 Hello. One of your first assignments this semester to gain an understanding of the rationale for a course called Quantitative Literacy and to provide some background information for it is to read an article entitled, The Case for Quantitative Literacy. Since this is a literacy course, we're going to be doing a little bit of reading and a little bit of writing. The emphasis of this course is infusing number and numeracy and data into the context, not just of this course, but in your life and other classes that you are taking. So it's entirely reasonable to ask you to read an article about quantitative literacy. This article has some research jargon in it, maybe some education type language. I want you to challenge yourself to be persistent to read this article because it has a lot of really good information in it. There's a link provided to you for finding this article with this PowerPoint. When you get to places that may be unfamiliar to you or not very interesting to you, try to persist, read through it, don't give up the whole article because you ran into a bump. Just move through it and then find something that's interesting for you. The purpose of this PowerPoint is to sort of outline this article so that you can know what to expect as you read. On the first couple of pages of the article is an introduction about what quantitative literacy is. In the 20th century, really we became so immersed in data with new technology. It's not new to us now, but it was new in the 20th century. We had access to a lot of data and information that used to have to go to the library maybe to look up. Just think about if you wanted to know something, you'll just Google it now. Huge amounts of data available to you literally at your fingertips. Quantitative literacy really is about what to do with all of that information and make informed decisions given that information. It's not about just the chalk and the symbols and the formulas and memorizing formulas. That's traditional mathematics. We need traditional mathematics and people who are very good with symbol manipulation and procedures and algorithms. That's not really what this course is about though. Quantitative literacy is important to everybody and in the introduction you'll find examples of how farmers and nurses and social scientists, etc. How they use quantitative literacy. If you don't find yourself in that list, I will challenge you that even just in managing your money, it's not about balancing a checkbook anymore. It's about managing money. That has even become an individual and complex notion. So really try to appreciate quantitative literacy as something that you can integrate into your daily life. Other motivation for quantitative literacy is that with assessments such as the NAPE or National Assessment of Educational Progress, when we have had disconcerting reports that maybe American schools aren't moving at the same rate as we would hope globally, the answer to that has been sometimes, hey, put more mathematics in the high schools. Make it more rigorous. Let's condense everything and move mathematics courses down and that's not necessarily the right answer for everyone. Numeracy is the key. It's not necessarily calculus. Again, calculus is very important and very interesting, but not everybody wants to excel in calculus. Not everyone is interested in calculus. I hope everyone will find quantitative literacy interesting and relevant and accessible and that you will really dive into embracing mathematics and numeracy in your life. A little bit more history about quantitative literacy that you'll find on pages two through four. Again, in the 20th century, terms like math anxiety and math panic became realized. These were real terms. You know, people used to sit in math class and maybe feel pressure or dumb or sweaty palms because they're in math class and this is a real thing and there has been research and validation provided for these disconcerting conditions. In mathematics, in quantitative literacy, we don't have to feel anxious. We already know the mathematics and their arithmetic needed to move forward in this course. This course is about how am I going to use the mathematics I've already learned. On pages four through six, you'll find some topics about a little more background to quantitative literacy. There is some statistical reasoning in quantitative literacy, but it's not all just about statistics. Statistics is really about taking real data and making predictions and making decisions based on data that we have to look at. Quantitative literacy uses real data, of course, but it's more of a habit of mind in approaching problems. I hope that this course, if you do your job and I do my job, that will change the way that you think. Every time you see number or quantity in some advertisement, on Facebook, in the media, in a book you're reading, in your history class, that your mind will automatically start thinking quantitatively and does this make sense? And how big is that and is that a big number and does it matter and what does it mean to me? That's a habit of mind. There are four definitions that we're going to work with for this particular article from quantitative literacy. They kind of progress from 30 or so years ago to more current definitions. You can see this one is kind of being at home with number and ability. Being at home with numbers and an ability to use mathematical skills in everyday life. The next one even uses, for example, balancing a checkbook as an everyday task. Well, this was 1993. Money management is something we're more interested in today instead of balancing a checkbook. I am very good at adding and subtracting numbers, which is what I need to do to balance my checkbook, but I never balance my checkbook. I've got it all online. The bank does it for me. So a bigger question is what am I going to do with this money? How do I have enough money left? When I charge something, what is that doing to my credit? What is that doing to my interest rate? How does my credit impact my power bill? And it does. And these are important things to know about money management, which we're going to learn in this course, not just about keeping up with your checks. Now we're getting to more recent definitions and aggregate of skills, knowledge, and beliefs and dispositions. There's that word habits of mind again. Fourth definition, an individual's capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world to make well-founded mathematical judgments and to engage in mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that individual's current and future life as a constructive, concerned, reflective citizen. This really is about mathematics and democracy, which is why this article is found in that context. Here are some elements of quantitative literacy found on pages 8 and 9. I've listed the elements here. I encourage you to read the definitions. There are bullet points. These are...there's no point really in me reading them to you, but you can go and look for yourself and find these elements of quantitative literacy. It's more than algebra. And again, expressions of quantitative literacy on pages 9 through 15. Here you'll find more bullet-pointed examples of how we use quantitative literacy in citizenship. Virtually every major public issue, health care, social programs, voting, voting political boundaries, school boundaries, all of these topics necessitate being able to reason quantitatively. How about the role of mathematics in human culture? I really hope that you will help me change the idea that it's okay to say, I don't do math. Let's don't do that anymore. It's important that we are equipped citizens and that we are comfortable with the mathematics and the number in our lives. Education, every profession uses some sort of quantitative reasoning, every profession. Personal finance we've mentioned. Personal health. Patients become partners with their doctor. No longer does the doctor just write a prescription and say, here you should take this. A patient wants to know, well, what are my numbers? What's the range of numbers? What's the accepted number for this particular thyroid hormone? What are some other doctors saying? This takes quantitative reasoning, management of any kind, work. Finally, there's a list of skills necessary for quantitative literacy. Most of the skills, for example, the arithmetic skills, it looks like arithmetic, but used as a pronoun, we say arithmetic skills, you already have. This is about using the mathematics you already know to think deeply about topics in your life. Quantitative literacy is a little bit different math course because as we see here, there's no special content of its own. Again, you probably already know all of the mathematics you need. It's just how are we going to arrange it? How are we going to incorporate it? Which mathematical skill do I need to make which determination, which is appropriate for this decision? For instance, in algebra class, we talk about, hey, how do you find the slope between these two points? How do you find the slope of a line? What's the formula for that? Be sure you don't get confused between the x's and the y's. All of those things are really important. In this class, we don't just talk about finding slope for random reasons. We say, what does that slope mean in this context? Like, for instance, if we're looking at the price of gas over time, what's that rate of change? There's a reason why we want to find the slope. So finally, you will find these directions for after you read the article yourself. I've given you some outline and hopefully some motivation for reading. This is your assignment. The article is available with this PowerPoint. You are to write a three to four hundred word essay responding to one of these questions. Your essay must demonstrate that you have read the article. I've outlined it for you, but that does not substitute reading the article. Please be sure, as part of your grade, you know that you will be evaluated on submitting your article on time, that your response clearly reflects you've read the article, and that your grammar is correct. We have assistance for helping you with your writing in the learning center. If you don't have a learning center at your campus, ask someone to proofread your paper for you. Don't ever turn in an essay that has not been proofread for grammatical mistakes and typos and so forth. Look forward to reading your reflection on the article, a case for quantitative literacy.