[Blindmath] Math for everyday use

[Sabra Ewing]

Or what if you are on a certain diet where you have to get a special amount of a certain vitamins most people don't need.you can find on the Internet how much of certain vitamins certain foods have, but you will have to figure out on your own how much of a certain food or how much of certain mixtures of foods you will need in order to get the right amount of this special vitamin.for example, you might be at risk for cancer, so you might be prescribed a special diet that has a certain amount of antioxidants. You don't want to have to be calling your doctor all the time about everything you're eating to make sure you're getting the right amounts, see you have to figure it out yourself.Also ask your student to think about the questions he or she asks supposed experts every day. Like asking a banker how long you will need to have money in an account before you will have the desired amount.or asking a veterinarian how much you will need to feed your dog when switching to a new food.or asking the doctor how many antibiotics you should take.for asking a travel agent how much it will cost you to get somewhere.what if one day your student decides that he or she wants to be that person?in addition to programming, you would also use math and computer science when making robots. Everything having to do with the robot is based on circuits and electrical currents.you will have to use specific formulas to know how much of a current to use at a specific time. Solving the unknown variables in these formulas will be very similar to solving algebraic equations. And gaming,you will have to use coordinates similar to those on a graph as well as geometry to make your character move around the screen in the correct way and end up at certain spots. Especially if you can't see what your character is doing as you are designing, knowing the correct math to make it work out the first or second time would it be helpful.also, making programs involves some of the logical decisions you learn about in math. A lot of times, when you make a program, you don't know what the outcome will be. You just have to put in the correct formulas so the computer can do the right calculations and find out what the outcome will be. For example, a simplified version would be that if you don't know what the average salary will be, you don't know if it will fall below or above a certain number or percentage. See you have totell the computer how to calculate the average, ask the computer if the calculation falls below or above the number or percentage, tell the computer what to do if it falls below, tell the computer what to do if it's equal to, or tell the computer to do something else if it falls above.touchscreen phones and computers use electrical currents as well. When you touch a certain part of the screen, you close a circuit and send a certain amount of electrical current to the computer. The computer knows based on the electrical current that you send what to do. That's why when you tap on something on the iPhone, it opens up.if you don't know how much current the computer is receiving at a certain time, then you won't know how to program it so that when you tap twice, it opens up an app or when you swipe up or down, it scrolls up and down the page.if you become an architect, which there are blind architects by the way,you have to build things at very specific angles to make sure that the building is safe, complies with all relevant building codes, and that it will stay up for a long time.different materials are different weights too, so you have to make sure that one part of the building isn't too heavy or it will collapse. For instance, if you make a building out of wood, but then you have an elaborate roof on top with towers and hurts that is made of marble, that building my collapse because the roof will be too heavy. In that situation, it's obvious, but in other situations it might not be and you have to use math to figure it outdid

Sabra Ewing

> On Dec 8, 2014, at 1:18 PM, Joseph C. Lininger via Blindmath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> I think Bente already answered the question pretty well from a direct answer point of view, but let me share an experience with you which provides another answer. Feel free to share this experience with your student.
> 
> All through middle school and high school, I was basically a bad student. I didn't like studying, and I especially didn't like doing homework. I was more interested in studying things I did find of interest, such as girls and computers. (Yes I know those two aren't often seen paired, but I digress) I knew grades mattered, and I even believed people when they told me that later in life I'd be sorry I approached school the way I did. Unfortunately, I didn't care much.
> 
> That came back to haunt me in college. I was interested in a degree in Computer Science, which required a lot of mathematics. Unfortunately, I hadn't built the mathematical foundation properly. I ended up having to go back and take several remedial math courses. I also had to do a math learning group for at least one of the courses.
> 
> I have completed several more advanced math courses now, including some in more abstract areas. I would not call myself a math expert, however. I've always felt my math is a bit more shaky than it could have been  had I learned it when I was younger. Yes, I can do math now. I even use my math skills for day to day things for work sometimes, and for my graduate level studies. I'm not nearly as confident in my mathematical abilities as a person at my level should be, however, and I feel this is a direct result of how I behaved in middle and high school.
> 
> Hope this helps
> 
> Joe
> 
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