jobs to places with more development of estimation skills for lack of calculators and computers. Iraq, anyone?