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Should American schools focus less on Calculus and more on Probability?
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Arthur Benjamin is a professor of mathematics at Harvey Mudd college and came back to TED this year to share an important idea that he has been discussing with mathematicians, educators, and policy makers:
We caught up with Arthur last week and here is what he had to say about this recommendation:
When asked about the reasons why mathematics education has traditionally placed calculus as its pinnacle Professor Benjamin said that the reasons are historical. He says that calculus:
has been the pinnacle of math education for hundreds of years, and the curriculum is very slow to change.
But he argues that it needs to change because the applications and the daily uses of the principles of calculus are far less than they are for statistics and probability.
When I asked the professor to explain why he thought that statistics and probability could and should be a part of our everyday working knowledge, I thought at first that he was being sarcastic when he said: "Let me get out my newspaper and see if I can find some examples."
But in the next instant that is exactly what he did. He then rather convincingly argued that the story on the front page about the housing market which referred to the "nationwide index" and trends in the market would be highly misleading (not necessarily intentionally) to a reader who did not have a working understanding of the principles of statistics.
Just so you don't think that the recommendation is being made to scrap calculus all together in favor of statistics. It should be mentioned that Professor Benjamin points out in this discussion that:
Calculus is an important subject. It's one of the great products of the human mind. The laws of nature are written in the language of calculus. And every student who studies math, science, engineering, economics, they should definitely learn calculus by the end of their freshman year of college.
But he points out that:
Very few people actually use calculus in a conscious, meaningful way in their day to day lives. On the other hand, statistics -- that's a subject that you could, and should, use on daily basis.
Why is this? Well, because:
It's risk. It's reward. It's randomness. It's understanding data.
So what needs to be done about this issue?
to have impact, there would have to be agreement from public policy officials, as well as support from the major mathematics societies, such as the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and (at the high school level) the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
We asked the professor how hopeful he was about seeing this kind of a change in the public policy of mathematics education, he told us that of all the reforms that one might like to see in this field, this one represents "low hanging fruit," because it would be easy and inexpensive to implement and would have a significant impact on the way we understand the world around us.
When asked why he thinks this is an easy policy to implement Professor Benjamin mentioned two important things:
For example, for better or worse, a major player in setting state curriculum policies are textbook publishers. Switching from calculus to prob/stat is something they could accommodate without hurting their profits (it's sort of like Coke having juice products that they could sell in their vending machines).
and,
Also, most teachers who have taught calculus and pre-calculus have the background and talent to teach prob/stat and discrete mathematics.
Easy to implement, significant impact, and agreement with many professionals in the field. So what is stopping it?
Policy changes in education take an enormous amount of time and effort. President Obama recently announced that it was important that we need more students trained in computer science (and indirectly discrete mathematics). Perhaps if the right policymaker decides to promote the idea, you could see some action. At the risk of comparing it to health-care proposals, I would like to see students have a choice as to the mathematics path that they follow, with no penalty for choosing the statistical path.
Another issue though (this is the author talking now) is that there has to be some political support for the idea, that is where you come in. If you want to learn more about Arthur Benjamin, Mathemagics (a part of his attempt to make mathematics fun and easy for people), or this important shift in public education and what you can do to help it, please visit Benjaminmath.com, and thank you ahead of time.
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