Why a liberal arts mathematics book with a quantitative literacy focus?
How do you engage students with the study of math? Crauder, Evans, Johnson, and Noell have found the answer: Help them become intelligent consumers of the quantitative data to which they are exposed every day—in the news, on TV, and on the Internet.
In an age of record credit card debt, opinion polls, and questionable statistics, too few students have mastered the basic mathematical concepts required to think about and evaluate data. Quantitative Literacy: Thinking Between the Lines develops the idea of rates of change as a key concept in helping students make good personal, financial, and political decisions.
The goal of Quantitative Literacy is a more informed generation of college students who think critically about the data provided to them, the images shown to them, the facts presented to them, and the offers made to them. Quantitative Literacy shows students the mathematics that matters to them: their bank account, their medical tests, their daily news feed. It also develops their mathematical thinking, helping them to understand the difference between truthful and misleading mathematical reporting.
It’s All in the Examples…
After taking your course and working with Quantitative Literacy, students will be equipped to think about and answer all of the following questions:
- Will the Atkins Diet really help me lose weight?
- How do I use logic to get the best results from a Google search?
- Is the local carpet store trying to fool me into thinking their prices are lower because they quote price by the square foot instead of the square yard?
- How far can I go on this tank of gas?
- How do I interpret the results of my medical tests?
- How can businesspeople and politicians use graphs and charts to mislead me?
- Will inflation affect my savings and the age at which I can retire?
- How do I avoid getting tricked by a Ponzi scheme?
- I want to buy a new car in two years. How much do I need to save each month to achieve my goal? How much car can I really afford?
- Why are games of chance so financially risky?
- Does the golden rectangle explain the beauty of some paintings and architecture?