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Yes,I amthe publisher's editor who told Stephan Hawking that. It's in the Preface of the earlier editions of a Brief History of Time, but without mentioning me by name. When I saw the draft typescript I noted that there were some two dozen equations. About a year before he showed me the draft I had published The Accidental Universe by Paul Davies. This had disappointing sales and the feedback from Cambridge U Press sales dept was that the equations were intimidating.
Fast forward to now. There is a big news story in the UK that half the population cannot do math. They cannot turn a "25% discount" into pounds and pence, or work out a 15% deposit, or figure out 20% VAT. And calculating how many cans of paint you need to fix up your house is impossible. Nowonder governements canget away with borrowing billions and indeed trillions of pounds / euros / dollars
There is a good introduction to the dire state of numeracy education in the UK at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17224600
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