Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203130290
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: TEMPE, ARIZ. LENGTH: Medium
Arizona State University Professor John McDonald had some prophetic advice for his daughter. Take all the math courses you can in high school, he advised.
The advice paid off. After she enrolled in college, McDonald's daughter switched her career plans and decided to major in chemical engineering.
"She had the mathematical background to enter a scientific career," said McDonald, who teaches mathematics. "High school students often don't know what they want to do later in life. Without a mathematical background, students are eliminating themselves from a lot of careers. Mathematics is growing in importance."
Some of the better paying jobs needing a math background include computer programming, computer systems analysis, statistics, engineering, medicine, physics, operations research, chemistry, insurance, banking and business.
Mathematics is necessary for such Wall Street careers as foreign exchange specialist, option trader and financial analysis.
Economics is becoming laden with mathematics. Historians, lawyers and political scientists need to understand numbers.
Women and members of ethnic minority groups - black, Hispanic and native American - are disproportionately affected by poor math education, which prevents them from entering scientific and professional careers, according to a report issued by the National Research Council, a private group that is the research arm of the National Academy of Science.
"In my opinion, some of the blocks to dealing comfortably with numbers and probabilities are due to quite natural psychological responses to uncertainty, to coincidence, on how a problem is framed," wrote John Paulos, in his best-selling book "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" (Vantage Books). "Others can be attributed to anxiety or to romantic misconceptions about the nature and importance of mathematics."
"We are at risk of becoming a divided nation in which knowledge of mathematics supports a productive, technologically powerful elite," the report says, while a dependent, semiliterate majority are disenfranchised, lacking political power and economic clout.
To deal with the problem, the National Research Council has established the Committee on the Mathematical Sciences in the Year 2000 to assess the current state of mathematics education, identify problems and recommend action.
"It is hoped that this analysis by the committee will lead to a national agenda for renewal and revitalization of the mathematical sciences and to a strategy for implementation that will stimulate all sectors of our society into action," said William Kirwan, chairman of the Committee on the Mathematical Sciences.
by CNB