>be international relations student
>get curious one day
>look up a paper to see if, at a given job, bureaucrats or politicians are more effective at that job
>there IS a paper on it
>read paper
>it draws its conclusions based on a mathematical formula
>scratch head because the level of calculus is over my head
>not content just to take their word for it
>"if all the good shit is locked behind math then I should learn math"
>take a few years of calculus, almost enough for a math minor
>go back
>the problem with the paper isn't the math, it's that there is only shaky evidence at best that the factors they're using as variables that they are presenting have the mathematical relationship that they want to calculate results based on
>got fascinated by hard science anyway
>end up majoring in biochem after all of that time in IR

I'm not a STEMlord, but people in other areas of academics use math to conceal nonsense so often that it really seems like you have to learn it just to debunk bullshit when it's being presented to you. Do you see a lot of funky math like this?