Math 2.0 Day

What is Math 2.0 Day? Scheduled for July 8th, it’s a day to get people interested in the ways they use math every day. It’s also a day for big names in the math and technology world to get together and share news and resources related to math and how it is used in the technological world. How can you celebrate? Well, you can learn a new math trick to impress your friends, find out some little-known facts about how numbers help keep the world running smoothly, and settle all those questions you’ve had in the back of your mind about how the world of math works.

Jack Black’s Take on Math

This guy sure knows how to make school cool, doesn’t he? School of Rock presents the teacher every elementary school student wishes they had.

Who Uses Math?

So maybe math wasn’t your favorite subject in school. You’d stare at those equations and wonder how you’re ever going to make sense of it all. You might be curious about who uses math, anyway. Well, there are people for whom math is a big part of making a living and many of them make it so that the math is invisible to you. So, who uses math on a frequent basis?

Programmers. These are the people who deal with computer code to create everything from your favorite Android apps to your office software. Any time you have a computer program perform a word count, total up the line items in your budget or beat your last top score by fifty points, there’s an equation hidden in the coding that goes into action for you.

Scientists. They use math and numbers to measure everything from the very big to the very small. If you’ve ever seen the mathematical equation of Einstein’s theory of relativity, you might have gone a bit pale at the complexity of it all. But it was an important breakthrough in our understanding of the universe.
Engineers. How do people know how much aerodynamic pressure a rocket can tolerate without disintegrating or how much weight a bridge can support without falling? Engineers have equations to help them understand the machines, buildings and infrastructure they design.
You. That’s right, if you’ve ever balanced a checkbook or calculated how much you should tip your waiter at a restaurant, you’ve used math. Math is such a big part of our lives that a lot of us probably don’t think about it very much.

I know a kid who struggles with math. What can I do?

There are cases where math drills don’t help and trying to make that elementary school student do his homework seems to makes things worse. Rather than stressing out both yourself and the child about it, maybe you just need to step back, calm down and look at it from a different angle. Maybe there’s a reason the child struggles with math and it isn’t necessarily a learning disability. Reasons might range from an undiagnosed vision problem that prevents the child from seeing the lessons to an explanation of the problem that the child didn’t quite get. With the right kind of lesson plan, you can take the confusion out of math and actually make it fun for the child. This can range from math games to fun drills that reward students for getting a series of right answers in a certain amount of time.

Helpful Resources

Math Bits A site by two teachers with lesson plans that include both math and programming. Plenty of resources that include CDs, worksheets, projects and assessments on a variety of math and programming topics.
Math.com Free resources to help students explore math. Includes a range of topics ranging from basic to college-level math.
Homeschool Math Free math resources for the homeschooler. Includes worksheets, games, videos, lesson plans and ebooks.

Math To Impress Your Friends