Areas of Interest: Low Numerical Maths Teacher
Although I have never had any trouble accepting my low Numerical score in general (I wouldn't want my work to be about numbers, and my half-year score - scaled up! - in the NZ equivalent of Maths A-Level was 10.5%*), it didn't quite explain why I happily do complex sums in my head on quite a regular basis, or even choose to set up quite complex spreadsheets on occasion.
Penny dropped when I had a group of primary teachers recently, and found the Maths Specialist had scores like mine - High Mechanical, Low Numerical. Listening to him explain how he stayed (reasonably) motivated towards maths and numeracy in spite of his low Numerical score, I realised I was listening to someone describing things in Mechanical (how things work) terms. Not only did that make sense of my own surprising forays into mental and structural maths, but also illuminated the journey I made from 10.5% mid-year to something in the mid 80s a few months later. Mr Bishop, my maths master who was enlisted to give me extra tuition, asked some searching questions and realised that I couldn't understand why we were torturing the poor numbers with calculus. All it took was for him to give me a couple of illustrations where calculus would help us get something done - calculating the volume of bronze required for a ship's propellor is the one I remember, plus a very mechanical approach to follow for each of integration and differentiation and I was away and laughing. Suddenly I couldn't think of anything that was more fun than making this stuff work. Clever J V Bishop, spotting the real issue almost a quarter century before I ever took the Birkman...
* Yes, I know AoI scores aren't about ability, but ability and application do seem to follow high AoI scores, for understandable reasons; 10.5% was definitely overstating my motivation towards maths...
Penny dropped when I had a group of primary teachers recently, and found the Maths Specialist had scores like mine - High Mechanical, Low Numerical. Listening to him explain how he stayed (reasonably) motivated towards maths and numeracy in spite of his low Numerical score, I realised I was listening to someone describing things in Mechanical (how things work) terms. Not only did that make sense of my own surprising forays into mental and structural maths, but also illuminated the journey I made from 10.5% mid-year to something in the mid 80s a few months later. Mr Bishop, my maths master who was enlisted to give me extra tuition, asked some searching questions and realised that I couldn't understand why we were torturing the poor numbers with calculus. All it took was for him to give me a couple of illustrations where calculus would help us get something done - calculating the volume of bronze required for a ship's propellor is the one I remember, plus a very mechanical approach to follow for each of integration and differentiation and I was away and laughing. Suddenly I couldn't think of anything that was more fun than making this stuff work. Clever J V Bishop, spotting the real issue almost a quarter century before I ever took the Birkman...
* Yes, I know AoI scores aren't about ability, but ability and application do seem to follow high AoI scores, for understandable reasons; 10.5% was definitely overstating my motivation towards maths...
Labels: Mechanical, Numerical
posted by jon at
22:33
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1 Comments:
My educator hat on -- again; I feel the need to point out that the overwhelming majority of the items which contribute to a high numerical interest involve jobs in accounting or bookkeeping. It happens often that math-capable people don't score a high numerical interest simply due to that -- they couldn't be paid enough to do accounting.
Lynn G
PEG, Ltd.