Post 2 Professions and math

       Children always ask when are we going to use any of this math in real life? Most teachers ignore it, maybe because they don't have an anwser for their curious students. There are many ways teachers can choose to anwser this question for thier students. They could teach the children that the math work itself such as fractions or probablity may not be specifically used but the thinking principals behind it will be. Math is a critically thinking subject, in life we need to be problem solvers and therefore math can give us the background for this. A teacher could also approach this question from the students at a different angle. Starting off with when the students grow up they want to make lots of money. Than the teacher can ask how do they expect to manage this money? What if your spending $500 a week in grocery's but at the end of the month you don't have enough money to pay your heating bill? As adults we have to manage our money so we have enough for all of our bills. This takes a lot of addition, subtraction and even multiplication. If you have a weekly bill in order to find out how much money you will need for one month you must multiply the weekly bill by four weeks. Without the use of math many adults could be missing bills simply because they couldn't manage their money. They didn't have the important math skills that we as elementary students are learning now.

            Another way we can tell the students how they will use math in real life is by telling them that depending on their occupation as they become adults they may use a lot of the math. We can make a list of different jobs that require math so the students can visually see how important it is. We can even ask the students what they want to be when they grow up and relate each occupation to math skills. Children say things like; I am going to be a mechanic they dont use math, or I am going to be a sports broadcaster, they don't use math. But in actuality these students are incorrect. Almost every profession uses math skills or math thinking processes in some way. Some professions that use math could surprise your students and even yourself. One job using math is a car stereo installer, this falls under the category of a mechanic. When they are installing the stereo they must know things such as what are decibels, different size gauge wires, what size hole do you need to fit a 10in speaker in, and what size fuses do I need? All of these questions are answered by doing basic math skills. Another job that you use math in that could be surprising to students is a sports broadcaster. The broadcaster must figure out  batting averages, how many bases did the last player steal, what the score is and how much time is left in the game. A radio DJ uses math in his career also. Explain to your students that a radio DJ are the people they listen to on the radio probably everyday. They use math because they need to know things like how many 4 minute songs can they fit into a 30 minute music block and when is the next commercial. They need to know how many minutes until the next commercial so they know how long they need to talk for or if they have time for another song. These are a few professions that use math everyday that would surprise students. Other professions using math are pilots, engineer, architect, software engineer, computer programmer, astronaut, and the list goes on and on. This shows math is used in the real world, not only in your own personal life but in many different professions that could surprise students.
The websites I used in the articles http://weusemath.org/careers and www. stephencarr.com/mathjobs.html