The Secret Social Life of Math
and Science
OCSS Annual Conference
October 1, 2012
Alicia R. Crowe
How we understand numeric and
scientific information & how it is
being used influences how we make
decisions on issues that impact the
quality of life of ourselves and others
in our society
Examples
Understanding economic data
Making decisions about what to do
buy a house, sell your house, take out a
loan
Asking questions when encountering data
Is this interest rate appropriate or is this
predatory lending? Does the interest
rate being lowered mean anything for
my daily life?
Examples
Understanding scientific medical information
Making decisions about whether the risk in
taking a drug or a undergoing a new
procedure is too great to proceed
Making decisions about what types of food
to eat
Examples
Understanding scientific medical information
Making decisions about whether or not to
support a ban on pesticides
Should we limit fossil fuel use now?
Is this study trustworthy?
Examples
Understanding polling data
Asking critical questions about the
way the poll was administered, who
was sampled, and how the sampling
occurred
So you can determine how much to
base your judgments on the poll.
Basically, certain aspects of
mathematics and science and
mathematical and scientific ways
of thinking are fundamental to
understanding social studies
concepts and becoming active
members of society.
So what can you do?
• Start making science and
mathematics a part of the class in
many ways
• But not just a sprinkle on top
A Quick Activity
Explore current news
Look for instances where
mathematical or scientific
understandings could influence
how you understand a current item
in society
Bringing the science into
focus
Mention the science connections more
often
Point out relationships among science,
technology and society in what you
already do
Ask questions that help students see the
connections between the science and the
society
Bringing the science into
focus
7th grade ancient civilizations and science
Salt
Armor and weapons
The Silk Road and the movement of
ideas (scientific and mathematical not
just religion, language and culture)
What are some relationships between
disease spread and what happens to
societies?
Understanding data is
another place to start
raw numeric data or numeric information
in context;
percentages in context;
the meaning of average;
the ability to interpret and question
graphs and charts.
How to begin
Highlight the differences among numbers
students read or numbers you present
Ask questions that help students to see
the raw number in a larger context, and
Point out relationships between raw
numbers and percentages when you use
them or they are in the readings.
Imagine this…
• You’ve planned this great issues based week.
• “Population Growth: Should we be
concerned?”
• Students explore some data and find that
population growth has decreased over the
last 40 years going from about 2% per year
in 1960 to 1.5% in 1990 to an estimated 1%
in 2015.
You overhear this conversation…
• “Well 2% to 1.5% to 1% sounds like it is
better to me.
• “No way, just because the percentage is
going down doesn’t mean we shouldn’t
care.”
• So our social studies question could be what
they are talking about, but could it be a
mathematical misunderstanding.
Add some information to the
conversation from the beginning
Currently the world has ~ 6,973,738,433 people
(yes that’s billions)
1% of that ~ 69,737,384
Yes that’s 69.7 million
A little over 6 Ohios
Now, they can approach “if it is a problem” with
an accurate sense of how big 1% is.
Example
As a beginning activity early in the year, you could
provide your students with a set of questions to help them
think about and discuss a current or historical news piece
as part of a larger conversation about the content for the
day.
What do the numbers in this piece mean?
How could they be represented differently?
Where are the places that misunderstanding can
take place as a result of the author’s use of numbers,
percentages, or this chart or graph?
Across the year you can start
simple
Problematize the textbook –
Start by modeling questions such as:
What does this data or chart really tell us?
Does this scale distort the data?
Is more information needed to more fully
understand what is happening?
Using data is another way
to go
Have students create charts and
graphs to represent data they find or
gather themselves.
A common table of data
An image from PBS: http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html
Using data is another way
to go
Students create pie charts to represent the
percentages and compare and contrast
data from wars.
They can add the population of the US
during these time period to create pie
charts that show percentage of population
to compare as well.
Explore others’ data
Exploring the data that others have
gathered and made visual can expand
your students’ experiences
GapMinder
http://www.gapminder.org/
Collecting and interpreting
themselves is yet another
Exploring census records
How has the population of the United States
changed from 1790 – 1860?
Gathering census data
Choosing what to focus on (urban/rural,
gender, race, income, occupation)
Creating charts or graphs to represent the
data
Beginning to interpret what the data tells
us about changes
Begin to connect what is seen to events
in time
Creating and interpreting
Develop a research question/topic that the
class is interested in
What school lunch does our school like the
most and least?
Develop an instrument.
Gather data.
Chart, graph, interpret.
Conclude.
Move to action
Think about your classroom
What are you teaching right now?
What are ways that science, technology and
society are a hidden part of what you already
teach?
Where is there math hidden that you can
highlight?
Thank you and keeping
looking for the math and
science that are hidden in
our social studies.
For your future references
Fordham University’s “Internet Source
Book of Science” and a lot of math too
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/science/s
ciencesbook.asp
BBC News and many other outlets have a
science and environment section that often has
articles that relate science and society in the
past and the present.