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Review Of The Triumph Of Numbers By I. B. Cohen, H L. Vacher

Numeracy

I. Bernard Cohen, The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005). 209 pp. $24.95 (USA). ISBN 0-393-05769-0.

The premier historian of science ends his career telling how the world has become awash in numbers—“how numbers entered the conduct of life and of government, the understanding of nature, and the analysis of societies.” The stories begin with Kepler and end with Florence Nightingale. In between, major players include Galileo, Harvey, Leeuwenhoek, and Halley; Graunt and Petty; Jefferson and Franklin; Lavoisier, Sinclair, Pinel and Louis; Guerry and Quetelet. The book tells of the spread …

Development Of Case Stories By Interviewing Students About Their Critical Moments In Science, Math, And Engineering Classes, Vicki V. May, Thomas H. Luxon, Kathy Weaver, Rachel Esselstein, Cynthia Char

Numeracy

Dartmouth’s Critical Moments project is designed to promote discussions among faculty and graduate students about the retention of students, particularly women and minorities, in science, math, and engineering (SME) disciplines. The first phase of the ongoing project has been the development of four case stories, which are fictionalized composites drawn from surveys and interviews of real Dartmouth students. The surveyed population was 125 students in general chemistry. Of the 77 who agreed to be interviewed, 61 reported having experienced a critical moment – i.e., a positive or negative event or time that had a significant impact on the student’s academic …

Teachers Talk: Pressure Points In The K-8 Mathematics Curriculum, Kim Rheinlander, Dorothy Wallace, Wells Morrison, Daniel Ansari, Donna Coch, B. Venus Williams

Numeracy

Forty K-8 teachers participated in small, in-depth, facilitated discussions about "pressure points" in the curriculum. We define a pressure point as a topic, skill, or concept that is crucial to future mathematics learning but which many or most students do not master to the extent expected at a given grade level. They are issues that persist from one grade level to the next; eventually they impair the ability of students to succeed in technical disciplines. The teachers identified a number of pressure points; we focus on an understanding of place value and "reasonableness" of answer as two examples that were …