The Secret Social Life of Math and Science

OCSS Annual ConferenceOctober 1, 2012

Alicia R. Crowe

How we understand numeric and

scientific information & how it is

being used influences how we make

decisions on issues that impact the

quality of life of ourselves and others

in our society

Understanding economic data Making decisions about what to do

buy a house, sell your house, take out a loan

Asking questions when encountering dataIs this interest rate appropriate or is this predatory lending? Does the interest rate being lowered mean anything for my daily life?

Examples

Examples

Understanding scientific medical information

Making decisions about whether the risk in taking a drug or a undergoing a new procedure is too great to proceed

Making decisions about what types of food to eat

Examples

Understanding scientific medical information

Making decisions about whether or not to support a ban on pesticides

Should we limit fossil fuel use now?

Is this study trustworthy?

Understanding polling data

Asking critical questions about the way the poll was administered, who was sampled, and how the sampling occurred

So you can determine how much to base your judgments on the poll.

Examples

Basically, certain aspects of mathematics and science and

mathematical and scientific ways of thinking are fundamental to understanding social studies

concepts and becoming active members of society.

So what can you do?

• Start making science and mathematics a part of the class in many ways

• But not just a sprinkle on top

A Quick Activity

Explore current news

Look for instances where mathematical or scientific understandings could influence how you understand a current item in society

Bringing the science into focus

Mention the science connections more often

Point out relationships among science, technology and society in what you already do

Ask questions that help students see the connections between the science and the society

Bringing the science into focus

7th grade ancient civilizations and scienceSaltArmor and weapons The Silk Road and the movement of ideas (scientific and mathematical not just religion, language and culture)What are some relationships between disease spread and what happens to societies?

raw numeric data or numeric information in context;

percentages in context;

the meaning of average;

the ability to interpret and question graphs and charts.

Understanding data is another place to start

How to begin

Highlight the differences among numbers students read or numbers you present

Ask questions that help students to see the raw number in a larger context, and

Point out relationships between raw numbers and percentages when you use them or they are in the readings.

Imagine this…

• You’ve planned this great issues based week.

• “Population Growth: Should we be concerned?”

• Students explore some data and find that population growth has decreased over the last 40 years going from about 2% per year in 1960 to 1.5% in 1990 to an estimated 1% in 2015.

You overhear this conversation…

• “Well 2% to 1.5% to 1% sounds like it is better to me.

• “No way, just because the percentage is going down doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care.”

• So our social studies question could be what they are talking about, but could it be a mathematical misunderstanding.

Add some information to the conversation from the beginning

Currently the world has ~ 6,973,738,433 people (yes that’s billions)

1% of that ~ 69,737,384 Yes that’s 69.7 million A little over 6 Ohios

Now, they can approach “if it is a problem” with an accurate sense of how big 1% is.

Example

As a beginning activity early in the year, you could provide your students with a set of questions to help them think about and discuss a current or historical news piece as part of a larger conversation about the content for the day.

What do the numbers in this piece mean? How could they be represented differently? Where are the places that misunderstanding can take place as a result of the author’s use of numbers, percentages, or this chart or graph?

Across the year you can start simple

Problematize the textbook –

Start by modeling questions such as:

What does this data or chart really tell us? Does this scale distort the data? Is more information needed to more fully understand what is happening?

Have students create charts and graphs to represent data they find or gather themselves.

Using data is another way to go

A common table of data

An image from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html

Students create pie charts to represent the percentages and compare and contrast data from wars.

They can add the population of the US during these time period to create pie charts that show percentage of population to compare as well.

Using data is another way to go

Exploring the data that others have gathered and made visual can expand your students’ experiences

GapMinder

http://www.gapminder.org/

Explore others’ data

Collecting and interpreting themselves is yet another

How has the population of the United States changed from 1790 – 1860?

Gathering census dataChoosing what to focus on (urban/rural, gender, race, income, occupation)Creating charts or graphs to represent the data Beginning to interpret what the data tells us about changesBegin to connect what is seen to events in time

Exploring census records

Develop a research question/topic that the class is interested in

What school lunch does our school like the most and least? Develop an instrument.Gather data.Chart, graph, interpret.Conclude. Move to action

Creating and interpreting

Think about your classroomWhat are you teaching right now?

What are ways that science, technology and society are a hidden part of what you already teach?

Where is there math hidden that you can highlight?

Thank you and keeping looking for the math and science that are hidden in our social studies.

For your future references

Fordham University’s “Internet Source Book of Science” and a lot of math too

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/science/sciencesbook.asp

BBC News and many other outlets have a science and environment section that often has articles that relate science and society in the past and the present.