Math is all around us, even if we don’t see it
Written by John Seelke
One of the main reasons I remain on Facebook is to keep in touch with my former students. One day one of them posted “Another day has passed without using the Pythagorean Theorem.” It seems this phrase, or a version of it, has been making the social media rounds for the past few years, even Buzzfeed once listed it as one of the most relatable tweets of 2018.
Of course I had to chime in and tell my student that if she sat at a table that had a right angle, or if she crossed the street that had a corner, she may not have realized it, but yes, the Pythagorean theorem was used. In the Washington, DC area, while much of the city is laid out in a grid, with vertical and horizontal streets, there are some major streets that are at diagonals. Choosing to take the street on the diagonal as the shortest distance is using the Pythagorean theorem.
Now, let’s be realistic. I know that my former students, or probably none of us, will pull out a calculator to calculate how much the distance on the diagonal is shorter than moving along the two sides of a triangle. But the fact that people have come to recognize that moving along the diagonal is shorter than moving along the two sides is at the foundation of the Pythagorean Theorem.
Mathematics is often seen as the bane of existence in education. When I tell someone I’m a math teacher, more often than not, someone will say “I hated math” Andrew Hacker, a political scientist, published an entire book, The Math Myth, in 2016 which, among other things, claimed that the only math that was needed in K-12 education was arithmetic.
One of Hacker’s central arguments is that requiring students to pass higher level math courses such as Algebra 2 may serve as an unnecessary barrier to students from graduating high school. Some states, including Michigan, Texas, and most recently Arizona have either dropped Algebra 2 as a graduation requirement or are considering dropping it.
When Hacker’s book was published, two different articles, one in The Atlantic, and the other in Slate, countered Hacker’s argument. More recently, a 2019 Freakonomics podcast explored mathematics, where well known math educator Jo Boelar, among others, called for a requirement for Algebra 2 to be replaced by a course focused on statistics and data science.
I am not 100% convinced that Boelar’s notion is correct, however, I do believe that statistics is one place where math is seen on an everyday basis and where students should learn to better understand what graphics, polls, or data truly mean.
Over the past six years, statistics has become quite important both in politics and in science with relation to the global pandemic.
In relation to the pandemic, major news outlets such as the New York Times have developed numeric trackers of COVID cases, where data may be both factual and not worthy of an alarm. For example, recently the New York Times tracker mentioned that the number of covid cases per 100,000 increased 40% in the last two weeks. On one hand, such an increase may seem completely drastic. Yet a closer look at the data reveals the number of cases increased by approximately 6 people (from 14 to 20).
Oftentimes, polls or presentations will not include the n-value Even those in education are not immune to the misuse of data. Teachers, school leaders, or district leaders searching for what works can often be swayed by data presented by vendors. Or school leaders may celebrate how a certain intervention led to an increase of students reaching proficiency by 25%. Yet what they may not share is that only eight students that participated in the intervention, meaning only two students made progress.
While schools should of course celebrate when every student finds success, consider the differences between saying a given program Increased student proficiency by 25% versus saying the program Increased student proficiency by two students. It’s important to note that saying there was a 25% increase (from 8 students to 10 students) isn’t lying with statistics. But at the same time it’s not telling the complete truth.
We may never get to a situation where students are posting that they are using the Pythagorean Theorem on a daily basis. And I’ll be honest, if I weren’t in math education, I doubt I would regularly remember the product rule for a derivative or even the quadratic formula. Yet the reality is that math is being found in places we least expect it. Teachers, don’t pretend that the concept you are teaching on a given day will be used regularly in life, but challenge your students to become critical thinkers, questioning how math can be used to better society as a whole.
One option could be finding lessons from organizations like Citizen Math. And students, while it’s true a day may go by without you specifically using the Pythagorean Theorem, let’s hope a day doesn’t go by where you use the reasoning skills learned in math to challenge assumptions, reconsider data, and create stronger arguments when debating solutions to challenging problems.
John Seelke is currently an Instructional Specialist in Secondary Mathematics in Montgomery County, MD. Over his 20 year career in education, John has taught at the K-12 level, at the university level and has worked in two district offices. In 2007, he was honored with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST), representing Washington, D.C.