A survey of 3000 pupils aged from seven to 18 for City & Guilds is reported by the BBC to have found that “maths lessons are seen as difficult, irrelevant and boring by about a third of teenagers” and that the subject could be “geared more towards real life”, but that “most agreed that maths would be useful once they had left school”.
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Math/Maths 91: Gathering for Gardner 10
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. First Samuel and Peter were joined by special guest Edmund Harriss to talk about his time at Gathering for Gardner 10 and Five math things to do before you die, then they spoke with eachother about: Snowflake Growth Successfully Modeled from Physical Laws; A Joint Position Statement of the Mathematical Association of America and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics on Teaching Calculus; All the Math Taught at University Can Be Outsourced. What Now?; Mathematical Fonts; Intersections, Henry Moore and British modernism exhibition; Emmy Noether: The Mighty Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of; Rechner Calculator; Math Awareness Month: Mathematics, Statistics, and the Data Deluge; and much more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 91: Gathering for Gardner 10
Devlin’s 21st C. mathematician that can’t be outsourced
Keith Devlin has written a piece in the Huffington Post.
Repetitive tasks such as high-tech assembly-line manufacturing, airline reservations, and customer support are not the only things that can be outsourced in the flat world of the twenty-first century. So too can many less routine tasks that require a university education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
In particular, procedural mathematics (solving differential equations, optimizing systems of inequalities, etc.) can be outsourced.
Devlin argues that all mathematical skills taught at university can be outsourced to computers or other countries and says:
If we cannot compete, then we need to play a different game. Fortunately, that other game is one we already do well at: originality and innovation.
A Dismal Performance from the Dismal Science
Paul J. Ferraro and Laura O. Taylor ask, “Do Economists Recognize an Opportunity Cost When They See One? A Dismal Performance from the Dismal Science”
One expects people with graduate training in economics to have a deeper understanding of economic processes and reasoning than people without such training. However, as others have noted over the past 25 years, modern graduate education may emphasize mathematics and technique to the detriment of economic reasoning. One of the most important contributions economics has to offer as a discipline is the understanding of opportunity cost and how to apply this concept to all forms of decision making. We examine how PhD economists answer an introductory economics textbook question that requires identifying the relevant opportunity cost of an action. The results are not consistent with our expectation that graduate training leads to a deeper understanding of the concept. We explore the implications of our results for the relevance of economists in policy, research, and teaching.
Importantly, given four options, only 21.6% of respondents chose the correct one. They performed worse than chance. Some feeble statistical analysis is performed by the authors.
This challenges none of my views about economists: none of them can do maths; none of them can do statistics; what they do has very little rational basis; they are terrible at designing questions for undergrads that don’t require you to make assumptions, often drawing heavily on cultural knowledge.
Found via MetaFilter, which compares the problem to the Monty Hall problem in probability. Nowhere near, in my opinion.
Edexcel chief says the maths curriculum is failing students
The UK’s national ambition to lead in new high-tech industries is threatened by an alarmingly widespread cultural apathy to maths in this country.
Maths is seen by too many students as something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
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It is a cultural and an educational problem.
Our experts in education note that young people don’t see maths as relevant to their lives or ambitions.
For the majority of young people, maths is a meaningless subject, with 85 per cent of students quitting it as soon as they are allowed. For too many, maths is just a series of disconnected techniques and formulae. It seems dry and academic.
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We urgently need a new approach that makes innumeracy as unacceptable as illiteracy.
These are not new or surprising sentiments, except that they come from Rod Bristow who, as head of Pearson UK, describes himself in an opinion piece in the Telegraph numeracy campaign as “responsible for one of the biggest exam boards in Britain”. Edexcel, he says, “sets and marks one million mathematics GCSEs, International GCSEs and A-levels every year”.
Many people see the problems Rod describes as being driven by the assessment system, so what does he propose to do about it? “With other exam boards,” he says, “we are already in discussion with the exams regulator Ofqual about how we can further strengthen maths GCSEs”. He gives the following recommendations:
Where young people don’t gain a C grade first time at GCSE, the education system must offer new courses which encourage them to continue with maths.
We can do this by associating maths more closely with other academic disciplines such as the pure and social sciences.
Universities should make mathematical literacy a clearer requirement for entry to those majority of courses which will use it.
We must show how maths is applied in careers from construction to web design.
He also recommends learning through serious games.
Engaging computer games encourage the ‘learning by doing’ essential to building numeracy skills, and we should make clear the role of maths in producing those games in the first place.
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If we want our young people to excel and lead the way internationally in maths, we must repurpose our maths teaching, learning and our exams, and use the tools of the future to change the ugly sister culture around mathematics.
Source: Numeracy Campaign: ‘maths curriculum failing to meet the needs of the 21st century’.
Math/Maths 86: Complex Pony Tails
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: The Recent Difficulties with RSA; Do we need a maths museum?; Brian Schmidt’s Mathematical Arguement; IBM claims most PhD mathematicians in its employ; Maths grads teaching alert; John Nash’s Letters to the NSA; The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash; Rapunzel’s Number: Science behind ponytail revealed; EPSRC Shaping Capabilities; Maths Jam; & more.
Get this episode: “Math/Maths 86: Complex Pony Tails“
Bridging the Mathematics Gap: your views
The Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education have a call for views on post-16 education. This says:
In a speech at the Royal Society in July 2011, the Secretary of State Michael Gove stated his wish that within ten years, all young people would be studying some form of mathematics post-16. ACME is seeking views on how we can make this a reality.
A paper giving some background information & details of how to submit your views are available via the website.
ACME: Bridging the Mathematics Gap : Have Your Say.
