There are great advantages to being a mathematician:
a) you do not have to be able to spell
b) you do not have to be able to add up
The illiteracy of mathematicians is taken for granted.
There still persists a myth that mathematics somehow
involves numbers. Many fondly believe that university
students spend their time long dividing by 173 and
learning their 39 times table; in fact, the reverse is
true. Mathematicians are renowned for their inability to
add up or take away, in much the same way as geographers
are always getting lost, and economists are always
borrowing money off you.
-- R. Ainsley in Bluff your way in Maths, 1988