Is the mathematics you learn in school really needed in everyday life?

Users mqb2766 and Meowstic ask if maths taught at school should be relevant to daily life at all. angelike1 thinks it might be the most

Beautiful! What function do you use for the conversion?

Good to know.

Do you know if they use any other calculations? I sometimes set my students problems which ask them to minimise the length of a fence containing a fixed area (usually with constraints like the area has to be rectangular and there has to be a section of the fence dividing there area in two). Do you know if these or similar calculations are used by architects?

Definitely think so. I think what would have helped me, would've been practical exercises/field trips involving real life scenarios involving figures eg go home and figure how old each of you will be when grandma is 80, bearing in mind you are now 11 and she is 65 (might be a terrible example but something i used to struggle with at that age). Another example - Go and measure a space in your house for a new chess of drawers and then find one in the shops that will fit that space. Exmaple 3 - Go to your local pool and ask what the about the "depth" is then measure length and breadth ( i could never "see" 3 dimensional on paper it just didn't make any sense), ex: Go to Ikea and look at the dimensions of a wardrobe, what depth do you think you will need for your batallion of shoes? example 4: What is the probability you will be picked for the athletics team, bearing in mind there 30 of you in class, 3 have 2 left feet and you are one of them, but rather than on paper act it out. 😂

I definitely think logic should be a scarlett thread running through majority of subjects so that its not such an alien concept because like it or not, all of us as fully functioning adults use logic in our daily lives so its a bit weird that one struggles with it so much in maths.

Another topic in school thats i've found keeps coming up in everyday life is "Standard Deviation".

I target English lit more than maths

But isn't it strange how some people sound almost proud when they say they are not very good at maths? That comes up a lot when I tell people I teach maths for a living.

I can't believe that if I said I taught English literature people would tell me they weren't very good at reading.

Sure, but most of that is covered in KS2. Pythagoras, for instance, describes circles, lengths of vectors, forms the basis for the cos rule, underpins trig, ... but is not used for everyday maths. Similar for many other topics

If you did a French gcse, you're unlikely to use it every day. Similar for most (all?) Subjects. I'm unsure why gcse maths should underpin everyday maths.

That's a good question.

Of course, different exam boards will have slightly different syllabuses for GCSEs. Personally, I wouldn't actually remove anything from the syllabus to make room for it, but possibly add a small section into the actual GCSE, and then have another qualification like GCSE Statistics (talking of stats I think that could also be improved at GCSE), but for financial mathematics? Main problem with that though is that exam might not be well known to teachers or taught very much and so may be not very effective at improving access to that kind of knowledge? I'd certainly add nominal and real calculations and inflation into the GCSE, and I think that would work well alongside the compound and simple interest, and would also be very useful for students in understanding the real world, as I feel that it's slightly ridiculous that I've only actually officially encountered these terms in a specification context when doing A level Economics.

I definitely feel that there can be a much, much stronger element of financial mathematics to A level Maths, especially as you have calculus and exponential & logs (although credit to AQA lots of their logarithmic questions do have some kind of financial application), which would enable you to do a lot of interesting things that you wouldn't be able to look at from a GCSE Maths level perspective.

But isn't it strange how some people sound almost proud when they say they are not very good at maths? That comes up a lot when I tell people I teach maths for a living.

I can't believe that if I said I taught English literature people would tell me they weren't very good at reading.

Even if you aren't working in a technical field, the analytical skills and problem-solving skills gained from studying maths are still really important. In maths if you want to claim a statement is true, you actually have to logically prove it; you can't just throw around a couple of examples and say it's true, so this teaches people how to formulate logical arguments which is also very useful.

I didn't think of adding more stuff about Excel into the specification in my previous post (I was talking about adding more financial mathematics into GCSE and A level Maths), but you've just reminded me that would be another thing that would be great!

That's a very deep understanding of Pythagoras. I'm very impressed.

Surely I would expect a French GCSE to be of some practical use, at least in a French speaking country, as well as preparing me for future study?

I find it of use to this day. Not just for getting the maths bit of Countdown. Maths is vital to make sure you are not being ripped off.

I like the way how you explained math it really inspires me to work harder for my math GCSE