> but they're going to be meeting people who memorise pi to 50 decimal places or happen to calculate the sum of small cubic numbers for fun to pass the time and are really good at arithmetic.
Not really. The "above average ability" depends on the population: if you compare mathematicians with other college educated people, I'd guess they'd be at the bottom among the STEM fields. It wasn't weird to see people (or myself) having the occasional "wait, what's 5 times 7". And it shouldn't be surprising if people knew that 99% of the arithmetic operations done in math degrees are things like "2+1" or "2·3".
Not really. The "above average ability" depends on the population: if you compare mathematicians with other college educated people, I'd guess they'd be at the bottom among the STEM fields. It wasn't weird to see people (or myself) having the occasional "wait, what's 5 times 7". And it shouldn't be surprising if people knew that 99% of the arithmetic operations done in math degrees are things like "2+1" or "2·3".