Math

I am divorced. (half o[1]f U.S. marriages end in divorce, less than Finland and United Kingdom, at least, but the same website tells me the U.S. rate of divorce per 1000 of population is the highest in the world: 4.95. That seems inconsistent…)

It may have been a really long time since high school, but I can still remember my math classes—in which I always got the second to the lowest grade, next to Melissa Vidmar. Tom La Briola always got the highest grade Everybody was white in my class, and we all went to college. I can still remember Melissa’s name but have no clue what that funky function calculus symbol (looks like the musical clef sign) stands for. Oh, I remember that calculus’ function was to figure out the area of parabolas and other curved forms (stop laughing, Erik), but have I used the sin wave of trigonometry since high school? NO.

I learned that funky calculus symbol in 12^th grade because I was in an honors class of math—not because I was good at math but because once I got a concept, I did not need to drill and kill in order to retain it. But I was scared about math and I still am. Do you know why? Because I was always afraid I would get it wrong—the right answer RULED in math. And even now that I better understand that mathematics is logic and attention to detail and lots more than right answers, I am even more scared because of more and more technology and fewer and fewer people who understand it: like The Human Genome Project or the amount of pollution in our atmosphere or why our prisons, in both number of facilities and their populations, are increasing faster than our colleges or the amount of binary-coded information about me stored in random computers countrywide-- if not worldwide or the future of my retirement funds, which are invested in stock and bond markets, the risk factors of which I do not understand. All these databases are not only numerical, but they are quantitatively logical, and where are we teaching our students how to comprehend such things? My stepfather was an engineer and pushed me to excel in math and science and to go to college, even though I was a girl. What is happening in homes where it is “cool” to be bad in math, ‘cause, like, you know, EVERYBODY is bad at math!

Well, of course, everybody is not bad at math. In fact, if you can do math well, you can count on being paid well—as an engineer, an attorney, a doctor, a pharmacist, an accountant, a stock broker, etc. However, I am a writing teacher, so, like, I do not need math—right? What about my retirement allocations? What about my mortgage, loan and credit card interest rate calculations? What about my grading system? What about my Research & Persuasive Writing students (105) who cannot reason through statistical evidence or see patterns in data or illogic in claims—and these folks want to major in BUSINESS!?[2] What about the University of Washington’s (and every other 4-year school) requirement for “quantitative literacy”?

I struggle with logic problems in Word Puzzles books. You know, the kind where Fifi is one of 5 dogs owned by 5 people, one of whom is a serial murderer living next door to a vegetarian whose name is not Mabel….aarrgghh!!!

No, not everybody. Actually, some people excel in math—they are usually white and usually male. In fact, Hispanics and Blacks score the lowest in math…look at the scores below. Why is that?

The dropout rate among 16- to 24-year-olds has fallen over the past 20 years. Having fallen more for blacks than for whites, the difference in dropout rates between the races has narrowed. The dropout rate for Hispanics remains relatively high at 30 percent, compared to 8 percent for whites and 13 percent for blacks.

Some 90 million adults--about 47 percent of the U.S. population--performed at the two lowest levels of literacy in 1992 on a national survey of adult literacy. Literacy was defined as "using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential." Three scales were developed measuring different aspects of literacy: prose, quantitative, and document.

Adults with higher levels of educational attainment had higher average levels of prose literacy. Also, adults aged 19 to 54 had higher average literacy scores than those 55 and older. The differences in literacy between younger and older adults may be due to the higher level of educational attainment among younger adults.

On all three literacy scales, the average literacy scores for Hispanics were below that of blacks which were below that of whites. On the quantitative literacy scale, the difference between blacks and whites was larger than the difference between white high school and college graduates.

Long-term trends in reading achievement show improvements for many of the country's 13- and 17-year-old students and for some groups of 9-year-olds. However, many of the advancements in performance that had been made prior to 1988 among black students have not continued--or have reversed between 1988 and 1992.

Table 18.--Proficiency of 17-year-olds in reading, by selected characteristics: 1971, 1980, and 1992

Results from national assessments of mathematics achievement indicate that students have made some improvements in their basic computation skills. Average proficiency for 9- and 13-year-olds improved between 1982 and 1992. For 17-year-old students, average proficiency had declined between 1973 and 1982, but an upturn during the past decade returned their performance to the 1973 level. However, the performance of older students on advanced mathematical operations has shown little or no improvement.

Table 19.--Percent of 17-year-old students performing at or above three mathematics proficiency levels, by race/ethnicity: 1978 to 1992

[1] http://www.divorcemag.com/statistics/statsWorld.shtml

[2] I wonder if the Enron folks were quantitatively literate—or is it just us peons who believed them, as long as their stock went up. L

Math: Cult or Culture?

A Math/Writing Course

Eric Scott

escott@hcc.ctc.edu

Angie Caster

acaster@hcc.ctc.edu