Is There a Radical Revision of the Secondary School Math Curriculum?

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"It's a stupid story, sexist story, but it's relevant to this argument I'm going to make," he says. "Imagine that because of some cosmic catastrophe or toxins in the environment ... women became pregnant with 10 to 20 fetuses." He asks: What would people who are absolutist opponents of abortion do if they were forced to accept an increase in birth rates? And so again, just to get away from the absolutists position and the relevance of that to the, so George Maggia story is, well, once you get them off of this totally absolutistic position, then the rest is haggling about the details", writes Limbaugh.

People have a complicated relationship to mathematics. We all use it in our everyday lives, from calculating a tip at a restaurant to estimating the probability of some future event. But many people find the subject intimidating, if not off-putting. John Allen Paulos has long been working to make mathematics more approachable and encourage people to become more numerate. We talk about how people think about math, what kinds of math they should know, and the role of stories and narrative to make math come alive.

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John Allen Paulos received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is currently a professor of mathematics at Temple University. He s a bestselling author, and frequent contributor to publications such as ABCNews.com, the Guardian, and Scientific American. Among his awards are the Science Communication award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Mathematics Communication Award from the Joint Policy Board of Mathematics. His new book is Who’s Counting? Uniting Numbers and Narratives with Stories from Pop Culture, Puzzles, Politics, and More.

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