" Mathematics being 'cut and dried' and 'easily taught' ........ ahaha, you have just betrayed a profound ignorance of the ART of higher mathematics"
If I would pick another field of my study, it would be mathematics. My grandfather who was a member of Academia told me that mathematics is the queen of the science. People who encounter math, get generally burned out after Calculus encounter, and they are not aware of higher mathematics which often works with theoretical models. Differential geometry like Riemannian is hard (at least was to me). I personally dislike statistics and especially spatial statistics, which I have to deal on regular bases. At least we have tools for it to do various modeling and simulations. In previous job, we had team where we built geospatial statistical models and we had to do write ups reports for the clients explaining what these calculations represented. The math behind the processes was established on level that I had encountered at graduate courses.
Any case, measuring the age of geological features are fairly standard, well established by numerous fields in the industry (even insurance companies use it for probability risk like earthquake risk), and is well explained. Radioactive decay detectors are norm in labs around universities around the world, and thousands of people use it every day.