"One of my mother’s closest friends, when she was a young girl, was
among those who could not grasp fractions. This lady once told me so
herself after she had retired from a successful career as a ballet dancer. I
was still young, not yet fully launched in my activities as a mathematician,
but was recognized as someone who enjoyed working in that subject. ‘It’s
all that cancelling’, she said to me, ‘I could just never get the hang of
cancelling.’ She was an elegant and highly intelligent woman, and there is
no doubt in my mind that the mental qualities that are required in
comprehending the sophisticated choreography that is central to ballet
are in no way inferior to those which must be brought to bear on a
mathematical problem. So, grossly overestimating my expositional abilities, I attempted, as others had done before, to explain to her the simplicity and logical nature of the procedure of ‘cancelling’."
Penrose, huh. I was reading the intro to Scott Aaronson's new book on quantum computing, and in it he says,
> More pointedly, one wonders who the audience for this book
is supposed to be. On the one hand, it has way too much depth for a
popular book. Like Roger Penrose’s _The Road to Reality_ – whose
preface promises an accessible adventure even for readers who
struggled with fractions in elementary school, but whose first few
chapters then delve into holomorphic functions and fiber bundles –
_Quantum Computing since Democritus_ is not for math-phobes.
"One of my mother’s closest friends, when she was a young girl, was among those who could not grasp fractions. This lady once told me so herself after she had retired from a successful career as a ballet dancer. I was still young, not yet fully launched in my activities as a mathematician, but was recognized as someone who enjoyed working in that subject. ‘It’s all that cancelling’, she said to me, ‘I could just never get the hang of cancelling.’ She was an elegant and highly intelligent woman, and there is no doubt in my mind that the mental qualities that are required in comprehending the sophisticated choreography that is central to ballet are in no way inferior to those which must be brought to bear on a mathematical problem. So, grossly overestimating my expositional abilities, I attempted, as others had done before, to explain to her the simplicity and logical nature of the procedure of ‘cancelling’."