- David Semitekol
- Chicago, IL
- United States
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Where do you use math in your profession?
One of the most difficult challenges that math teachers face today is motivating their students. This becomes more difficult when faced with the all famous question: "What am I going to use this for?"
Help me with some real world examples of modern day math. Please let me know your profession and what type of math you use to share with our students.
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Thank you everyone so much for the contributions! They are great and I wasn't expecting such a turn out. My goal is to gain enough examples and to use them at the start of each lecture. I'm hoping that these examples in the beginning of class will spark the student's interest for the reaming of the lecture and to show that that we really do use math.
There is a difference between having to learn something and wanting to learn something. When we have to learn it we just try to get through it. When we want to learn it, this is when we make breakthroughs. Stimulate the interest in students so that they want to learn math and we increase our probability in someone discovering the next breakthrough.
Jean-Pierre Walker 20+
Tom Hruschka
Rikki Ansell
We have wonderful assessment tools that help us understand how personality types learn and interact. We should be using them to match students to the right teachers!
Rikki Ansell
As an artist, math also helps me figure out how many sheets of aluminum I need for that sculpture, how many pounds of glass beads I need for that design, and how much all that will cost me. I use math to calculate my time and materials so I can calculate how much a piece must sell for just to break even. Beauty and wonder help me figure out how much the piece will sell for above the break even!
As a photographer, math determines how I frame my photographs, how much I zoom in, how fast my shutter speed must be to capture that frog in mid-leap. It also helps me calculate how much it costs to produce a print in various sizes and materials, how much it costs to frame it, and how much it has to sell for.
Math helps me convert massive numbers like one billion into something I can visualize - like $10,000,000 which is 500 new $20,000 cars. I can SEE 500 cars in any dealer's lot, so math helps me make sense of one billion pennies, and understanding one billion pennies makes understanding 7 billion people on Earth easier. If your students are younger and find $20,000 incomprehensible, math let me calculate how many blades of grass were in one inch of my yard, which let me figure out how much yard it would take to hold 7 billion blades of grass, which is about the area covered by the city of Miami, Fl. or 17,361 football fields.
Kevin Claiborne
As a math major, you might guess that I use math mostly when my girlfriend is out shopping with my money and asks me "what is 30% of 125 dollars?"
Of course !
alberto tagliaferri
I found Math and Algebra empowered the mind with some ways of thinking you would not accomplished other way. I think one example is the first subtle and beaty concept I came upon: infinistesimals and the definion of function limit.
When a debate comes at work about some "yes/no" issue or some steps between that "yes/no", I always could see a continous of states and conditions in between. Money and time to implement seals the things and delimits what is feasable. But, sometimes is good to undestand issues and I beleave me being able to see this has something to do whith beeing able to see epsilon becoming as little as I want and always beeing able to find (a some cost, of course) a suitable 'h' that let's me approach as much a I wanted.
Jason Kirin 10+
It's all about behavior, mental and emotional stability.
And, of course, when I was in High School and college I griped through my math classes muttering that I'll, "never use this in my real life ever!"
I learned American Sign Language, Literature and Psychology- hooray for no math! I thought.
Now, math doesn't bother me-- I quite enjoy it now that I'm older.
But in my job I often have to use math for behavioral data collection. When one of my students has a negative or positive mark on their Daily Progress Narratives then it is calculated into a percent of their day, this data is then calculated into weekly updates and monthly updates. All of it turns into numbers and averages that are spread over graphs and Individual Education Plans.
In many cases the words are no longer even seen!
I'm fairly certain a lot of the psych field turns into numbers at some point or another.
Yawa Hansen-Quao 20+
Jordan Kannon
To sum things up, using math as a proving ground for arguments will open up a whole new method of discussion. Expose your students to this and I am sure it will peak their interest in the mathematics.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
It's amazing how much money you can spend by saving money on discounted products.
Kevin Choi
the LSAT, GMAT, GEM require math. Although it may not be calculus, it is the coherent logic that you have to compute (quickly) to solve many questions and problems. I was told that these math questions are involved in exams like the LSAT because it reflects your level of coherent logic. It makes you think on your feet, helps you theorize new ideas, organize information/data, etc etc.. Pro gamers, athletes, even most successful business have proven to have high computing capabilities.
Abd Al-Rahman Hlayhel
But look around you math is everywhere every physiques formula is a probable example, who don't know the example of car A and B are racing,
A has speed x
B has speed y
B start ahead of A by distance d
How long will it take A to pass B
That's a simple physiques formula, could be used as an example.
Not only physiques there is biology, chimistry, programing, etc...
Math is everywhere in anything we use, even the sofa I'm sitting on is built using math
I can't think of anything not related to math, one way or the other.
One of math fascinating math implementation is in natural inspired algorithm
there is a software called netlogo with lots of pre programed examples, a bit hard for kids but can be used by the teacher in a session or two to given students some live solved problems
The software can be found here
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/
Yolanda Cai
Ceri Jones Salahadyn
I learn through experience, so need to be able to apply in order to experience, in order to learn. My life food and passion is learning so I have created my life, to continue my learning through experience and in turn, create experiences for others that enjoy a similar palette.
"Making Ideas Tangible" through Working Art is how we do it. Our most recent structure intersects, Art, Architecture, Education and Renewables ="Interactive Hard Art". Every type of Math was used throughout the fabric of the Design, Construction, Installation and ongoing development as an Educational tool, functional sunshade and community Art element. We are working with the Principals and Teachers, inclusive of, Art, Science, Math, Geography and History to develop fully integrated curriculum and lesson plans (using Promethean Planet as just one of the mediums) that align to the IB program frames. The design holds ancient and universal truths, wisdom and knowledge, with an entrance through the Sun's highway and the 12 zodiac constellations that the sun passes through during its annual cycle. This piece of “Interactive Hard Art” exposes our young people to rudimentary universal knowledge in a playful, engaging, artistic and creative way that allows them to think and apply their unique expression to their learning process. The more we integrate meaningful learning possibilities through Works of functional Art the more we can demonstrate a Return on investment that allows for the production of more one-of-a-kind, considerate and bespoke, tools for our young people to become productive and creative global agents.
Integrating a rudimentary solar lighting system is next. An article published in "Go Green Kids & Parents" International Magazine can be reviewed on pages 5 & 6 at www.gogreenkp.com and for further information you can visit our dedicated project web site at www.interactivehardart.com.
Connradd Tatge
Algebra will be enough mathematics to get one through the day (in America anyway).
All of that calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, discrete math, etc? Unnecessary!
The purpose of taking a math course is to qualify to take the next math course. Yikes.
Vojtěch Pacík 10+
Letitia Falk 10+
I was looking at chemicals that made lavender plant roots grow so I knew that for every chemical I added I had to add the same amount of each one and that I had to repeat another plant grown without any chemical in case the conditions (light, nutrients, temperature...) affected how the roots grew instead of the chemical.
So I got all of my data and one of the chemicals made the roots grow more on all of the plants it was tested on, but how could I know that they grew different ENOUGH from the control that this chemical might be worthwhile to use? After all, even plants treated the same way sometimes grew a lot and sometimes only grew a little. Maybe the plants had a lot of variation in root length and this trend was just a fluke? Or a result of growing the plants in a lab instead of outside?
I needed statistics! Statistics take into account the natural amount of variation in samples and tell you if a trend is "significant" or not. I had to try to teach myself all of the formulas I needed for my research so by the time I DID take statistics the next year, I was VERY grateful for the class :)
Statistics is what lets me know that the results of my experiments are actually MEANINGFUL, and because there are consistent amounts of variation allowed (5% usually). Scientists from around the world use the same guidelines and can therefore trust each others results.
Math allows scientists to be objective and to share data that is meaningful according to agreed upon standards. Without it we would see "what we want to see" and would have trouble communicating with one another.
Johan Cegrell 200+
It does not require that much arithmetic. But it does require a very acute sense of the creation and transformation of denominators and variables. You need to understand the math of the numbers and figures, without actually computing them.
Personally I don’t like to do math. But the understanding of mathematics allows me to be part in projects and issues that are both exciting and challenging. I can be part of and help guide operations whose mathematics I understand, but could never perform.
15 years after high school, I found the answer to the question I used to challenge my teacher with.
Reilus Heliodromus
While you don't want to encourage careers in illicit finance, you might point out that people like the good folks at Enron and guys like Bernie Madoff can undertake complex mathematical schemes that get into astronomical numbers. You might lower your voice, squint at them, and ask them what other mathematical conspiracies might exist?
You could tell them to look into Japanese sumo and the system of cheating used in matches. One can prove its existence though statistical analysis. What other lies can one uncover beneath allegedly holy shrouds with mathematics?
Mathematics is the cornerstone of the Quadrivium -- mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. Mathematics presents the number, which is an idea that exists outside space-time. Geometry puts the number into space. Music puts the number into time. Astronomy puts the number in space-time. That might fascinate some students.
M Voelker
Rachel Koser
Tony Kuphaldt 10+
Microsoft Excel (or any spreadsheet for that matter) is another way to integrate real-world tools with mathematical education. Applying algebra to get a spreadsheet to do the calculations you want it to, or using a spreadsheet to visually represent data, is a powerful thing. I have my (2-year technical) college students use Excel regularly as a mathematical modeling tool.
One of the most memorable examples of math education for kids I've seen is my fifth-grade teacher, who had us building model rockets and using trigonometry to estimate how high they flew. First, we would stand 100 feet away from the launchpad, sight the apogee of the rocket using a special protractor, then look up the value of the tangent of that angle (this was in 1980 -- we used trig tables rather than hand calculators) and multiply by 100 to find the rocket's height. Very cool stuff, and it took all the fear away from trigonometry when I encountered it much later in school.
Tony Kuphaldt 10+
One example that comes to mind is a diagnosis I once made on a leaking compressed air system at a commercial facility. Compressed air was leaking out of the pipes somewhere in this expansive system, but we did not know where. We connected a pressure sensor to the main pipe and used a computer to graph pressure versus time. This revealed an inverse-exponential curve, which is precisely what you would expect if the air pressure at the leak were falling with time -- an air leak occurring at some location where the leak pressure was constant would produce a linear drop of main supply pressure over time (based on differentiating the Ideal Gas Law: dP/dt = dn/dt R T / V). We knew this system had pressure-regulated as well as unregulated segments to it, and from this analysis of the pressure drop we could tell the leak must have been in one of the unregulated segments of piping. This knowledge allowed us to eliminate large portions of the piping and focus our search on a smaller part of the system, to find the leak faster than if we searched the entire piping system.
A subset of mathematics education is estimation. A person who can rapidly estimate quantities is able to apply basic arithmetic to a wide variety of problems in life (time to arrive at a destination, costs versus returns of financial decisions). An understanding of probability is crucial to making intelligent decisions involving risk and reward. As I like to tell my students, lotteries are a form of taxation on the math-illiterate.
Simply put, math is a powerful tool for understanding the physical world around us. Who wouldn't want to have a powerful tool at their disposal to help them make good decisions in life?
Tony Kuphaldt 10+
* Fourier analysis of waves: Jean Baptiste Fourier discovered that any repeating waveform is mathematically equivalent to a series of sinusoids (sine and cosine waves) added together at different amplitudes, phase shifts, and harmonic (integer-multiple) frequencies. When you look at a graphical equailizer on a stereo system and see the individual bargraphs showing how much of each frequency comprises the sound, you are seeing the results of a Fourier transform function applied to that wave. Fourier transforms work for *all* waves, not just pressure waves (sound). In machine vibration analysis, for example, technicians and engineers use Fourier tranforms to decompose a vibration waveform into its different harmonic frequencies, those decomposed signals holding clues about the health of the machine.
* Charles Proteus Steinmetz applied the notation of imaginary (vs. real) numbers to the solution of alternating-current electric circuits near the turn of the last century. His mathematical contribution to the then most empirical subject of electrical engineering revolutionized the field. As it turns out, complex numbers work wonderfully well to represent electrical signals (there are those waves again!) changing in time. Technicians and engineers in the electrical industries use Steinmetz's principles continually to calculate voltage and current quantities in power systems.
* The calculus principles of integration and differentiation are widely used in automatic control systems. Differentiation is used to calculate the rapidity of some variable's change, for the purpose of damping rapid changes. Integral is used to calculate how much control action is necessary to bring a variable back to its "setpoint" (target value), by integrating the error (variable-setpoint) over time. Technicians and engineers "tune" control systems by adjusting the coefficient multipliers of the differentiation and integration functions to achieve stable control.
nagib shagour
is there any design behind the shape of the digits as
written in the English alphabet. namely 1234567890
to see that please write the digits using straight lines.
the design is that the shape of every digit indicates
its value by an equivalent number of "angles".
1 has only one angle. 2 has two and 3 has three
angles. Try out the rest of the digits 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
its interesting i think.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
1 and 7
nagib shagour
1 has clearly one angle pointing to the left. just remember its 1 not "I"
and 7 remember how we used to write it before the digital calculator came about.
7 with the small horizontal dash in its middle.
I still don't remember the exact shapes of 6 and 9.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
Another place mathematics comes into play is less obvious but I think more profound. Mathematics is a model for rigor in drawing conclusions from what one knows or can assume to be true. It is the opposite of "hand waving." The most important influence on my life of my mathematics training is rigor of thought. This has served me in every setting in which I have sought to understand other people's arguments or to define my own.
Mathematics is peculiarly challenging for many people, often providing a unique experience of struggle and breakthrough. The practice and experience of struggle and breakthrough is an invaluable skill for taking on challenging work with confidence later in life- understanding how long something might take, how being stuck feels, and how to break through.
These are some of the ways a strong mathematics background has enabled me to undertake projects and problems which may on their face be unrelated to mathematics.
Franciz Desouza
1 x 8 + 1 = 9 ,12 x 8 + 2 = 98, 123 x 8 + 3 = 987 ,1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876 ,12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765, 123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543, 12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432 ,123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
1.Statistics is mostly used in daily life activities
And most basic is to manage personal finances
+=-,
future value of things to buy,
Present Value
Debit Credit entries , End of day balance
And this goes on infinitely
Ps: I find using Abacus easy for all calculations
nagib shagour
like the grains of sand on a beach.
Is it the person who puts or arranges them in these beautiful orders that
creates these patterns, or is he/she discovering messages setup by a
higher intelligence creator?
I guess every one is to make his own decision.
I have no clue myself.
han jinyu
O'Neil Poree
I particularly enjoyed, and used feedback control technology (Start with Norbert Wiener's classic "Cybernetics" for a good orientation there).
Then there was numerical analysis, particularly numerical integration. Skim through calculus to motivate that, and go for the references to pioneers: Runge, Kutta, Simpson (all of these will have "Rules" quoted in the literature).
Finally, one needs dynamics and mechanics to get into really fun work, like putting a missile from, say, Hawaii launching down next to a given site on Luna, (or Mars, or such...).
Showing such possible future undertakings as these, to interested students, will fire some of them up to "blast off", I would guarantee.
Enjoy.