Category: Math for Writers

Categories
Math for Parents Math for Teachers Math for Writers Math Secrets

Guest Post: Grownups can learn new tricks!

Bon Crowder, another math evangelist

Bon Crowder, another math evangelist

 couple of weeks ago, a fellow freelance writer wrote me about her foray into graduate school.  She needed to brush up on some math skills, and she wasn’t sure how.  I have a feeling that her questions weren’t unique.  Whether you need to learn a little extra to help your kid with his homework or you need to take a math class to further your education, learning math again (or for the first time) can be daunting.  

Luckily, my friend and fellow math blogger, Bon Crowder offered to write a guest post on this very topic.  I swear, Bon and I were separated at graduation or something, because we approach math education in very similar ways.  Plus she’s fun.  (See? Math folks aren’t always boring and difficult to understand!)

I wanted to title this “Being a Great Adult Learner.”

But that’s dumb. All adults are great learners. If we weren’t, we’d be stumbling around, bumping into doors, starving and naked. We know how to learn, and the proof is that we’re still alive.

And dressed.

The question is “What makes you learn?”

1) You need confidence.

Confidence involves two things: feeling worthy and knowing you have the ability.

When people feel they’re entitled to something, they’re more likely to feel confident in getting it. Hang around any Best Buy service desk and you’ll see this in action. People say all kinds of strange things when trying to return a broken product, and these things are said with a sense of entitlement. BY GOLLY they’re going to get their way!

So how do you gain worthiness and ability? You’re worthy of it because you already have it. And you’re able to do it because you already do.

You have it all. It’s just hidden behind a wall of words you or someone else (or both) has told you for years. Now’s the time to ignore everybody, even yourself.

Because here’s the gosh-honest truth: There is not a single thing within a mathematician that is not within you.

You’ve done math since you were a kid. Even before you were in school. You knew at a deep level that if there was one toy and there was another kid around, you’d better run like the dickens to get it. There’s no dividing that toy evenly between kids.

You balance your checkbook (or you would be in jail right now), you probably have some rough idea of your gas mileage, and you know that if you have 12 people coming over, you’re going to have to double or triple that recipe for shepherds pie. You know math. Now’s the time to admit it.

So say this every night before your prayers. If you don’t pray at night, say it twice:

I do math. Today I woke up on time because I calculated how long it would take to get dressed. I knew how much money to spend because balanced my checkbook. I figured out how much weight I needed to lose – and I used math to do it.

Modify this statement to fit your lifestyle and run with it. Every night.

2) You need the right environment.

Once you’ve tapped in to the realization that you’re inherently good at math, you need the right learning environment.

This includes location, timing and the other people involved. If you have to drive too far away after working all day and all you get is a lousy quarter-pounder-with-cheese, you’re going to be tired, grumpy and irritable. If your class is full of teenagers fresh out of high school and the professor is 400 years old and believes in death by PowerPoint, things are not going to go well.

How do you know the right environment?

Look at all the learning experiences you’ve had through the years. List out the good ones and the bad ones. And then dig deep – what made the good ones good? Why were the bad ones so detrimental?

Include timing, location, student body, temperature in the room and details of the instructor. List out the attitude of the instructor, his/her teaching style, voice intonations – even how he wrote on the board.

Pick out the deal-breakers and the nice-to-haves and write them on a special piece of paper. This is your official “Environment Requirement” page. Laminate it, put it in Evernote, tatoo it to your bottom – whatever you do to keep it close so you can refer to it often.

How do you make sure your Environment Requirements are honored?

Here’s where that sense of entitlement comes back into play. If your class has a deal-breaker environment element, do something about it. Think, “If this were a faulty remote control that I bought at Best Buy, how would I handle it?”

Ask the instructor to manage the loud students better. Ask building maintenance to change the temp of the room (or bring a sweater). Don’t sign up for a class during a time when you’ll be tired, hungry and irritable.

And if you can’t change the environment – leave. Drop the class. Get your money back.

If it were a crappy remote control, that’s what you’d do, right?

You’re dressed…

And fed. You learn all the time. And you do math.

Now go find a class that fits and have fun!

Bon Crowder publishes www.MathFour.com, a math education site for parents. But that’s not all!  Bon has launched a really, really, really cool initiative called Count 10, Read 10.  While parents are encouraged to read to their infants, toddlers and preschoolers, we’re rarely encouraged to inject a little bit of math into the day.  Bon will show you how.  Take a look at her blog for more information on developing math literacy (or numeracy).  I’ll be writing about this more in the coming months.

Categories
Math for Parents Math for Teachers Math for Writers Math Secrets

Math Secrets: A round up

Photo courtesy of jez.atkinson

I’m on vacation this week, so I thought I’d do a quick round up of Math Secrets to date:

Math Secret #1: There’s More than One Way to Skin a Math Problem:

Most math teachers teach that that there’s one process for solving math problems, but this approach just isn’t very practical.  Now that you’re a grownup, you can find your own way to the answer.  I promise.

Math Secret #2: You Were Born This Way:

Think you don’t have any math sense?  Think again.

Math Secret #3: You Can Skip the Love:

Knowing how to do math ≠ loving math.  You really only need two things: acceptance and tolerance.

What to share your own secrets?  Post a comment.

Categories
Math for Writers

Guest posting: 5 simple math skills every writer should have

Today, I’m the guest poster at Word Count: Freelancing in the Digital Age, the terrific blog for writers by Michelle Rafter.  I’ve talked about why writers need math here Math for Grownups before.  At Word Count, I get down to brass tacks.

Hope you’ll take a look!

Hey, that’s me!

I’ve got good news and bad news.

The bad: You do need math, even as a writer. Whether you’re reporting on a business, interpreting statistics or managing your freelance career, math is a big deal.

The good: You don’t have to like it. The better: Forget about finding cosine or using the quadratic formula. A few basics are all you need. You can start with these:

1. Calculate a percent. You learn that a company’s revenue has fallen by $2.5 million over five years. That’s a lot of money, right? Well, actually it depends on the company’s revenue over the last five years. If total revenue was $5 billion, the company lost 5 percent. To calculate that, divide 2.5 million by 5 billion. But if the company’s total revenue over five years was $5 million, the company lost a whopping 50 percent. Using a percent gets to the meat of those numbers.

Read the rest of the post…

Categories
Math for Parents Math for Teachers Math for Writers Math Secrets

Math Secret #3: You can skip the love

When I was a camp counselor after my sophomore year of college, I had a standard response to kids who asked, “Do I have to?”  Whether they were complaining about sweeping out the cabin or taking a hike, I’d look them in the eye, smile and say, “No. You get to!”

I wasn’t a teacher yet, but I had this instinct to spin complaints into commendations.  Sometimes this worked.  The hikes were a good time, and even sweeping sometimes ended in fits of laughter or song.

But the more I think about math and grownups, the more I think that this flip response doesn’t apply.  I do think math is fun — well, some math.  I love proofs, from the two-column geometry proofs that I did in high school to proving properties of our real number system.  I also love doing some kinds of algebra, like solving systems of equations with two variables.

But I don’t love all math.  Try as I might, probability still screws with my head.  And I honestly and truly despise logarithms. (Those are to solve for x, when the variable is an exponent.  More than likely, you haven’t seen logarithms in decades.)

The realization that math doesn’t have to be fun really hit home twice this past year.  When I wrote my proposal for Math for Grownups, the publisher offered positive feedback, except for one thing.  “Don’t focus on the fun of math,” my editor said.  “Focus on the fact that we need it.”  That was a real wake-up call for me.  I couldn’t say to my readers, “You don’t have to do this math; you get to!”

And this spring, I also served as an instructional designer for two online, high school math courses, Algebra II and Probability and Statistics.  This meant that I reviewed the lessons, looking carefully at the pedagogy and mathematics.  I could tell when I loved the math.  I was ready to work every day and genuinely didn’t want to stop until everything was finished.  But when I hit a unit that was less engaging for me, I stalled.  I looked for anything else I could be doing — laundry, cleaning out my email, visiting my favorite blogs.

I didn’t love all of the math I was doing.  Why should I expect that of anyone else?

That’s why I say that math doesn’t have to be your BFF.  It’s like making dinner every night.  Some people can’t wait to get their hands into some fresh bread dough or chop up onions or heat up the grill.  Others are satisfied with take-out.  And then there are plenty of us who are very happy somewhere  in the middle.

But we’ve all got to eat, whether we love cooking or not.  And we’ve all got to do math.  You don’t have to love it, but you can learn to tolerate it.

What do you love or hate about math?  Share your ideas in the comments section.

Categories
Current Events Math for Grownups Math for Writers

Missing-Persons Statistics: When the numbers don’t add up

I’d like to welcome my first guest poster here atMath for Grownups, Carole Moore.  Carole is a fellow writer and the author ofThe Last Place You’d Look: True Stores of Missing Persons and the People Who Look for Them, which hit bookstores in May.  Her book is a gripping account of a variety of missing persons cases around the country.  A former police detective, Carole knows her stuff.

Carole Moore’s most recent book.

She also knows how darned scary missing-persons statistics can be.  And so she’s offered to take a closer look at these numbers and what story they really tell.  This is a critical way that we can use math without even being aware.  See, as scared of math as many of us are, we may also be inclined to trust numbers.  Unfortunately, without some perspective and context, numbers don’t mean a thing.  Keep reading…

When it comes to crime, statistics can be misleading. The truth is in how you break down the numbers. Let’s look at one example:  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 797,500 children under the age of 18 were reported missing in one year’s time. That’s an average of 2,185 kids per day. What’s more interesting is what those numbers don’t say:

First, the category of the report from which they’re drawn (NISMART-2) specifies “reported” missing. That means that some kids who disappeared in the same time bracket were not reported within the reporting period. It doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t reported at all – although many aren’t. Illegal immigrants often won’t call police out of fear of reprisals, and the children of the mentally ill, transients, the homeless, prostitutes and drug users, as well as foster kids, often escape the count. So, while the figure 797,500 sounds huge, the actual number of missing children in a year well exceeds “reported” missing.

Now, look a little closer at those numbers, starting with family abductions, which account for 203,900 children reported missing, and 58,200 kids classified as non-family abductions. That leaves 535,400 children unaccounted for – of these children only 115 were considered “stereotypical” kidnappings. (Examples of stereotypical kidnappings are usually extreme and include cases such as those of Jamie Duggard and Adam Walsh.) The remaining 535,285 children fit in none of these specific categories.

The children left are grouped miscellaneously. For example, a child reported missing after stopping at a friend’s house following school (and who didn’t notify a parent or caretaker) would now be a reported missing child for statistical purposes. So would a child who becomes lost or hides out whose disappearance is reported – even if the child is really not missing in the truest sense of the word, they would be classified as “reported missing.”

My point is that while the statistics here don’t lie, they also don’t tell the whole story in and of themselves.  Many missing children are never reported missing, while many of the reported missing really aren’t missing at all. To truly understand crime stats, it’s important to dig deeper than the numbers.

Carole Moore is a former police detective and current freelance writer, as well as contributing editor and columnist at Law Enforcement Technology.  You can learn more about her atwww.carolemoore.com.

Do you have questions about crime statistics?  Ask them in the comments section!

Categories
Math at Work Monday Math for Writers

Math at Work Monday: Kim the Copywriter

If you’ve ever visited the website of a prescription medication or picked up a brochure from your doctor’s office, you’ve seen the kind of work that Kim Hooper does.  And she’s proof that math and writing are not mutually exclusive endeavors.

As a senior copywriter for an advertising agency, Kim writes brochures, websites and other copy that helps promote a brand or a product.  Since her agency’s primary client is a pharmaceutical company, much of her writing is science-based.

When do you use basic math in your job?

Much of my job involves scanning through research papers about specific drugs and interpreting clinical data in a “sexy,” Madison Avenue way. This tends to involve a bit of math. For example, let’s say we want to point out that our drug is really successful with women over 40 years old. I will look through the demographic tables in the clinical study to create a compelling factoid. Let’s also say that out of 100 women, 60 are over 40 years old. So, when writing a piece, I may have a big headline that says something like, “60% of women in the clinical study were over 40 years old.”

Most of the math I do involves basic addition or subtraction and percentage calculations. Very often, I’ll do percentage calculations for side-effects data. So if 3 patients out of 150 in the clinical study experienced side effects, I’ll take this fact and make sure to call out that 98% of patients did not experience side effects.

Do you use any technology (like calculators or computers) to help with this math?

I do use the calculator built into my PC to double check my work. But I almost always have to do “margin math,” meaning I show my calculations on paper so the client’s regulatory committee can review them.

How do you think math helps you do your job better?

Math keeps my left brain strong. In advertising, the right brain is very important. This is a creative business. We’re trying to find interesting, compelling ways to communicate product messages that may not be that thrilling at first glance. My left brain can help make the messages thrilling. Numbers are very appealing to consumers. If they can see information broken down into easy-to-understand percentages, for example, they may be more likely to try our medication over another one.

How comfortable are you with math?

I’ve always been a bit of a math nerd, and I went all the way through Advanced Placement Calculus in high school. In fact, it was really difficult for me to choose a major in college because I loved math and science and I also loved the arts. For a short time, I double-majored in genetics and psychology. I ended up majoring in communications, which seemed broad enough for me to explore a number of career options. I just happened to fall into a career that makes use of both sides of my brain, which I love. I really enjoy sifting through data and doing the math necessary to make facts come to life.

I think we all get a little rusty if we don’t use math regularly, but it’s been part of my job for a number of years now. There’s no way I could do calculus again, but I have no problem doing basic math. I enjoy it.

Kim Hooper is an advertising copywriter by day, novelist by night. Get to know her work at KimHooperWrites.com.

Do you have questions for Kim?  If so, ask them in the comments section!

Categories
Math for Parents Math for Teachers Math for Writers Math Secrets

Math Secret #2: You Were Born This Way

I’m on the right track, baby

I was born this way

–Lady Gaga

It was day two of my second year of teaching high school geometry, and already I had been called for a parent meeting in the principal’s office. I was a bit worried.  What on earth could a parent have issues with already?

Mrs. X sat with her 14-year-old son across the desk from the principal.  I shook her hand and took the chair next to her.  The principal handed me a copy of my geometry class syllabus that I’d sent home with all of my students during the first day of class.  Like every other class syllabus at this particular school, mine included class rules, the grading system, a list of general objectives and the obligatory notice that I’d be following all other relevant objectives outlined by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“Mrs. X has some questions about your syllabus,” he said, turning the meeting over to her.

“I don’t understand what this objective is,” Ms. X said, pointing to her copy of the syllabus and then reading aloud: “‘Students will use their intuitive understanding of geometry to understand new concepts.’  What does ‘intuitive’ mean?  Are you going to hypnotize my son?”

I instantly relaxed.  Clearly, I was dealing with an over-zealous, perhaps under-educated parent, who had been listening to too much right-wing radio (which in the early 1990s was railing against witchcraft in the classrooms).  I might think she was crazy, but I could handle this.

I calmly explained that all students come into my class with a basic understanding of shapes and the laws of geometry.  I needed my students to tap into this intuitive understanding so that we could build on skills they already had.

In short: These kids already knew something about geometry, and as a professional educator, I was going to take advantage of that.

What I didn’t realize was that my heartfelt theory was not proven fact.  But in April of this year, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study that does just that.  Here’s the gist:

Member of the Mundurucu tribe of Brazil (photo courtesy of P. Pica)

French researcher, Pierre Pica discovered that members of the Amazon Mundurucu tribe have a basic understanding of geometric principles–even though they aren’t schooled in the subject and their language contains very few geometric terms. In other words, geometry is innate.

In fact, Pica found that French and U.S. students and adults did not perform as well on the tests as their Mundurucu brethren.  Turns out formal education may get in the way of our natural abilities.

“Euclidean geometry, inasmuch as it concerns basic objects such as points and lines on a plane, is a cross-cultural universal that results from the inherent properties of the human mind as it develops in its natural environment,” the researchers wrote.

Bla, bla, bla, and something about points and lines.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but what this means is I was right all those years ago.  We may not have been born with Euclid’s brain, but we do, at the very least, pick up his discoveries just by interacting with our world, rather than sitting in a high school classroom.

Actually, the philosopher Immanuel Kant said as much when he was doing his thing in the 18th century, so this isn’t a new idea at all.  But many students (and parents) didn’t get that memo.

The bottom line: aside from uncommon processing and learning differences, there’s no reason that you can’t do ordinary geometry.  More than likely, any obstacles you face are rooted in fear or stubbornness.

And I, for one, won’t let you get away with that.

Categories
Math for Grownups Math for Parents Math for Teachers Math for Writers

Math Secret #1: There’s More than One Way to Skin a Math Problem

The more I talk to people about math, the more I hear this refrain: “I don’t like math, because math problems have only one answer.”

Peshaw!

Okay, so it’s not such a crazy idea.  Most math problems do have one answer (as long as we agree with some basic premises, like that we’re working in base ten).  But math can be a very creative pursuit — and I’m not talking about knot theory or fractals or any of those other advanced math concepts.

I have a friend who is crazy good at doing mental math.  She can split the bill at a table of 15 — even when each person had a completely different meal and everyone shared four appetizers — without a calculator, smart phone or pencil and paper!  This amazed me, so I asked her how she does it.  And what I discovered was pretty surprising. She approaches these simple arithmetic problems in ways that I never would have thought of.  She subtracts to solve addition problems, divides to multiply.  And estimation? Boy howdy, does the girl estimate.  In other words, she gets creative.

(She also has a pretty darned good understanding of how numbers work together, which is probably the biggest reason she can accomplish these feats of restaurant arithmetic.)

While there may be one absolutely, without-a-doubt, perfectly correct answer to “How much do I owe the waiter?” there are dozens of ways to get to that answer.  Problem is, your fourth grade math teacher probably didn’t want to hear about your creative approach.

See, when we learn math as kids, we’re focused on computation through algorithms.  (In case you’re not familiar with the word, algorithms are step-by-step procedures designed to get you to the answer.)  You did drill after drill of multiplication, long division, finding the LCM (Least Common Multiple) and converting percents to fractions.  But nobody ever asked you, “How would you do it in your head?”

The good news is that now you’re all grown up.  There’s not a single teacher who is looking over your shoulder to see if you lined up your decimal points and carried the 2.  You can chart your own path!  And when people are given this freedom, they often find really interesting ways to solve problems.

Don’t believe me?  Try this out: Add 73 and 38 in your head.  How did you do it?  Now pose the question to someone else.  Did they do something different?  If not, ask someone else.  I will guarantee that among your friends and family, you’ll find at least three different ways of approaching this addition problem.

So, let’s do this experiment here.  In the comments section, post how you solved 73 + 38 without a calculator or paper and pencil.  Then come back later to see if someone else had a different approach.  If you’re feeling really bold, post this question as your Facebook status, then report the results in the comments section.

And while you’re at Facebook, be sure to visit and like the Math For Grownups Facebook fan page!

Categories
Math for Grownups Math for Parents Math for Teachers Math for Writers

My Math Story

The biggest fights my father and I had were about math.  I kid you not.

The year was 1984.  I was a junior in high school, taking Algebra II.  Radicals were kicking my scrawny, little butt.

(Remember radicals?  They look like this: sqrt{24}. In Algebra II, you mostly learned to simplify them, as well as add, subtract, multiply and divide with them.)

My father wanted to help, and he had the patience of Job.  But he was not great at accepting that I didn’t understand.  And I wasn’t great at controlling my emotions.  I hollered, cried and probably threw things.  Somehow, I got the impression that my dad thought I couldn’t do math, and I did what any strong-willed girl will: I dug in my heels.

That’s when I started drinking coffee, actually.  I was so determined to show my dad–and my Algebra II teacher, Mr. Gardner–that I got up at 4:30 a.m., sat in my dad’s easy chair with a cup of coffee and a stack of sharpened pencils, and did problem after problem after problem.

I did every single radicals problem in the textbook.  And then I did them again. I took what Mr. Gardner and my dad taught me and figured the darned things out.  It took time, but I was determined not to give up.

Why on earth would I do this?  Well, I’m stubborn, for one.  But probably the biggest reason is Mrs. Ivey.  She was my geometry teacher the year before, and she changed my perspective about math.  You see, before then, I knew I couldn’t do math.  Mrs. Ivey convinced me that I was wrong.

She and my father are the reasons I majored in math.  I found out I’m a math teacher, not a mathematician. (Sometimes we’re one or the other.)  I’m fascinated by the ways people choose to do math, not by complex computations or proofs.

Math geeks aren’t always born.  Sometimes a teacher inspires us.  Sometimes we’re dragged kicking and screaming. And sometimes we just learn to deal with math–because we have to.

What’s your math story? Share it in the comments section!