How on earth is any of the advertising antagonizing? I had to read through the course page twice to look for anything remotely resembling a criticism and came up blank.
If it is the quote you added to the bottom of your comment, my question still stands. That isn't an insult to anyone (certainly not mathematicians) but rather a comment that many people freeze up when it comes to mathematics (at least that was my interpretation).
There is a somewhat common attitude towards abstract mathematics that its preciseness is something of a bother to people and that it requires some kind of "cure".
Immanuel Kant wrote about it [1] and many engineers have a varying degree of animosity towards pure mathematics. So, in the book's description they say this:
This engaging book is an antidote to the rigor mortis brought on by too much mathematical rigor, teaching us how to guess answers without needing a proof or an exact calculation.
I don't like the advertising, or the description if you will, as it basically tries to discount rigour. One can simply say it's an addition to the usual rigour of mathematics for the sake of daily street fighting style problem solving. The way they state it, however, it sounds like they are saying that rigorous math is not necessary.
My reference to George Orwell is simply that when he wrote Keep the Aspidistra Flying his publishers made him write a lot of things he didn't want to write, and they even specified the amount of words the books needed to have (which is is somewhat understandable, but limiting still).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_Pure_Reason. However, note that this is about metaphysics and one can argue that pure mathematics is not what he was critisising and that his work doesn't directly try to disprove the use of axioms, without which mathematics cannot exist.
> How on earth is any of the advertising antagonizing?
The word "antidote" is used in the book's summary, which is defined as (via Google) "a medicine taken or given to counteract a particular poison." One could take the "poison" to be mathematical rigor, or something similar.
Perhaps this does not change your opinion, but I do not think the original comment was completely off base.
If it is the quote you added to the bottom of your comment, my question still stands. That isn't an insult to anyone (certainly not mathematicians) but rather a comment that many people freeze up when it comes to mathematics (at least that was my interpretation).