Mythic Logos

So last night, I ended the spring semester teaching. Two of my four students remarked as they were leaving, “This was a great semester” which is nice to hear.

The last student to leave was the one on my side of the video camera. So we sat and talked for awhile. He loved the guesstimation stuff in the course, which is something that I love too. I feel like that is something that is just so incredibly useful everywhere. The ability to understand the magnitude of a problem or issue is amazing.

Example: How much money does the Baltimore City School System cost per year? My wife and I talked about this one morning as she teaches for that system. We estimated about 1 billion dollars; I think we computed it to 1.2 billion and rounded down. We looked online and got the budget from 2007-2008 and it was 1.178 billion dollars. Not too shabby. I put the question on the last exam.

Anyway, this fellow tells me that he has already used what he has learned on his job. Largely about how he views things. And the guesstimation. Stuff is making sense to him that did not use to make sense. At the same time, he was joking about “when was the last time derivatives were ever used on the job” to his fellow workers. Fair enough. And I do not pretend that post-arithmetic is useful on the job. I like to think of it as a mindset, not a toolkit.

I remarked to the fellow that he does not need to do derivatives because someone else did that stuff. He does environmental policy compliance stuff. So I remarked that I would hope science was in there somewhere. And he said, yes, but that it had all been worked out already. They have regulations that say that parts per million of emissions of something should not be more than such and such when such and such is being produced. And so he just checks the numbers. He does not set the thresholds which is where the science and math is.

And I said that it might even be better that he does not know the stuff. And he replied with the fact that sometimes some stuff gets kicked out to engineers that do know this stuff. And they then start getting aggravated as to why the regulations are such and such instead of so and so. He just measures and gets on with things. He actually quipped that someone did the math and converted it into a series of extremely legalistic terms and writings that he needs to interpret. I thought that was funny to convert math/science into legalese. Still complicated, just different. Prevents the engineers from getting involved, I suppose.

Sort of like when I do taxes. I keep looking for the formula, the overall picture. Instead, I get a lot of “put this in line 23. take 20 and add it to line 23 to put in line 24.” Percentages, and if-thens, and all the rest are written abstrusely to me in this step procedure. Give me an equation, please! (sort of like GUIs are great and all, but give me command lines and APIs when I need to do some real work)

But he was very happy with the course and learned a lot. He thanked me for understanding that the course was set at a level of overview, not detailed mastery. Though I do think they all learned a great deal. But only time and other courses will tell.

Then I read What is Mathematics For? today and it was right on. So many people talk about putting applications in mathematics and the usefulness of algebra or what-not on the job. This fellow, Underwood Dudley, patron skeptic of math cranks, argues that few use algebra or post-arithmetic mathematics. Everything has already been done for the vast majority of employees. He even gave an example as to when he had to compute a rate that was not in the rate books and his boss noted of his work “that is not how we do it”; and so he redid it using the long way, presumably to the same answer.

It is a great article and should be read. The main conclusion is that we teach mathematics for the ability to reason. And that is pure beauty. I like that reason and believe in it. Though I do think for useful math stuff, guesstimation should be taught, over and over again (still arithmetic, though). And learning about the lies told by pictures and data. Very important.

Final paragraph of the article; I love the steward bit:

What mathematics education is for is not for jobs. It is to teach the race to reason. It does not, heaven knows, always succeed, but it is the best method that we have. It is not the only road to the goal, but there is none better. Furthermore, it is worth teaching. Were I given to hyperbole I would say that mathematics is the most glorious creation of the human intellect, but I am not given to hyperbole so I will not say that. However, when I am before a bar of judgment, heavenly or otherwise, and asked to justify my life, I will draw myself up proudly and say, “I was one of the stewards of mathematics, and it came to no harm in my care.” I will not say, “I helped people get jobs.”