Back to school means back to books and the perpetual student question, “why do I need math anyway, I plan to be a (insert profession, not engineer, here).”
I have a social work student at home who has put off university math classes for several years, as well as a younger one receiving year around math tutoring to hone his skills.
He would rather be learning to drive a tractor/swather/sprayer, painting a barn or playing a video game, although it’s mostly the latter. Dad projects the other stuff onto him.
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Both are good students, but they recently asked why they need solid numeracy skills later in life. Because Dad said so, was the reply.
Reporters applying for journalism jobs are tested on their abilities to write and interview but seldom on a skill like calculating a percentage or estimating large numbers.
However, reporters use math skills every day. Is something a story or merely an anomaly? We routinely make on-the-fly estimates and exact calculations.
Western Producer reporters use numeracy skills every day, whether it is making commodity prices relative to previous and future years, calculating levels of fertilizer application over time or determining how a price increase for a popular herbicide might affect the farm economy.
Editors check reporters’ calculations, budget the business of news gathering and perform other duties too numerous to be counted.
What about being a farmer? Do you need math? It is one of the most math dependent jobs I know.
One moment you’re figuring out how small the margin is on a specific crop choice and the next you’re calculating the right amount of products to blend into a pesticide tank mix for one of your smaller than average fields so that none is left over when the job is complete.
Innumeracy, said mathematician John Allen Paulos in his textbook on the subject, is “an inability to deal comfortably with fundamental notions of number and chance.”
So, don’t let your babies grow up to be innumerates. They might end up needing work some day, even as reporters or farmers.
