A timely usage for high school mathematics—the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence recently distributed a survey seeking citizen opinions about taxation and affordability in our county. The authors of the survey hoped for a high numerical confidence to their survey because of their large mailing. During my actuarial career I have never seen a 99 percent confidence assigned to a survey. The computation of confidence should be based on the number of responses rather than how many questionnaires were distributed (as claimed by the authors).
The high school math curriculum of School District 166 does include an introduction to probability and statistics. Math students learn the meaning of confidence calculations when statistical sampling is involved.
Students, study math! Exciting careers are ahead including social media such as Google, Twitter, and the like (determining trends in consumer and cultural interests, etc.). Mathematical statistics is being used aggressively by political pollsters, manufacturers for quality control, and in my field, actuarial science, even to help price insurance for the effects of climate change.
A former high school District 166 math teacher regularly challenged her students to find an occupation that did not require math. She told me none were found.
Doug Sanders
Grand Marais
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