Applied Mathematics

Let us look more closely at the recommendation by the Technical Panel on General Education (TPGE) of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) that “the Revised General Education Curriculum (RGEC) should include five (5) required Core Courses from the areas of Applied Mathematics, Contemporary History, Creative Communication, Environmental Science, and Ethics.”

Each of these courses, says the TPGE, “should be multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary, with emphasis on developing the critical and creative capabilities of students.”

Take Applied Mathematics. This course is not envisioned to repeat the Algebra, Calculus, or Statistics courses slated to be taught in high school. Instead, the college-level course should apply what students have learned in high school to the real-life situations that they will encounter.

There are at least two such situations: the situation of university life and the situation of a new college graduate just starting out as an entrepreneur or as an employee in a corporation.

To succeed in their major courses in college, even if their courses are not heavily quantitative (such as Literature or Theology), students should at least know how science is intimately related to mathematics. There is science in every discipline (yes, even in Literature and Theology), and the role of mathematics is crucial to the advancement of science.

For example, in literary studies, it is important to know who exactly wrote a particular literary text. In the past, when intellectual property was not considered important, many writers did not sign their works. It is the job of the literary scholar to find out who wrote these works. One way is through stylistics, which involves counting (with the aid of a computer) the words, turns of phrases, metaphors, and so on that are identified with certain writers. Another way, if the manuscript is extant, is carbon dating, which is also a scientific tool involving mathematics.

Similarly, in theology or religious studies, science has played a crucial role in checking the authenticity of documents purportedly written during the time of Jesus of Nazareth. Although faith is to biblical scholars what rice is to Filipinos, to simply accept on faith the verdict of scientists, without understanding the science and mathematics involved, is to be the blind leading the blind. Faith is more secure if founded on reason and scientific evidence.

When students graduate from college, they have to face the problems of the “real world.” Take climate change. When they have to make a decision about which equipment to purchase or whether to turn off the airconditioners when leaving the office for lunch, they should know exactly what this sentence means (taken from Wikipedia): “The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere is approximately 390 ppm (parts per million) by volume as of 2010 and rose by 1.9 ppm/yr during 2000-2009.” If students do not learn how climate change affects everyday life in an office, they will be part of the problem rather than the solution.

When it is time for them to vote (and they do this even in college), students have to understand what the survey companies mean when they say that their polls have a margin of error of plus or minus six percent or that their sample was only 2,400 voters out of several millions. Voting for a particular candidate because that candidate will win is a terrible reason for voting, but even worse than that is thinking that a candidate necessarily will win if the polls say so. The worst is accepting or questioning the results of a poll without knowing what statistical method was used.

The word “Applied Mathematics” should not justify mathematics teachers focusing only on what they understand by the term (usually, differential equations, applied probability, computational mathematics, and other purely mathematical fields). To ensure that the course is not taught as a pure mathematics course, but as something that can be useful to all students regardless of major, some Higher Education Institutions (HEI) might start experimenting with non-math majors as teachers (for example, an industrial engineer, an economist, a literary critic with a strong interest in stylistics, a political scientist with experience in pre-election polls, a medical doctor, even a violinist or a composer).

In fact, the TPGE has crafted a provision encouraging such experimentation: “Autonomous and deregulated HEIs have to maintain the minimum number of General Education (GE) units and do not have to offer the specified Core Courses, but are encouraged to experiment and innovate within this constraint. Such HEIs are urged to share their best practices with other HEIs, in order to ensure that GE in the country continues to grow and change with the times.” (To be continued)

TEACHING TIP OF THE WEEK: Try a group quiz. Divide the class into groups. Then pick one of the group members at random; pick a different student every time you use this technique. Only that student takes the quiz. His or her grade becomes the grade for everybody in the group. Everybody will soon be tutoring everybody else.

Here is how Maryellen Weimer, in an article published in Faculty Focus, describes the technique: “You can use quiz groups (I’d assemble them with a range of abilities). Every group member is assigned a color and on quiz dates, a color is selected. That student takes the quiz and everyone in the group (present that day in class) gets that grade.”