Republic of the Philippines

Sorsogon State University

Technology Department
Sorsogon City Campus
Sorsogon City

IMPROVING STUDENTS USE

OF BASIC MATH SKILLS

By;

Biboy Janer Delloson

 Abstract

Research provides students with an understanding of what it means to do

mathematics and of mathematics as a living, growing field. Writing mathematics and
problem-solving become central to student’s learning.

Students develop mastery of mathematics topics. Philosopher and educator John

Dewey claimed that we don’t learn the basics by studying the basics but by engaging in
rich activities which require them. Research experiences require the repeated
application of technical skills in the service of looking for patterns and testing
conjectures (e.g., factoring and graphing polynomials for the Patterns in Polynomials
project). It is this repetition, in the context of motivating and meaningful problems, that
leads to greater understanding and retention of mathematics skills. During an
investigation, students make connections between ideas that further enhance retention.

Students develop their own mathematical aesthetic as they practice making choices
about which aspects of a problem to investigate.

Students develop both confidence as mathematical thinkers and enthusiasm to

do more mathematics. The creativity, problem-solving, surprises, and accomplishments
that are part of research help to answer students’ questions about the value of studying
mathematics. They are studying new methods so that they can answer their own
questions. They are learning in order to do work that they care about at that moment
(and not for a test or some far-off future task).

Doing research is challenging and can be frustrating. Students’ commitment to

persistence and tolerance for frustration grow as they are supported, encouraged, and
given repeated opportunity to think about and succeed with problems over days and
weeks.

Students learn to distinguish between different levels of evidence and to be skeptical in

the face of anecdotal evidence. The habit of looking for counterexamples to claims is a
core skill for critical thinkers in all aspects of life.
 Introduction

Math offers more opportunities beyond grade school, middle school and high
school. Its applications to real-life scenarios are vast. Though many students sit in math
class wondering when they’ll ever use these things they’re learning, we know there are
many times their math skills will be needed in adulthood. Basic math is a necessity, but
even abstract math can help hone critical thinking skills — even if your child chooses
not to pursue a STEM-style career. Math can help them succeed professionally,
emotionally and cognitively. Here’s why. Solving math problems and improving our math
skills gives our brain a good workout. And it improves our cognitive skills over time.
Many studies have shown that routinely practicing math keeps our brain healthy and
functioning well. classic math problems like Johnny bringing home 42 watermelons and
returning 13 of them can just seem a silly exercise. But all those math word problems
our children solve really do improve their problem solving skills. Word problems teach
kids how to pull out the important information and then manipulate it to find a solution. A
strong understanding of math concepts means more than just number sense. It helps us
see the pathways to a solution. Equations and word problems need to be examined
before determining the best method for solving them. And in many cases, there’s more
than one way to get to the right answer. This is because math problems often require us
to bend our thinking and approach problems in more than one way. The first process we
try might not work. We need flexibility and creativity to think of new pathways to the
solution. And just like anything else, this way of thinking is strengthened with practice.
Basic math skills are those that involve making calculations of amounts, sizes or other
measurements. Core concepts like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division
provide a foundation for learning and using more advanced math concepts. Being
proficient in basic math skills will help you both in the workplace and your daily life.
Though they can’t put a name to it, almost everyone has had some experience with
Euclidean geometry. Many of us first encountered it in elementary school, and our
ongoing interactions with it vary in depth. It’s found in solving for the hypotenuse of a
triangle or the circumference of a circle. It’s found in folding a paper into parallel lines
and cutting a cake into equal portions. And according to Matt Wickman’s new book,
Literature After Euclid, it’s found in the humanities.

Until the 18th and 19th centuries, universities traditionally considered

mathematics as a part of the humanities, especially as a branch of philosophical
thought. Wickman explains, “The idea was that geometry, Euclidean geometry, allowed
the mind to create very cogent, rational pictures of the world. Of how the mind operates
in arriving at conclusions. Of how we connect what we think to the world as it appears to
us. So mathematics was a way to connect mind and world.”

However, during the 18th and 19th centuries, Euclidean geometry began to
dwindle in prominence. The period, termed the “Late Euclidean” by Wickman, was
tumultuous in three respects. Intellectually, scholars began to realize the limitations of
Euclidean geometry. For example, the image of parallel lines as never intersecting
became problematic as new concepts emerged of space as curved. Though these
theories would not be fully fleshed out until the 20th century and Einstein’s theories of
relativity, this period saw the beginning of questions that challenged Euclidean
sovereignty in the sciences.

These mathematical tensions had political repercussions. As the rest of Europe

began to search for non-Euclidean solutions, Britain held out as an adherent of the
traditional mathematics. Scotland was especially loyal; now citizens of the recently-
formed Kingdom of Great Britain, Scottish universities were eager to prove their status.
Wickman explains, “The universities became defenders of Isaac Newton, defending a
certain kind of mathematics at a moment when it was being attacked on the continent.”

The intellectual and political aspects of the period both had an effect on the era’s
literary sphere, which the majority of Wickman’s book addresses. Even though very few
writers of the time studied it or even consciously referred to it, geometry had become
influential enough that they had had casual, if unconscious, contact with it. “Geometry,”
he writes in the book’s introduction, “was not only a rigorous discipline but also a
cultural medium, a trope.”
 Almost instinctively, mathematics functioned as a set of literary tools in the
novels, poetry and other writing of the time. In Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering, a
character stands aboard a ship, observing the coastline while memories begin to surge
back to him. The moment is a reproduction of the coastal surveillance projects of the
mid-18th century: just as surveyors worked to accurately remap the British coastline by
measuring the curves of the shore, the character remapped his history by observing the
geography.

Writers were just as sensitive to the changes taking place during the Late-
Euclidean era. One of the greatest philosophical puzzles of the time were irrational
numbers: numbers that, like pi, cannot be written as fractions and, when written as
decimals, neither end nor repeat. These numbers were therefore difficult for
philosophers to relate to the real world.

The poet Robert Burns in particular was fascinated by this concept and applied
irrationality to human beings. “Human beings who desire each other and want better
lives for themselves are not driven by things that are rational,” Wickman explains. “We
ourselves are irrational; therefore we question our own existence on that basis in the
same way that mathematicians question the existence of irrational numbers in the real
world.”

Just as Burns used his poetry to tease out the answers of irrationality, Wickman
believes that literature at large intervenes in intellectual questions. “These questions
can be human questions about the meaning of life, meaning of relationships, meaning
of history,” he says. “But they can also be questions about the meaning of ideas, the
meaning of what irrational numbers mean. Or the meaning of perspective.” And by
reading, we are able to take part in that discussion. “Literature is a means for us to
intervene in the questions of intellectual history.”

The great increase in scientific and mathematical activity that began to flourish in
the sixteenth century led to the formation of groups of persons who met, sometimes
regularly, for discussion and an exchange of ideas. Some of these groups later
crystallized into what became academies, the first of which seems to have been
established in Naples around 1560 [E;p.390] [St;p.101]. The Accademia dei Lincei
(Academy of the Lynx-like) was founded in 1603 and Galileo became a member in
1611. According to Kline [K;p.396], in France, Desargues, Descartes, Fermat, and
Pascal, among others, met privately under the leadership of Mersenne from 1630, and
corresponded widely (see also [St;p.100 ff.]). This informal group led to the chartering of
the Academie Royale des Sciences in 1616 by Louis XIV (and the Acad ´ emie des ´
Sciences in 1666). Similarly, an English group led by John Wallis began to hold
meetings in 1645 in Gresham College, London. This group was given a charter by
Charles II in 1662 and adopted the name of the Royal Society of London for the
Promotion of Natural Knowledge; Wallis was a charter member. The Berlin Academy of
Sciences was founded in 1700 with Leibniz as its first president. In Russia, Peter the
Great founded the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in 1724. These academies
were very important for the development of science and, in particular, of mathematics;
indeed, many of the most important mathematicians of the eighteenth century were
supported by these academies and never had a university position.

The academies promoted the exchange of ideas both by facilitating the direct
contact of the leading scientists and also by the publications that the academies soon
started. While there were various reasons for the support of the academies by the
rulers, it is clear that one reason was that the monarchs saw the importance of the
emerging science and technology for the civil and military needs of their realms, and
realized that mathematics was essential for this scientific development.

It may come as a surprise to the modern scientist to realize that the universities
of the time played little role in the scientific development that was taking place. Instead,
with a few isolated exceptions, the universities, still under the dead hand of the church,
remained conservative centers of scholasticism and often taught only a meager amount
of mathematics. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the universities
began to become centers of research [K;pp.397– 398][St;p.101]. It is difficult to say
where and when the first (modern style) mathematical society was founded, but the
oldest one still in existence is the Mathematische Gesellschaft in Hamburg. It was
founded in 1690 (and so is celebrating its tercentenary this year!) as the
Kunstrechnungsliebende Societat, and has long published a journal. Another early one
is the Spi- ¨ talfields Mathematical Society, which lasted from 1717 to 1846, initially
meeting in a pub in east London; it was ultimately absorbed into the Royal Astronomical
Society in 1846. (See also [M;p.44 fn.] and especially [Cs] for an entertaining account,
where it is indicated that there were at least three other “mathematical societies” in
London during the early eighteenth century.)

The day of the amateurs passed, and the professionals began to take over with
the formation of the national mathematical societies. The first such society is the
Wiskundig Genootschap, founded in Amsterdam in 1778, but most national societies
were founded considerably later: the Moscow Mathematical Society in 1864, the London
Mathematical Society in 1865, the Societ´ e Math ´ ematique de France in 1872, the
Mathematical Society of Japan in 1877, The Ed- ´ inburgh Mathematical Society in
1883, the Circolo Matematico di Palermo in 1884, the New York Mathematical Society
(later the American Mathematical Society) in 1888 and the Deutsche Mathematiker-
Vereinigung in 1890. Most of these societies commenced the publication of a
mathematical journal soon after their foundation and many of these journals have
played, and still play, an important role in mathematical communication.

According to Muller [M ¨ u], before 1700 there were only 17 journals publishing
articles with ¨ mathematical content, during the eighteenth century there were 210 new
journals with mathematical articles, and during the nineteenth century there were
another 950 new journals. (In this reckoning a continuation of a journal under a different
title is considered as a “new” journal.) However, before 1900 about half of these journals
had ceased publication or changed titles, so that in 1900 there were about 600 existing
journals containing some mathematical articles.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, mathematics had become specialized to

the extent and the number of journals so large that it was not only impossible for one
person to master it in its entirety, but even difficult for one to keep fully apprised of the
developments in his or her area. It was clear that there was a need for a more
systematic method of communication between mathematical researchers, so the
bibliographic (or “secondary”) journal was born.
Methods