Nor will giving speeches like this one. Those activities are all largely preaching to the converted. If enough of us do those things, and if we do them often enough, they will have some effect. But not much. And nothing like enough.
Television is a more promising medium.
Here, the good news is that for the past four years a project has been underway to use prime time television to provide mathematics with a massive dose of unadulterated and highly positive P. R. That project is almost completed. Next spring, PBS will broadcast a series of six one hour programs on mathematics called Life by the Numbers. The series is being produced by WQED television in Pittsburgh, with major funding from Texas Instruments and the National Science Foundation. Over the past two years, I have been involved in the project as a consultant, and I am currently writing a book that will accompany the series. This is the first time there has ever been an investment on this scale to use television to try to change people's perceptions of mathematics.