Monday, February 15, 2010

Practical math education

Can not agree more with the TED presentation from Arthur Benjamin (below). Essentially he argues that proficiency in statistics, probability, and meaning of data(sets) should be the pinnacle of high school math education.

I never used differential equations in professional life, yet standard deviations needed monthly. Even when it comes for common knowledge meaning of data is a more common necessity than analytics.

Another case in point - Nancy Etcoff stated on the 45th second of her TED talk that there are "Over 120 million prescriptions for antidepressants". Well, considering that US population is approaching 309 Million at the time of this writing, it is hard to make sense of Ms. Etcoff's number of prescriptions without further context if you are alert about meaningful data.

Here is the Athur's presentation: