Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Why Math?

James has tasked his students with contacting folks in a profession they'd like to pursue and asking them a few questions about their use of mathematics in their profession. Here are the questions they are asking:

    1. How do you use math in your profession? Outside of your profession?
    2. Are there any experiences – academic or otherwise - that particularly helped you learn and apply math in your profession?
    3. What specific advice would you give to someone thinking about entering your profession if they want to help prepare themselves in the best possible way?
    4. Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently as a learner?
    5. Please add any additional comments or questions that you feel you would like to share.
I thought that in addition to the great responses they are hopefully going to get back from the folks they contact, some of you might be interested in responding. If you have some thoughts you'd like to share with the students - or know someone else you could pass this along to - please stop by James' blog and leave a comment.

2 comments:

  1. James, this sounds like a good idea. I was wondering how you got into contact with professionals? Looks like we are on track to finding something to present at for the next conference that we attend. If it was not for all of the other stuff, we would have some big changes to put in play!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1. How do you use math in your profession? Outside of your profession?

    I am a principal of an elementary school. In my profession, I use math to analyze survey results, analyze assessment results, and critically think about the validity of the research I read. I would say that I use math to keep track of expenditures and balance the budget as well, but we have software that does most of that for us.

    2. Are there any experiences – academic or otherwise - that particularly helped you learn and apply math in your profession?

    I learned/retained more from teachers/professors that were more concerned with building conceptual understanding than procedural fluency. You cannot analyze or critically think about numbers without having a firm conceptual understanding.

    3. What specific advice would you give to someone thinking about entering your profession if they want to help prepare themselves in the best possible way?

    Concentrate on understanding why more than how to do the math. If your teachers are not helping you to understand why, ask and keep asking until you come to a satisfactory understanding of why.

    4. Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently as a learner?

    I would have kept asking why in those classes where teachers just concentrated on the how and perhaps they themselves only had a tacit understanding of why. Push the intellectual limits of your teachers - don't settle for less. It is your education - take charge of it and don't let a poor teacher deprive you of that.

    5. Please add any additional comments or questions that you feel you would like to share.

    A lot of attention is paid to critical thinking skills in the language arts (critical literacy). What is the author trying to get you to feel? Why would the author choose to portray the main character in this way? What are they trying to get you to think or do about this topic?

    But, what about critical numeracy? There is a saying "numbers don't lie", but they do! There is another saying "50% of all statistics are made up on the spot." You can twist the statistics to say what ever you want them to (or at least appear to). I find that some policy makers (politicians, state departments of education, central office staff and fellow building administrators) do not understand completely the difference between norm referenced and criterion referenced tests or even the difference between percentages and percentiles. Yet, they are making decisions that effect our schools based on their erroneous understanding of the data they see and their unquestioning belief in the research they read about.

    "We think so because other people all think so; or because – or because – after all we do think so; or because we were told so, and think we must think so; or because we once thought so, and think we still think so; or because, having thought so, we think we will think so…" ~ Henry Sidgwick

    ReplyDelete