"Why are We So Illiterate in Mathematics?" Response

Why are We So Illiterate in Mathematics? August 22, 2013

And why does our common culture perpetuate the illiteracy?  As a math teacher, it makes me crazy to see our common culture supporting bizarre impressions of numbers and shapes and to see how students, made victims of these notions, can sometimes struggle with what used to be the most basic mathematical ideas.

Take, for example, the ice "cube." A cube is a regular hexahedron: a polyhedron that has six congruent faces, each of which is a square (think dice).  I don't know about you all, but the freezer of my youth held rectangular plastic pieces that froze water in the shape of roughly hexahedrons, with all edges that are line segments that are either parallel or perpendicular to each other.  Now, mind you, my own freezer mocks me in my passion for mathematics by producing a solid with two edges that are arcs and  two pairs of edges that are parallel line segments; these solids are definitely not cubes. Therefore it is no wonder that current students are confused by the word "cube."

Also take the coach, well meaning that she or he is, encouraging players to give 120% (or even a larger percentage) effort.  How does that happen?  When I fill my glass to the brim, it is 100% full. When I try to pour more water (or orange juice) into the glass, it overflows. I cannot add more than 100%.  Thus it is with athletics. How can you possibly give more than all you have?  No wonder students struggle with the concept of percentages in elementary school or middle school or in high school with the idea of probabilities summing to 1 or 100%.

My son, as a young child, participated in many sports, but particularly loved basketball.  He played in a pee-wee kind of league in Colorado Springs that played wonderful games, but clearly someone in the program wasn't a math teacher.  The teams played 3 quarters in a game.  Yes, instead of playing 4 quarters to make a whole game, they played 3 twenty minute sessions that they called "quarters" and the game was meant to be over.   When I asked the ref when we'd finish the game as we had only finished 3/4 of the game, he looked at ME as if I was the crazy one.  If they played 5 twenty minute sessions, I don't think they would have liked to play fifths.  That word has other implications.

Now ok, I'm contemplating these kind of challenges I face each day in the classroom as I walk my dog, Karma (as in "good Karma") around my neighborhood in Albuquerque and I start noticing the numbers on mailboxes.  I live at 1198.  To our left as we face the street live our wonderful neighbors at 1196.  Across the street from them is 1197; order is maintained with the folks across the street from us: 1199.  But much to my consternation, the wonderful folks to our right live at not 1200; they live at 11100.  Is this a problem unique to Albuquerque? 

I enjoy a good math joke as well as any other football player; people recognize this as they link comics, cartoons, and what-not to me on facebook; I do delight in the humorous additions to my day.  But I squirm at the one that had one triangle talking to another triangle: "You are so obtuse, you wouldn't know an isosceles triangle if it bit you in the hypotenuse."  Now stop right there.  The cartoon has a cute one-liner and anthropomorphizes triangles, but only a right triangle (and not an obtuse triangle) has a hypotenuse.

So perhaps I need more to do with my life so I'm not so concerned with such trivia, but I already fill 100% of my time between the triangle of 1198, math classes, and a tonic with ice cubes. Real ones, mind you.

For your blogs, folks, how about you have a choice.  1. you write on your theory about why U.S. Citizens aren't very savvy mathematically or 2.  you find some mathy idea to write about that interests you. Remember to submit it to canvas. Remember to make it your own; you are not to copy something from somewhere else. 

                                                                                                                                              

I definitely think that U.S. citizens are not the best at math. I think this because the technology we have been greeted with makes us start to become lazy. We have become too dependent on the technology and use the calculator on our smartphone for simple addition and subtraction problem. This makes our minds start to become less engaged in math because we think "why do something that takes energy and more time when something else can do it for you in a lesser amount of time". This is how most of America is starting to think with the higher technology we are being introduced to so we have become lesser found of math. 

In the street numbers I also don't understand how they work. I get confused and it makes me scared that if I want to drive to a friend's house I've never been to how will I find it without using a gps or maps on a smartphone? This also shows how technology just makes math more confusing and people start to lack on the ability. We depend on the smartphone to do things for us again. 

I also find it strange that the "quarters" of the basketball game was in the reality of math thirds. I think the word "quarters" has adapted to being just "parts" of the game because that is usually how a sport game is timed. Quarter was just used to make it sound "official" because who would want to call it thirds? This shows how some Americans just aren't that into the real math of things. It makes us become less aware of the math of what is happening around us.

Ms. Mariner's Blog on JAMM'n Peaches Response (Q1, Homework1)

JAMM'n Peaches: May 2013

We lived in Grand Junction, Colorado, at the juncture of the Grand and Colorado Rivers.  Just East of town is the town of Palisade; just west of town is Fruita.

Our rental house, about 1500 square feet of damp stucco and thin pine floorboards from the 1920's, sported a flower garden.  When I moved in, I didn't pay much attention to plants; after all, I killed most of the houseplants that I had ever owned.  First bloomed the Peonies.  Each large lacy fluffy light pink billow was so fragrant that the scent of one in a simple spherical bowl would fill the house.  Different flowers bloomed in succession until the roses, the many roses, bloomed. The wirey and pokey stalks of plumes spread across the yard in wild wonder, blissfully taking over all the play area.  Our neighbor, Barbara, a proud nonagenarian, leaned over the fence; "I have some clippers you could borrow for those rose bushes," she said.  I smiled, knowing that if I did anything to these plants then surely they would die.

One morning, I found the clippers and some gloves on a table in our back yard.  I began using the clippers more like a sythe on the rose bushes so the size of our yard would be increased, allowing for more play space. Later that day, I returned the clippers to Barbara and thanked her. She smiled and gently said, "You know, if you cut the roses at an angle five leaves below the last bloom, then your roses would blossom again."  I smiled back, knowing that I could not have cared less about the roses.

It was only 2 weeks later when I found myself cutting the roses as she had recommended, and not even a month later when our world became filled with Elizabeth, Sunrise, Blood Orange, and Pink Beauty roses.

And so it went with peaches.  Bushels appeared on my porch from well-meaning friends.  "Surplus," they said, "From the orchards in Palisade and Fruita. Can them."  I smiled, knowing that I didn't like peaches and liked cooking even less. Clearly, the peaches would rot.

It was barely 10 days before the lids of my first set of Jammin' Peaches began making friendly popping noises as the peaches cooled inside the pint glass jars.

But it is the smell of the roses and the thick air of boiling peaches that keeps me returning, in my mind, to our damp stucco home in Grand Junction. It is the smell of surprise, of change, of adaptation and the smell of comfort.

GA2
I really like how the dynamic of the cutting the roses at an angle five leaves after the last bloom and how it made a difference in the rose bushes. It made them look more elegant and fuller. I like how this idea of roses lead to the peaches. This blog post shows a good idea of how one idea can lead to another even when you don't really enjoy doing what it is, but it still comes out to a great product just like in math class.

I approach mathematics in a simple way. I try not to think to hard about it or I become frustrated. I use my notes to help me also. I like math, it is sometimes challenging and easy. I like math because I like the puzzles it brings forth to my everyday life. I learn math the best by doing the beginning of the chapter/sub-chapter on the board in class while taking notes. My best math experience is whenever I receive a good grade on my math tests, An effective learning tactic for me is taking notes while a teacher is writing down key parts of the chapter/sub-chapter in the classroom.