Essay About Math In Life Text

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length: 182 words 0.5 double spaced pages college admissions essays math changed my life i enjoyed mathematics in grade school. When i started my high school mathematical studies with calculus and analytic geometry, by george b. The mathematical concepts contained in this book combine with the principles of physics to form the basis for most engineering disciplines. There is a beauty to mathematical concepts presented in an orderly and intelligible way. The principles and techniques i learned from this book are now an integral part of my life.

I use them often in solving engineering problems that i develop and in analyzing designs of my own fabrication. This book should be the gold standard for all college calculus texts and should be on the bookshelf of all engineers. The knowledge in this book enabled me to pursue my interest in math and engineering.

The author of this essay was accepted by caltech an essay on mathematics in everyday life mathematics is one kind of science. On the other hand, easy mathematical operations are performed without the help of any machine or computer software. In official works like banking, policy, school, college and universities mathematical calculations are done by technically. Mathematics helps us to create everything as without the application of mathematics. We cannot create any building, picture, furniture, good art, wallpaper, your room, bridge etc. We use mathematics in our everyday life such as in banking transactions, buying or selling any product, giving or taking money, creating something, measurement of demand etc. Mathematics is a matter of studies and research: at present, mathematics has become a subject of studies and research.

They always engage themselves to find out any kind of easy usages of mathematics.

a better mathematics curriculum, by tom davis

all these ideas have been churning around in my head for years. Although it is very rough, and i'm sure i've left out many obvious things, i would appreciate comments. The curriculum i'm proposing is aimed at high school and below, although obviously some of the ideas make sense in a university setting. Just to show that i'm not completely ignorant of the situation, here is my background: i have a b.s. I have taught courses in mathematics and computer science at various universities ranging from stanford to junior colleges. I have done a great deal of volunteer tutoring of mathematics, for kids and adults who have a great deal of difficulty, and for kids who are far smarter than i am, and have competed on various united states olympiad math teams.

I also did a post doc at stanford in electrical engineering and have worked in industry as a software engineer for 20 years. I think the problem with mathematics education at the university level in this country is that it's generally taught by and aimed at mathematicians. This trickles down to the primary and secondary schools, since the committees that determine the curricula are usually packed with university level mathematicians.

I was trained as a professional mathematician, and in my non mathematician, non engineering life, i have never really needed to solve a quadratic equation either. You would think that in careers that use mathematics heavily for chemists, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists at least they are learning the right stuff, but i don't think that's the case. When i took third year physics as a junior i had to work with fourier series using actual sines and cosines. I had, of course, learned a great deal about fourier series in my math courses, but all at a highly theoretical level.

We didn't use sines and cosines we used complete sets of orthonormal functions on a measurable space or something. We learned about the weird convergence properties of the functions that were on the edge of not having a fourier expansion. The bottom line was that i had to teach myself to do it in the usual case with sines and cosines applied to reasonably well behaved functions.

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Later in life, i've run into dozens of similar cases, where i had learned the abstract, theoretical theorems, but had never tried to apply them to real problems. If you read concrete mathematics by knuth, graham, and patashnik, knuth states in the preface that the reason the book and the course based on it were written and taught is that there were large areas of mathematics he had never seen taught and that he wished he had known in order to do his work in computer science. In many universities, in fact, engineering departments offer their own math courses since their students are unable to solve engineering problems with the tools they learn from the math department. In the case of the university of rochester a few years ago, the administration decided basically to eliminate the math department and replace it with service courses for students in various other areas. The bottom line is that we need to teach students the mathematical techniques they will need to use later in life to solve the sorts of problems they will encounter. This obviously varies from person to person, so in the best of all possible worlds, we could teach a different sort of math class to future mathematicians, to future engineers, future computer scientists, carpenters, accountants, or housewives, giving each exactly what they need. Having a separate curriculum for every type of person is clearly an impossible goal, but i think we can do far better at designing a curriculum that would work well for everyone.

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In the first few years, it would cover what everyone, technical or non technical, needs to know. At that point, most folks could stop taking math, and courses aimed more at technical people but not necessarily mathematicians could be taught. I have found that if i have a good idea of how to solve practical problems in an area, it's not hard to abstract it to pure mathematics, so by the time a person has decided that he/she is going to be a professional mathematician, courses in pure mathematics could be taught. The argument is made that it's good for the students to learn to think logically, and that doing abstract math is a good way to teach logical thinking. The ability to think logically is critical, but there are plenty of places where you can apply logic to practical problems that require a more concrete type of mathematics.

I fully agree that there are some wonderful, beautiful theorems and results in pure mathematics, some practical and some less so. I have no objection to teaching optional courses on this material for non mathematicians, sort of the way i might take an art appreciation course even though i can't draw a recognizable stick figure of a human by myself. So what should the courses contain in my humble opinion, of course ? since the bottom line of an education is to allow the student to be able to function well in society, the best approach is to list the sorts of problems with some mathematical content that ordinary people face. With such a list in mind, it's much easier to see what mathematics is useful and what is not. I make no claim that the list below is in any way complete, but i believe that it gives a general idea of the things i have in mind.

    household finances calculating change, adding assets, making and keeping a budget, calculating interest saving or borrowing , calculating taxes and tips, working out your salary from pay rates.

    Is a car lease better than a car loan? if you borrow $200,0 to purchase a house at 6% interest, about how much will your monthly payment be?

problem solving skills this is a sort of a universal skill, but i'm not positive how to teach it, and at what level it should be taught to the average non technical person. Surely the ideas of getting an estimate of the total cost of a project before beginning, or of knowing how to gather data to do research on the cost/benefit of purchasing a house, boat, car, et cetera, are important. a bullshit detector politicians, salesmen, and con men may all try to fool you with faulty statistics, bad logic, emotional appeals, et cetera. How do you recognize these? basically, this amounts to how to apply logic to everyday life.