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

Thanks for an interesting post. So you are saying that the value of maths in everyday lives logical thinking and problem solving skills rather than specific mathematical techniques? And if so should we be teaching mathematics differently to bring out those skills more?

It seems like we live in a world where all the calculations we need are done for us. We have automated supermarket checkouts to tell us how much we need to pay for our shopping, we carry gps phones in our pockets to work out optimal routes for us, and price comparison sites find us the cheapest possible deals on holidays and many other things.

Our world is very different from the way it was when a lot of the mathematics we teach in school was invented. The ancient Babylonians had methods for solving (some) quadratic equations and also knew about Pythagoras's theorem about a thousand years before he was born.

I need to know a lot about mathematics for my job, but that's certainly not true for everyone. What do you think about the mathematics we teach at schools? Should we be covering different topics? Should we teach it at all? How much mathematics do you use outside the classroom?

---

My name is William Lee and I teach maths to students studying for the BSc Mathematics degree at the University of Huddersfield. I also work a lot on developing mathematical models in collaboration with industry, helping them uncover hidden meaning in their data and better understand how their processes work and can be improved.

It seems like we live in a world where all the calculations we need are done for us. We have automated supermarket checkouts to tell us how much we need to pay for our shopping, we carry gps phones in our pockets to work out optimal routes for us, and price comparison sites find us the cheapest possible deals on holidays and many other things.

Our world is very different from the way it was when a lot of the mathematics we teach in school was invented. The ancient Babylonians had methods for solving (some) quadratic equations and also knew about Pythagoras's theorem about a thousand years before he was born.

I need to know a lot about mathematics for my job, but that's certainly not true for everyone. What do you think about the mathematics we teach at schools? Should we be covering different topics? Should we teach it at all? How much mathematics do you use outside the classroom?

---

My name is William Lee and I teach maths to students studying for the BSc Mathematics degree at the University of Huddersfield. I also work a lot on developing mathematical models in collaboration with industry, helping them uncover hidden meaning in their data and better understand how their processes work and can be improved.

Listening to the Yesterday in Parliament section of the Today Programme on Radio 4 I heard the Health Secretary Matt Hancock doesn't think that testing all MPs and workers in Parliament for coronavirus is not a good idea because the test isn't reliable in people who don't have symptoms, i.e. he is concerned about false positives.

That got me thinking, how much maths do you need to know to be a good health secretary? How much mathematics should we expect our MPs to know? What about other Ministers?

What do you think?

Perhaps what is also needed is some idea of finance - i.e. how to manage money. Everything i see tends to indicate there is a serious lack of competence in this area throughout the population. A very large proportion of the population is way over their heads in debt. They do not seem to think that this is a problem. They will find out that it is, when one of them [assuming it is a couple] lose their job or get sick. If it is a single individual, they will find it out immediately when they lose their job or become sick. Some ppl think that they should have a year's minimum income available in cash or cash equivalents. [Minimum income being what it would take to make your rent/house payment & buy you groceries for that period of time.] This would be nice, but i think that most ppl would have trouble stretching that far. Three months should be do-able though. Cheers.
Perhaps what is

Yes and we need to banish it from maths education as I discussed here

but i think i am expert on numerical patterns in the Quran, the reason i give you this is beacuse you are a profesional mathematician, so you look upon it objectivly, purely based on math, no theological implications here, just pure math, based on math to conclude some stuff. if you are not intrested then i will not bother you with this. But for me this is one of the most amazing thing, beacuse with the help of math we can achieve amazing things, eternal life and many other super amazing stuff.

Thanks and yes, I think that it's because the same sort of skills can be attained from different parts of maths like the same logical reasoning is present in geometric proof and algebraic proof at GCSE. I think it should be taught differently at GCSE as a result to emphasise a wide range of skills more. Foundation GCSE should focus more on quantitative skills rather than abstract reasoning while higher should focus more on the aforementioned abstract reasoning and problem solving. The topics in the two parts could also be graded based on the difficulty of the skills in them and the content they build up on with proportions of each skill in each part & exam to make sure they're adequately assessed.

A level maths should be about methods for stem subjects in general like calculus as it is right now. I think the only change I'd make is possibly making the proof questions more difficult and less algorithmic - it feels like the way it is done right now can be learned, like proof by induction in further maths. Maybe they could have difficult proof questions at the back worth more marks for students aiming for an A*? To complement A level maths, I think Further maths should have more emphasis on proof writing and problem solving rather than being A level maths with more topics so university maths isn't much of a shock when the focus changes to proof writing.

I think that the vast majority of it is useful in everyday life even if you don't realise it. Some of it you might not really use but if you really stop and look then you will realise that you use it more than you realised.

There was once an attempt to make pi rational by legislation.

https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/805/did-a-state-legislature-once-pass-a-law-saying-pi-equals-3/

Much of what we learn in school is more about 'learning to learn', than about the specific details of what is learned.

Some great suggestions. Does anyone have some examples of proof questions that could be asked at GCSE level?

I use maths everyday - when I am out running, I estimate percentage of run completed to spur me on. I used trigonometry ( yes really) to estimate the height of a ladder required to reach the gutters on my roof. I always tot up value in supermarket - which are best buys. When travelling of course - conversions of currency and kilometres too miles. Could not function properly without maths

I would be scared if I really thought that such medical decisions were made by ministers. Jim Hacker comes to mind.

Yes there's a good video about that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFNjA9LOPsg