I wish I could say I have been doing science already, not yet (hopefully), but I was referring to (say) programming problems like (for example) one recently where I could see that it boiled down to asking whether there existed a linear combination of a input set of vectors with a single second vector - I was able to spot the connection, I'm not convinced I would've been able to get it without the mathematics under my belt to spot the pattern.

Regardless, I plan to be learning until the day I drop, science or not.