R
Not your usual poster here. I am a high school teacher. I teach kids how to factor x^2 + 5x +6 or how to graph rational functions (polynomial over a polynomial) and inevitably someone asks how this abstract stuff is actually used by people out there.
The problem is that math teachers (myself included) usually have no clue! They are not specialists or experts that have an job that applies the math. But I bet people on this forum do all the time (even if they don't realize they learned the foundation of their math back in high school).
So if you have any examples, please let me know!! Please start high level and drill down, like:
A plane has a nose-wheel steering system. The system is controlled by a box with a computer in it. The computer has something called a PI controller which decides how much current to send to steer the wheel. The engineers need to figure out how to set certain parameters, P and I. To do this they work with second-order polynomials, specifically a rational function called "transfer function". One of the thing the I-value does is eliminate steady-state error, so the nose wheel is centred when the pilot has hit foot off the steering pedal. To set the I-value, engineers use a 2-dimensional graph called Pole-Zero. By finding the right zeroes/roots, they can find the best I-value.
Something like that...
I want to research this area. There is plenty of examples on how jobs use math but often that math is not in the high school curriculum. There is also the "mental gymnastics" / "learn to think systematically" argument. But often kids want to know examples of how a specific topic they are learning (factoring, quadratic equation, polynomials, radical functions, rational functions, domain/range) is used.
(And not how it could hypothetically be used in some dumb artificial word problem, nor how it was used thousands of years ago..)
Thanks!!
RL
The problem is that math teachers (myself included) usually have no clue! They are not specialists or experts that have an job that applies the math. But I bet people on this forum do all the time (even if they don't realize they learned the foundation of their math back in high school).
So if you have any examples, please let me know!! Please start high level and drill down, like:
A plane has a nose-wheel steering system. The system is controlled by a box with a computer in it. The computer has something called a PI controller which decides how much current to send to steer the wheel. The engineers need to figure out how to set certain parameters, P and I. To do this they work with second-order polynomials, specifically a rational function called "transfer function". One of the thing the I-value does is eliminate steady-state error, so the nose wheel is centred when the pilot has hit foot off the steering pedal. To set the I-value, engineers use a 2-dimensional graph called Pole-Zero. By finding the right zeroes/roots, they can find the best I-value.
Something like that...
I want to research this area. There is plenty of examples on how jobs use math but often that math is not in the high school curriculum. There is also the "mental gymnastics" / "learn to think systematically" argument. But often kids want to know examples of how a specific topic they are learning (factoring, quadratic equation, polynomials, radical functions, rational functions, domain/range) is used.
(And not how it could hypothetically be used in some dumb artificial word problem, nor how it was used thousands of years ago..)
Thanks!!
RL