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Parts Of The Whole: Quantitative Literacy On A Desert Island, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Quantitative Literacy On A Desert Island, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
Some of the specific institutional problems faced by quantitative reasoning courses, programs and requirements arise from the fragile intellectual position of “quantitative reasoning” as an idea, or meme. The process of isolation and reintroduction explains both the proliferation of living species and the way in which some difficult ideas take their place in a culture. Using evolutionary explanations as metaphor and the Copernican revolution as an example of a difficult idea, we draw lessons that can be applied to the “quantitative reasoning” meme, including the function of the National Numeracy Network as an island of protected discourse favoring the growth …
Parts Of The Whole: Moderating Competition In The World Of Ideas, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Moderating Competition In The World Of Ideas, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
In both biological and mathematical dynamical systems, competition may be moderated by the presence of a top predator of both competing species. Applying this principle in memetics sheds light on why some strategies are more likely than others to promote quantitative literacy in various kinds of institutions.
Parts Of The Whole: Strategies For The Spread Of Quantitative Literacy: What Models Can Tell Us, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Strategies For The Spread Of Quantitative Literacy: What Models Can Tell Us, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
Two conceptual frameworks, one from graph theory and one from dynamical systems, have been offered as explanations for complex phenomena in biology and also as possible models for the spread of ideas. The two models are based on different assumptions and thus predict quite different outcomes for the fate of either biological species or ideas. We argue that, depending on the culture in which they exist, one can identify which model is more likely to reflect the survival of two competing ideas. Based on this argument we suggest how two strategies for embedding and normalizing quantitative literacy in a given …
Parts Of The Whole: Only Connect, Dorothy Wallace
Parts Of The Whole: Only Connect, Dorothy Wallace
Numeracy
This is the first of several columns that will focus on the mechanisms by which new ideas become accepted by a culture, offering some familiar examples, deriving basic principles from these examples, and applying them to the problem of promoting quantitative literacy in an educational system. In this essay we describe how new concepts become embedded in a culture through their connections to existing ideas, and use this principle to suggest strategies of discourse about numeracy that promote it among various constituencies in the culture.