Towards the end of the 1960s, and during the 1970s, a decade when some people felt Britain was going to hell in a handcart, a group of ambitious intellectuals introduced the "new maths" in schools across the country. If traditional mathematics, numbers and equations were a bit hard for many people, why not replace them with something more up to date that everyone could understand? And as the rate of inflation went up and the winter of discontent set in, perhaps it was better to forget about numbers and let this bold cultural revolution in mathematics create a new generation of proletarian intellectuals able to take their place at the vanguard of a new understanding of mathematics. What happened?