ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 26, 1996 TAG: 9612260006
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG
SOURCE: SONJA BARISIC ASSOCIATED PRESS
Delice Williams signed up for Professor George Rublein's math class at the College of William and Mary doubting that she would ever enjoy a subject she had feared most of her life.
A few weeks into the semester, however, she realized she actually understood what Rublein was talking about. She was even having fun.
By changing the way math is taught, Rublein believes he can cure students' fear of math. Instead of giving students equations and telling them to plug in the numbers, he gives them problems using real data. The topic he chose was aviation.
``I want students to walk away and say, `I understood something about this physical phenomenon because I did some mathematics,''' said Rublein, chairman of the college's math department.
``I have this notion that the alternative is, they go away and say, `I have no clue why anybody does this stuff other than to amuse themselves in their offices.'''
The official title of the course is ``The Mathematics of Powered Flight.'' Rublein likes to call it ``Fear of Flying - By the Numbers.'' This is the third year the class is being offered.
Rublein created the course mainly for students who either don't like math or think they can't understand it, but have to take a math course as a graduation requirement.
For those reluctant students, making math interesting is a long shot, Rublein said. It's not enough to give them old-fashioned word problems, he said.
To illustrate his point, Rublein opens a high school algebra textbook and picks out a problem: how much will a camera priced at $128 cost during the fourth week of a sale if the price is reduced by 25 percent each succeeding week?
Such problems are artificial, Rublein said.
``They don't really tell anybody anything that's informative about what's going on in the real world and atypically do they use a calculation that someone in the business would use,'' he said.
He decided to find problems that people involved in a business actually would do. He chose the business of aviation, partly because it's mysterious.
``You go to the terminal and you get on this tube, and pretty soon the thing is up in the air,'' Rublein said. ``I want to explain to them what's going on.''
Rublein is not a pilot, so he had to study up on the subject himself before he could present it to his students.
He created a text that includes a fictional story line about two main characters who are traveling. Throughout the story are problems.
The course is not meant to be a coherent examination of the airplane business but instead a tool for getting comfortable with math. Rublein focuses on concepts the students learned in high school, such as algebra and trigonometry.
Students learn to calculate the flying distance between two cities, using latitude and longitude. They study wind and its effect on airport design and aircraft operation. They learn to read navigation maps. They examine lift, drag, buoyancy and air pressure.
Rublein also brings a flight simulator computer program to class to help students visualize their problems.
Instead of just filling in formulas, the students have to do math much the way pilots do.
For example, the wind blowing across a runway basically is the leg of a right triangle. The harder the wind is blowing, the more difficult it will be to land.
``Instead of saying, `figure out the leg of the triangle,' you figure out, `can he land?''' said Williams, 21, a senior English major from Rockville, Md. ``Since the life of the pilot depends on whether he can land, you can see why this [mathematical procedure] makes sense.''
``It's a more attractive way of doing math because it's so concrete, because it's grounded in real phenomena,'' she said. ``It canceled my fear of math.''
LENGTH: Medium: 79 linesby CNB