There's a difference between understanding something and being able to do something. For example you can get a broad understanding of what calculus does in a matter of minutes: a derivative is just the rate of change of a curve, and an integral is the total area under a curve - you're practically there! Of course it'd take months of work to understand how to apply it yourself, let alone all the tricks involved, but a basic understanding of what stuff is, is very easy to obtain.
And I think that generalizes to math. Its normal presentation is completely impenetrable due to a large use of symbols and terms with no outside meaning (or, even worse, a meaning that contradicts the colloquial usage). But I think if we somehow resolved that issue, the average person would be fully capable of following along even if they're going to have to take everything at face value as opposed to being able to meaningfully understand the exact methods and tricks being used to get from A to B.
And I think that generalizes to math. Its normal presentation is completely impenetrable due to a large use of symbols and terms with no outside meaning (or, even worse, a meaning that contradicts the colloquial usage). But I think if we somehow resolved that issue, the average person would be fully capable of following along even if they're going to have to take everything at face value as opposed to being able to meaningfully understand the exact methods and tricks being used to get from A to B.