Math in our Life

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One of the most common discussion topics related to teaching & learning of Math is “relevance of Math” to life outside school. Explaining the relevance of Math which students are learning is seen as one of the main aspects of motivating them to learn the subject. So, in this section, we will deal with several aspects of life where math can be used to understand what exactly is happening.

A Caveat

The above approach also has inherent limitations. Most of the applications of Math in life, which would be understandable to students, would be from the primary (K – 8) school syllabus. Applications related to the high school syllabi cannot be easily understood by students. Hence it would be better if, in addition to these applications, teachers continuously emphasize that the real purpose of learning math is to develop logical and structured thinking skills. Teachers should also inform students that most of the calculations involved in these applications have been incorporated into software and hence in real-life paper and pencil calculations are rarely performed. We will see more about developing thinking skills in the section on Math and Development of Logic.

Some Typical Daily Life Aspects

The school math syllabus typically deals with the math involved in following aspects of life

 Income, Expense & Loan or Savings Savings, Bank, Interest, Loans Math with the Clock Work, Time & Wages Sale, Purchase, Price, Discount, Profit & Loss Distance, Speed & Time Mensuration  Presenting & Interpreting Data</li> Estimation</li> Digital Technology</li> </ol>

We can broadly classify the first 4 activities into commercial activities that involve the use of money. They also need an understanding of rudimentary aspects of economics and accounting. They also need an understanding of percentages which are another way of expressing decimal fractions. The fifth & sixth could be called scientific activities which involves understanding of basic physics of movement & rudiments of geometry & measurement. The seventh is a universally needed skill. In any discipline, a lot of data needs to be analysed and interpreted. The math involved in all the above is actually the 4 basic arithmetic operations and is not very difficult to do. The real difficulty lies elsewhere in the fact that students in Primary school have not had direct experiences of many of the above situations. Most of their experiences are indirect, mostly by listening to conversations and visits to banks or markets. Hence before dealing with the math, students need to be familiarized with the role of these activities in life.

These experiences have to be presented to students in simple ways & language which they can understand. One of the best ways to understand these aspects would be through “simulations” and “role-play”. These experiences also have a specialized vocabulary which needs to be learnt. Let us first see some of the ideas and vocabulary associated with these activities.

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