Why Do We <b><b>Study Mathematics</b></b>? | Online Learning <b><b>Tips</b> <b>...</b> |
| Why Do We <b><b>Study Mathematics</b></b>? | Online Learning <b><b>Tips</b> <b>...</b> Posted: 15 Oct 2014 07:58 AM PDT
Using Math in Everyday Life Mathematics is an essential discipline in today's world. It is a powerful tool for understanding the world around us and our perspective of the important issues facing us as individuals, families, businesses, and nations. Math surrounds us; we see and use math skills and capabilities every day—from balancing our checkbooks to advertising agencies to doctors; from retailers to builders, lawyers and accountants. Everyone needs some level of specific mathematics knowledge. Most professions use math to perform their job better and to get ahead in the world. Analytic Skills Obtained from Math in School To succeed in college, there are general education mathematics requirements that help students develop critical thinking and quantitative analysis skills. Every university has general knowledge course requirements. American Public University requires that all students complete at least three semester hours in their mathematics general education. These general education courses develop the skills that students need during their more specific program courses. The general courses include computational skills, problem solving, data analysis, pattern recognition, and learning how to approach and solve complex problems. Some mathematics courses are required as prerequisites for certain courses in your degree program. You won't be able to register for and pass some upper-level courses in your degree program unless you learn the required math concepts used in those courses. As an example, a student studying orbital dynamics must have a firm understanding of algebra and trigonometry, and a social scientist needs to comprehend the foundations of statistical analysis. As you proceed toward your degree, you will find that you need the technical and computational skills learned during your mathematics courses. Technology and Logic Technology is changing rapidly and the basis of many of these technological changes is mathematics and logic. These changes are so rapid that it would be difficult to predict the skills that people will need in the future workplace or at home in the coming years. But a good basis in mathematics, statistics, and technology will keep you agile enough to adapt to the advances in technology. Blending Historically Implied Math with Current Concepts Mathematics has evolved over many centuries to help solve problems. Math teaches us to think logically; to identify and state the problem clearly; to plan how to solve the problem; and then to apply the appropriate methods to evaluate and solve the problem. We learn to evaluate and draw conclusions based on our knowledge. We are surrounded by a large number of statistical data and studies. To be a successful student and also an informed citizen, we should be able to evaluate these studies and the data they present in order to decide what is true or reasonable. Mathematics help you recognize mistakes in thinking or analysis that we encounter in our lives. How many advertisements or political polls have you seen lately? Do you have the quantitative skills to evaluate their messages? Mathematics can help. Where Else is Math Applicable? Math is more than a subject that everyone in school needs to take. Many believe that math is only needed in the Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics fields (STEM). That's true, math is absolutely essential in those fields, but it is also needed in many other fields including economics, many of the social sciences such as psychology and sociology, and in many of the arts and humanities disciplines including art, music, and mass communications. Mathematics has been called "the universal language". Numbers and mathematics help us keep score—not just in sports contests, but in measuring money, time, distance, cooking and baking, balancing a checkbook, planning an improvement project, and buying the necessary materials. Building a new deck on your house or finding the amount of material to build a fence are both good examples of mathematics in our daily lives. Logic and quantitative reasoning attained in mathematics courses helps us make better decisions. Learning how to solve the hard challenges is an asset that will pay dividends throughout our lives. These challenges may be a complex statistical analysis or one of the many challenges you face in your life. We also use numbers and mathematics for leisure. We play card games, electronic games, crossword puzzles, and Sudoku's. They all share a common element of mathematics. In summary, a solid foundation in mathematics is an essential skill for students pursuing any academic degree and that same quantitative capability is necessary for success in life as well. University mathematics courses prepare students for both of those very important reasons. By Bill Owen As an adult educator, Mr. Owen's focus is on the use of sound analytical and managerial techniques to solve complex business and management issues. For the past four years he has served as the Program Director for the Mathematics Department, School of Science and Technology at American Public University System. He has a Master of Education in from the University of Oklahoma, he's attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and he has a Master of Science in Operations Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology.  Commentscomments  0 votes powered by Five Star Rating  |
| Making It All Add Up: Homeschooling <b>Tips</b> for <b>Math</b> - ParentMap Posted: 11 Dec 2013 09:20 PM PST When I first decided to homeschool, I asked for a lot of advice from experienced homeschoolers because I was nervous: Would my son learn to read? How would he make friends? Could I trust my own ability to guide his learning? The enthusiasm of other parents was encouraging. They told me of chemistry experiments and trips to paleontology museums. Their kids were learning voraciously, and the adults were having fun. Until it came to math. "Oh, we just give them some Saxon worksheets," was the most common response to my request for advice on a math program, and the distaste was palpable. Probe a little deeper, and parents told me more: "I hate math." "I can't add." "I'm horrible at math." For them, math had become the same thing it had been to them as children: something to endure. Confession: I love math. I want my children to enjoy it, too, and to see a future in it as accessible as becoming a motorcycle mechanic, English professor, farmer, or corporate lawyer. I also can't add. But math isn't about being good at adding, and an inability to add doesn't mean you can't teach your kids mathematics. Finding what worksIn her book What's Math Got To Do With It? detailing findings from longitudinal studies on math education, Stanford professor Jo Boaler notes that Americans are familiar with two kinds of math: "the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging. To teach math successfully, parents need to face down the voices in their heads that claim, I'm terrible at math, and experiment with materials that reflect the subject's multi-faceted reality.Maura Muller, from Rock Hill, N.Y., is one parent who's managed to overcome her childhood experiences. She hated math growing up. "I had a terrifying nun who would slap our hands with a wooden stick when we got an answer wrong and tell us how stupid we were." She didn't want her son to suffer the same math trauma, so tried to make math fun, reading books like Grapes of Math and The Adventures of Penrose, the Mathematical Cat, and later, as her son got older, The Man Who Counted and The Number Devil. I spent months looking for an actual curriculum that was both engaging and rigorous. By chance I came across an article about JUMP, a program developed by a Canadian nonprofit. JUMP breaks math concepts down into tiny, digestible steps, meaning that kids can master each step individually without getting overwhelmed by larger concepts all at once — its advantage for homeschoolers is that adults who fear their own math abilities can do the same. Delores Caesar, who began homeschooling her middle-schooler specifically because of concerns that her daughter was "slipping under the radar" by knowing facts but not understanding concepts in her math classes. This mom, from New York's Hudson Valley region, says she likes JUMP for daily lessons, but Math Mammoth and Critical Learning workbooks for an all-around deeper understanding of concepts. Grahamsville, N.Y.'s Vikki Siciliano, who was good at math as a kid but never enjoyed it, has been homeschooling for 16 years. Siciliano initially tried Saxon math, which her 5th-grade son hated because "it was so repetitive," but found the colorful, in-depth Scott Foresman program worked well for them. Two of her kids eventually became math majors. For those who like formalized math lessons couched in more narrative form, Life of Fred has become a popular series. Maura Muller, who, with her husband, has been homeschooling their 13-year-old son for the past 5 years, switched to using Life of Fred after trying Singapore Math, which her family found "dry, boring, and repetitive." When her son moved into learning algebra, Muller picked up Math Doesn't Suck, by Danica McKellar, which is geared to teen girls but "makes us both laugh." Muller also employs the techniques common with both rigorous and unschooling homeschoolers: using math in everyday life for activities like measuring out their garden, planning for Christmas shopping, cooking, and estimating miles per gallon for car trips. Practical teaching methods like these can go a long way to answering the question, "What am I ever going to use this for?" Hands-on learning"What absolutely did not work," says Delores Caesar, echoing many homeschooling parents, "is any online program. My nine-year-old just shut down looking at the screen." The limitations of online programs such as Khan Academy and IXL speak to the importance of connecting mathematics to the physical world. Patrick Honner, who teaches math at public high schools in New York City, says that he would focus on exploring math "through things kids enjoy, like games, puzzles, paradoxes, physical situations." One successful program that reflects this approach is from Miquon Math Lab. Miquon was developed in the 1960s for use with Cuisenaire rods—wooden sticks in different lengths and colors representing the numbers 1–10. I like using Cuisenaire rods because my son knows his "math rods" are a school-only activity, and we can break up lessons by letting him build with them. Vikki Siciliano, who also used Miquon for her kids' early years, says she prefers using Duplo Legos with the program "because they're easier to manipulate." These tools can make a big difference for a child who thinks three-dimensionally, or who needs to grasp lessons physically before transferring the computations to paper. And blocks, tiles and linking cubes continue to benefit math learning well into middle school. Reaching outside the homeIf the thought of teaching your child math still makes you break out in hives, outsourcing is an option. Vikki Siciliano says that a homeschooling friend of hers loathes math so much she hired outside tutors because she "was scared of pushing her own feelings about it on to her 14-year-old daughter." And as the homeschooling student gets older, their abilities can outstrip the mathematics lessons based on worksheets, manipulatives, and gas mileage calculations. This is where parents can really use the support of homeschooling groups and the Internet. Particularly in math, many students learn better if they are solving problems and discovering mathematical questions in groups. There are many blogs and websites run by mathematicians and teachers posing fascinating higher-level questions you won't find in textbooks. Patrick Honner's website regularly features math in art, as well as interesting mathematical questions and discussions. Did you know there's more than one kind of infinity? Or that The Simpsons is packed with mathematical references because most of the writers were math majors? Not just for homeschooling families, these resources offer all families the chance to think "out of the old-school box" when it comes to math. Changing your perspective"Parents, especially mothers of girls, should never, ever say, 'I was hopeless at math!'" says Jo Boaler. Doing so "is a very damaging message, especially for young girls." Boaler is sympathetic to parents who hate math, but she notes that many of the puzzles, games, books, and methods that make math learning fun and effective can work for parents, too. In short, you've got a chance to start your own math education over again. "At the heart of it, math is about the study of structure," says Kate Owens, who teaches undergraduate mathematics classes at the College of Charleston. "Most elementary school math is devoted toward studying the structure of rational numbers. But this is just one of many different structures that mathematicians study." Whether that structure is used to figure out how many miles you can drive on a tank of gas, decipher mortgage applications, or build a foundation for later work on the Higgs-Boson particle, it is essential that the homeschooling teacher, or any parent who wants to support his or her child's math education, presents it as a subject worthy of enthusiasm. If you give it a chance, you might find you're not so terrible at math after all. Even if you still can't add.
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Freelance writer Antonia Malchik has a BA in mathematics from Macalester College. She can be reached through her website, | You are subscribed to email updates from Tips Study Mathematics - Google Blog Search To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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