Keynote #2 (10:45 am): Dr. Maura Mast  & Dr. Ethan Bolker (UMASS Boston)

Title: Common Sense, Common Knowledge and Mathematics: Reflections on Teaching Quantitative Reasoning

Abstract: Ten years from now, what do you want or expect your students to remember from your course?  Our answers to those questions profoundly shaped our approach to teaching the QR course at UMass Boston.  From a ten year perspective most thoughts about the syllabus – “what should be covered” – seem irrelevant, especially for students who are not in a STEM field.  What matters more will be how students approach a problem using the tools they carry with them – common sense and common knowledge – not the particular mathematics we chose for the curriculum.  This has changed how and what we teach.  In our QR course, we focus on problems suggested by the news of the day and on subjects that we know matter to students, like credit card debt and student loans.  We practice “just in time” mathematics, introducing tools only when they are really needed.  This approach has changed how we teach and how we assess student’s preparation for the course.

In this talk we discuss how we use common sense and common knowledge in our QR course with exercises and examples of classroom activities that are built from real data in moderately complex everyday contexts.

(1:15pm): Dr. Jim Rolf (Yale)

Title: Online Experiences for Yale Scholars (ONEXYS)

Online Experiences for Yale Scholars (ONEXYS) provides a cohort of incoming first-year students with the opportunity to prepare for the rigors of quantitative study at Yale before arriving on campus in the fall. ONEXYS participants receive access to a wealth of online content, including videos built by Professor Rolf and his team, real-time discussions with other ONEXYS students, advice and mentoring from the current Yale students who serve as ONEXYS coaches, and a variety of problem sets, quizzes and other assessments to help them enhance their transition to Yale in the fall. Many of the quantitative concepts and skills covered in ONEXYS are drawn directly from Yale’s introductory math courses and placement exams, and are utilized across disciplines in the freshman year curriculum—ranging from economics to chemistry to political science.

(1:45pm): Dr. Matthew Salomone (Bridgewater State University)

Title: How “Quantitatively Inclined” are Incoming College Freshmen?

Numeracy is often referred to as the habit of mind to see real-world problems through a quantitative lens. Typical QR programs in higher education aim to build this habit in students by the time they graduate — but to what extent do students already have this habit when they arrive? I will briefly review some of what is known about incoming freshmen’s quantitative inclinations, and describe an ongoing project to measure their quantitative habit of mind in a somewhat subversive fashion.

(2:15pm): Dr. Rob Root (Lafayette College)

Title:  Introducing Quantitative Literacy in a Writing Course Using the Ultimatum Game

The idea of using game theory as a vehicle to establish connections between quantitative reasoning and everyday life is not new. We discuss the ultimatum game as an introduction to a course investigating the connections between quantitative literacy and social justice. We consider the learning opportunities available as examples of quantitative literacy, and as demonstrations of the practical implications of QL as a tool for making decisions and persuading others.