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I don't have the rulebook under my eyes, but if I remember correctly you have a simple percent value on a skill. As you use the skill during an adventure you "check" the box next to it on the character sheet. Then, at the end of the session, you roll a 100 dice. If the roll is above the value you have in that skill, the skill improved and you roll another dice to see how much.

Well, and here is the catch. What you describe is nearly exact copy of one of the models in the original blog you criticize for "math overuse". The diffrence is merely in the way implementation was written down -- in the P&P game you have it translated into mechanical process of random roll vs sliding scale difficulty that goes up with skill level. In the blog, this very same process is written as:

chance = (max_skill_level - current_skill_level) / max_skill_level + floor

... that's all there is to it. I don't think there's much merit in the complaint about the particular way implementation is written down, when the player is never going to see it in the first place ... but they'll rather receive concise "90% chance to improve on next use" tooltip when they mouse over the skill, with the value calculated for them behind the scenes. (on top of mentioned earlier general explanation how this particular piece of mechanics works)