The most ‘bang for the buck’ in opening the sciences and engineering to more people would be renaming complex numbers.
Names have meaning. They’re how the brain connects with things.
Imagine you’re doing a bunch of math, hard math, and suddenly you get to ‘complex numbers.’ Like all the math you’ve been doing up until this point has been simple. It’s demotivating.
Or worse, imaginary numbers, a term even Gauss hated.
You’re doing a bunch of math, and it’s challenging, and all the sudden boom, ‘Now we’re going to do imaginary math, kids’ says your teacher.
You turn to the dark side, become a literature major, open a coffee shop, and start listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor.