So good I just have to post it: “Economist Removed from American Airlines Flight for Doing Math“. University of Pennsylvania econ professor Guido Menzio fell victim to a non-mathmetician’s vigilance. From Catherine Rampell at WaPo:

“Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.“

The first post linked above also has this little anecdote from 2003:

“At Heathrow Airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor, and a graphical calculator. …  Authorities believe she is a member of the notorious al-Gebra movement. She is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.“

Mathematics has always seemed a little threatening to many people, but apparently social justice “educators” at Teach For America are telling minorities that “Math is the ‘Domain of Old, White Men’“. That is from David Huber at The College Fix. Huber quotes a story from EAG News.org:

 “Radical Math was created by educator Jonathan Osler several years ago while teaching at El Puenta Academy in New Jersey. Osler taught Radical Math along-side Cathy Wilkerson, a former member of the Weather Underground Organization (with Bill Ayers) who once participated in a plot to detonate a nail bomb at a dance for military personnel at Fort Dix.

Radical Math provides hundreds of social justice math lessons obviously meant to indoctrinate. For example, lesson titles include ‘Sweatshop Accounting,’ ‘Racism and Stop and Frisk,’ ‘When Equal Isn’t Fair,’ ‘The Square Root of a Fair Share’ and ‘Home Buying While Brown or Black.’“

Huber sums things up thusly:

“I cannot think of a better way to keep minorities ignorant of mathematics than by turning the subject into yet another showcase for historical grievances.“