Introduction
This course was designed to allow students to meet their 100-level quantitative reasoning math credit while also fulfilling college requirements for a course with a diversity and social justice (DSJ) designation. Social issues are approached “by the numbers” — giving students a way to apply the math skills covered in a more traditional course setting. These applications encourage students to do more than just learn math calculation skills. Instead, students will get an opportunity to set up the math, interpret their results in an engaging context, and think about the implications of their answers in the today’s society.
In an attempt to meet students where they are, each section of the textbook has a way that students can “learn by watching” or “learn by reading”, according to their preference. All concepts are covered using each method. Examples used in the text and the videos were designed to be similar, but different — giving students immediate access to additional examples when they need them.
This course was originally designed for use at Lake Washington Institute of Technology — a new text to be used for my Math&107: Math in Society. I hope these materials are useful to many other instructors and students, wherever they are. This course is licensed CC-BY-NC, meaning you are welcome to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute these materials without asking permission. I just ask that you include an attribution when you are using my work and that you do not use the materials for commercial purposes.
As an author of one with no formal editing team, I am aware that although my intent is to help students recognize (and hopefully be inspired to challenge) systemic inequities, due to my own cultural background and personal identity, I may sometimes misconstrue the impact of my vocabulary and approach. As such, I welcome comments and corrections of all kinds (typos in the text and incorrect math answers, as well as wording/examples seen as insensitive, etc.) so I can continue to improve the text. You can reach me at sherry.mclean@lwtech.edu. I’d love to know how you are using these materials 🙂
Happy math-ing!
Sherry McLean
