STARS: Is Math Doing a Number on You?—May 4th, 2005
On May 4th, 2005, STARS held one of the most heavily attended workshops of the semester entitled “Is Math Doing a Number on You?” This workshop grew out the recognition that student success rates for math classes were among the lowest in the college. Furthermore, counselors were encountering students on a daily basis who wanted to change their majors to avoid taking math classes. Under the guidance of STARS/FIPSE Projector Director Deborah Harrington, a panel was put together to demonstrate to students the practical applications of math on an every day basis, how math relates to practically every other subject in the academy, and how math can demonstrate to students the economic incentive of obtaining a degree.
This session was attended by over seventy students and faculty, which indicated the importance and the need for this particular workshop. The session began by having participants anonymously fill out a survey with the following three questions:
- How does math make you feel?
- How does math make you think?
- How does math make you act?
Upon completing the survey, the information was collected and would ultimately be used at the end of the workshop for a final activity.
The second part of the presentation was led by Los Angeles Valley College Counselors Bruce Thomas and Barbara Goldberg. During this part of the session, they presented an overview of the problem that counselors have encountered with students and math anxiety. They demonstrated that the success rate was only 50%, one of the lowest on campus. Next, they went on to discuss and debunk some of the common math myths and misconceptions that create anxiety. This included the myths that aptitude for math is inborn, that to be good at math requires that you be skilled in calculating, that math requires logic and not creativity, and that men are naturally better than mathematical thinking than women.
In concluding this section of the presentation, the counselors suggested some “strategies for change.” These strategies provided participants with some practical suggestions for how to better their study skills. This included the importance of note taking in conjunction with using the textbook, text taking strategies, and developing a mindset of that pushes for mastery of the material.
Next, participants where given a brief quiz by Dr. Richard Pfferman, Dean of Academic Affairs, where four of the questions had subjective answers such as “Leaders are born not made,” and one of the questions had a definitive answer “11 times 40 divided by 2 = ?” After the students and faculty had a few minutes to fill out the answers, Dr. Pfefferman pointed out that only the question involving mathematical computation had a concrete answer; this is another benefit of math—certainty.
The next section of the presentation was led by Art Professor Dale Fulkerson, who presented a lesson on the value of education, which assisted students in figuring out how much each unit of college is worth over their lifetime. Participants were placed into groups and asked to pick a profession and then estimate the salary and figure out the lifetime earning using a formula provided by Prof. Fulkerson. Next, Prof. Fulkerson demonstrated that if someone were working a good job without an education, making approximately $ 10.00 per hour, over their lifetime, their gross earning would be about $832,000. Whereas a professional job with a degree would yield lifetime earning of about $4,992,000. The difference between these was approximately $4,000,000. By dividing this figure by the number of units it takes to complete a BA (120), each unit is worth approx. $ 35,000 toward their lifetime earning capacity. Professor Fulkerson then posed the question “do you think it makes sense to do the math? Do you think it’s worth it to be in college?” This section of the presentation demonstrated an important practical application of math, while also reinforcing the value of higher education. Needless to say, participants found this information to be very exciting.
Moving along, the department chair for math, Dr. Steven Castillo, presented on the Beauty of Math. A few of the participants noticed that the Art instructor had presented on the economics of math while the Math instructor was presenting on the aesthetics of math. This helped to demonstrate that math cuts across the curriculum, and there’s a connection with math regardless of the discipline. Dr. Castillo took the participants through a power point presentation in which he demonstrated how math was directly related to beauty in art, music, architecture, and nature. He touched on the Sierpenski triangle, the Golden ration, the Chaos game, and Goedel’s incompleteness theorem, all of which he connected to how math plays an integral creating beauty.
Following Dr. Castillo’s presentation was a lesson constructed by Dr. Sally Raksoff, department chair of Sociology. She focused on logic and how an understanding of mathematical thinking is fundamental to logic—something else that cuts across practically every discipline and has ramifications for everyday life. To demonstrate the importance of logic, each group of participants was given a logic puzzle and they were asked to work on solving the problem. After a few minutes, the groups were given the answers and a discussion followed which explained that to get the answers it requires stepping outside of “normal” thinking and looking at the situation from a wider perspective. Participants were amazed out how difficult the problems seemed in the beginning, but once they knew the answers, the solutions were obvious.
The final exercise in the workshop asked the groups to brainstorm what they learned from the presentation, what the different presentations meant to them, and what surprised them. Next, the each group was given one of the index cards from the beginning of the workshop were participants had written down negative perceptions and feelings about mathematics, and then they were asked to provide some suggestions for how to help these students from letting math do a number on them!
As the participants were filling out the workshop evaluation forms, the panel showed a video clip entitled Donald Duck in Math Land. This reinforced the practical applications of math and the importance of understanding how math is related to our everyday lives, while providing a humorous twist. A number of students and faculty lingered around after the workshop, eager to find out more answers to the logic questions, and discuss various sections of the presentation with the panel presenters.
Is Math Doing a Number on You (Powerpoint)