{"id":2452,"date":"2011-12-08T17:44:31","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T21:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mathgradblog.williams.edu\/?p=2452"},"modified":"2011-12-08T17:44:31","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T21:44:31","slug":"critical-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2011\/12\/08\/critical-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Math"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Sometimes I think about basic ideas in mathematics that that the general public would greatly benefit from. In particular, I think that mathematicians often take for granted that these things are natural to us, and that to most people it&#8217;s almost like having a super power. Please augment this list!<\/div>\n<div>1. Computing how long it will take to pay off a balance on a credit card, with interest.<br \/>\n2. How to balance a checkbook.<br \/>\n3. The concept of instantaneous rate of change vs. average rate of change.<br \/>\n4. Basic laws of probability.<br \/>\n5. How to add and multiply fractions, and compare fractions (as in, is 5\/9 larger than 9\/45)?<br \/>\n6. Basic logical reasoning, in particular understanding &#8220;if-then&#8221; statements, and converse\/contrapositives of such statements.<\/div>\n<div>Good luck with the rest of your semester, and have a great holiday break!<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes I think about basic ideas in mathematics that that the general public would greatly benefit from. In particular, I think that mathematicians often take for granted that these things are natural to us, and that to most people it&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2011\/12\/08\/critical-math\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" data-url=https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/2011\/12\/08\/critical-math\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3gbww-Dy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/mathgradblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}