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Mathematics and Life 55 10 ways to see you are good at maths

 10 ways to see you are good at maths


Background


Do you know you are good at Maths ?


As it happens with all activities, there is great confusion, debate, as to how to know if you are good at Maths ?


There are parents, children, teachers, marketities,  agencies who believe and promote that being fast at calculations, orally, is the sole criteria of your being good at maths. There are big, commercially successful, models going and growing around the globe who buy, sale this core thought. Countless children feel guilty of not being able to find, say 674 x  4387 in a fraction of a minute if not seconds thinking. 


At Beyond Abacus we summarily reject this line of thinking and strongly believe in a much more scientific, inclusive, definition of mathematics as a science of understandings , recognising, appreciating and creating patterns in daily life, business, sciences


Based on this definition, I have identified many activities where knowingly or unknowingly, we use mathematical concepts. If we involve kids in these activities, their mathematical thinking will develop 


  1. Budget making is one of the most useful activities we do on at least a monthly basis. To prepare the budget we use the core mathematical skills of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. calculation of percentage. So,if you make a budget and it works, you have mathematical skills, even if you may not be good at exams. 

  2. Construction Be it just extending a room, making additional toilet or making an entire new house, construction activity assumes knowing good core mathematical skills like budgeting, comparing rates, bargaining, geometry, symmetry.

  3. Exercise training this another area where we use lot mathematical concepts like weight calculation, diet planning, time counting, estimating and see on.

  4. Interior designing requires good knowledge of core mathematical concepts like judgement of space, ratio, proportion,symmetry

  5. Fashion designing too is like interior designing, using same concepts of ratio, proportion, symmetry, estimation, visualisation, mixing colors

  6. Shopping at mall if done without just trying to impress someone, shopping at malls or  grocery stores requires real, mathematical sejudge offers and to avoid impulsive buying.

  7. Cooking and baking Although most ladies and girls do not know it, when they increase the tea for suddenly arrived guests or add salt to reduce the chilli impact, they are using the concept of ration proportion. In earlier times, even entire wedding food was planned, cooked by the family ladies using their judgement measures. 

  8. Sports also requires a lot of planning, judgemental based on data. Martina Navratilova, the legendary women's tennis player was one of the women athletes working on programmed diet schedule. The sport coaches have to watch, compare, scores, and develop judgement through cognitive, logical reasoning. 

  9. Management of time Working across different time zones is so common these days. We have countries like the US having 5 time zones within a country. Australia has a 3 hour difference between Perth and Sydney. Arranging a common meeting time requires good knowledge of time sense. Likewise, while estimating Project timeline deadlines, lot of mathematics is involved. 

  10. Driving skills are the ultimate and tests of judgement of speed, turning space, speed of the opposite vehicle, space to turn, strength of breaks, finding the average of the vehicle. 


Thus we see involuntarily we are doing a lot of maths. And guess what, on the whole do it quite well too. 


See these traits in your kids and motivate them to develop mathematical thinking than just scores in class tests and quizzes. 


Dr Prakash Moghe

Beyond Abacus

8085906062, 7489447223

drpnmoghe@gmai.com

Comments

  1. Snehal PrabhuneMarch 11, 2021 at 8:36 AM

    Wow, that's so prominent, certainly maths is in our lives but till now we failed to acknowledge that

    ReplyDelete

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