But we haven’t got any observations of a steady baseline prior to the last century. There could have been declines (or rises!) during the previous centuries and millennia.
Nice catch! :-) I am not sure how many people are actually doing Math for a living. Between Academia, some agencies, selected hedge funds and few other places. Few hundred thousand?
I see nothing wrong with this. The fact that it is in "old" python just means that it has done its job for a long time, presumably without needing to be rewritten. I would love it if someone came into my workplace in 15 years and found a script I wrote today still being used.
Surely, this must be culture and country dependent. Given the safety net in the country where I live in, being fired is far from being as important as marriage.
Abandoned bikes are a problem here in Denmark as well, but not an insurmountable one. City workers regularly put tags on the wheels of bikes parked at , fx. the train station. If the tags are not disturbed in a month or so, the bikes are removed.