..which haunts my curriculum...
I just thought I'd blog some college experience since I haven't been. Three of my four classes involve sooooooo much math. If it's not Microeconomics with it's, "AVC = TVC over q," or accounting where I run amortization calculations. You would think my core curriculum would be the one class where I would be safe from such a four letter word as the "M" word, but nooOOOOooooOOOOooo. I'm working on something called "log2n" and factoring numbers for my formerly sweet class on philosophical thought...
The class is actually called, "Paradoxes and the Limits of Knowledge." Anyhow, it was always supposed to turn into something cold and scientific. It's actually considered a science class. Nevertheless, I liked it better before I was doing all these calculations, especially finding finding log2 of 9 for my homework table.
Thankfully, in management, I'm safe from that four letter word.... mmmmmmm... aaaaa...
You shouldn't be afraid of math. Most people who are afraid are afraid for one of three reasons 1) they've had bad experiences due to bad teaching 2) They haven't used it in a while 3) There's an ingrained cultural stereotype about the sort of people who are good at math and they don't fit it.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to get more confident with math is to do it. It might help to start with math that really has no pressure of classes or the like attached. Martin Gardner who used to write a math column for Scientific American has a few excellent books that would help out in just having weird but easy to understand math ideas. The Colossal Book of Mathematics might be a good place to start. Some of the material will be a bit too much but most of it should be ok. He's an absolutely wonderful, wonderful writer.