I imagine that my peers, who once could do the calculations, would no
longer be able to do them as adults. I rather suspect that many of my
current colleagues--by their own admission--couldn't do it. My point was
that at the time we were in school, we could to enough arithmetic to help
us learn the next level of math. No one continues to be good at math
that is not used.
John M. Flanigan <johnf@hawaii.edu> The equation is the final arbiter.
Assistant Professor, Mathematics --Werner Heisenberg
Kapi'olani Community College The scoreboard is the final arbiter.
4303 Diamond Head Road --Bill Walton
Honolulu HI 96816 History is the final arbiter.
(808) 734-9371 --Edward Gibbon
On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Kathy Burgis wrote:
> John,
>
> I don't know about your peers, but the last time a large-scale national
> assessment was made of adult mathematical knowledge (the N.A.E.P. data,
> available from ERIC and other sources), it generally supported Jeff's
> contention. The N.A.E.P. test was given to a cross-section of adults of
> various ages. Most adults, who were educated in the golden pre-calculator
> age, did not have mastery of fraction, decimal, and percent computations,
> when the computations were embedded in a context, such as computing the
> simple interest paid on a loan.
>
> >You make good points, and I agree with most. (Except that at least among
> >my peers a generation ago--no, make that two generations ago--nearly
> >everyone would have been able to do the 25% thing pretty routinely).
>
> Kathy Burgis
> Dept. of Mathematics
> Aquinas College
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