Is advanced math necessary?
In our last episode, Andrew Hacker argued that math courses like algebra are unnecessary for most high schoolers. This week's guest couldn't disagree more.
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Before you devour this week’s episode, listen to last week’s American RadioWorks podcast “Decoding the Math Myth.” Really do it. We’ll wait.
By now that you’ve learned that last week’s guest, Andrew Hacker, argues that teaching advanced math to every student in the United States is hurting the economy by preventing people from getting college degrees.
But this week’s guest, Keith Devlin, says math is vital for developing student reasoning skills. He’s a mathematician at Stanford University and author of “The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetic Revolution.”