When am I gonna use this stuff?
By Murray Bourne, 03 Oct 2006
There should be a lot more of this kind of thing.
A programme from Minnesota in the US, the Regional Applied Math Project (RAMP) (article no longer available), gets math teachers to work in the "real world" for 40 hours and write up their observations on how mathematics is used in the workplace.
At last, some kind of context for the mathematics that is taught. If teachers don’t know what it is for, how can you expect students to know how to apply it? In one case, a teacher went to the taconite mine in Nashwauk and reported:
“I was just amazed with how much math was being applied at the mine,” he said. “It enlightened me as to the real-life applications of math.”
[Taconite is a low grade iron ore.]
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