Reply to America's poor math skills raise alarms over global competitiveness

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think there are at least two different problems:

1) not enough people going into stem fields.  There are at least three reasons for this: a) poor curricula in the k-12 grades makes kids not interested in these fields because they don’t see real world interesting use.  Here in America kids have more choice in what they study than in many countries.  B) insufficient capacity at higher education.  They just don’t have the professors to increase capacity.  C) relative compensation.  These fields are really hard and the comp is okay but not great.  You can make more money more easily in non-tech fields.  See, eg, all the engineers that go back for a jD to do patent law.  This relative wage disparity is not present in most countries.

2) Americans not in stem fields have poor math skills.  I’m a lawyer and it’s shocking how often I have to explain simple algebra to other lawyers.  People outside of math fields have little intuitive sense for numbers/math.  I think common core is supposed to help with that by requiring kids to think about math in different ways instead of just focusing on the old solve this equation worksheets.  I also think it’s a problem that most Americans take no math after 12th grade.  It’s like a language or like a physical skill — if you don’t use it, you lose it.  I don’t know a solution for that.  [/quote]

Funny...I remember working on a corporate transaction and in order to update the document the associate had to replace two, two digit numbers added together with a new set of numbers (think...previous was 57 +27, and now it is 59+28).  The lawyer asked that I update the numbers because he didn't want to "screw it up".[/quote]

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