India, May 10 -- "I like the idea of being proved right, I'm not necessarily curious about the subject," my teenager, currently in the throes of her final exams, said about mathematics, a subject she convinced herself to be "bad at". In my generation, every conversation involving a parent and a child would culminate in the padhai talk. It's just the opposite for my daughter and me: Padhai talk always leads to something so non-sequitur that padhai goes and drowns itself. This one led to the idea of instant gratification. Unlike other subjects, a mathematical question is designed to elate or deflate you almost immediately. Zero-sum game.

Is it a wonder, then, that mathematics is ruling the world by way of algorithms that are designed to ke...