Abandoning Algebra Is Not the Answer
Nothing to add except that I'm stunned to learn that there are people out there that want to remove algebra as a requirement for completing your secondary education.
Evelyn Lamb (Scientific American) fires back with a rebuttal...
About the Author: Evelyn is an AAAS mass media fellow with Scientific American for the summer of 2012. Follow on Twitter @evelynjlamb.
In an opinion piece for the New York Times on Sunday, political science professor Andrew Hacker asks, “Is Algebra Necessary?” and answers, “No.” It’s not just algebra: geometry and calculus are on the chopping block, too. It’s not that he doesn’t think math is important; he wants the traditional sequence to be replaced by a general “quantitative skills” class, and perhaps some statistics.
Quite a few people have responded to Hacker’s column already. I highly recommend these posts by Rob Knop, Daniel Willingham, and RiShawn Biddle.
There are so many problems with Hacker’s essay that it’s hard to know where to start. Hacker’s first main point is that math is difficult, and the poor grades that result prevent too many people from graduating high school or college. His second is that the math we learn is not the math we need in our jobs.
Math certainly is incomprehensible to many students, but from where I sit, poor teaching is often the reason. Math education is failing many of our students. Few pre-college math teachers majored or even minored in math, and until more teachers do, improvements will be hard to come by. Ironically, it seems that people who have mastered “useless” algebra and other higher math topics tend to get jobs that pay more than middle school math teachers earn. I have the utmost respect for people with math degrees who choose to teach in spite of the poor pay and discipline problems, but few people make that choice. Math education needs help, but Hacker’s suggestions throw out the baby with the bathwater.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/30/abandoning-algebra-is-not-the-answer/
= new reply since forum marked as read
الجبر al-jabr
Dear Math: I'm tired of looking for your X. Dude, it's time to forget about her and move on.
as I went into electrical engineering...
But asking secondary students to just learn algebra seems to be setting the bar fairly low already.
because we use i to represent current. Don't ask. 
My expertise is in communications and that equation describes QAM, quadrature amplitude modulation. More generally, we use trig and imaginary exponents to describe phase relationships in time-varying signals.
Fifty Shades of Calculus.
Oh yeah, baby... tie me up and teach me. 
Ha no that'd never work. Learning is a pleasure. Ooh I know, read Ayn Rand. Now that's torture.
I double-majored in Mathematics and Philosophy and almost got a third degree in Physics. I had all of the requirements except one - "Electricity and Magnetism". I took the course, but the professor was incompetent. He gave us a 500 level text (an expensive one at that) and all he did was write formulas on the board. Those formulas were in the book, but the book clearly expected about six semesters of backup knowledge to have a fucking clue how to apply the formulas. I could do the math, but he was incapable of explaining the context.
He had an open door policy and I went in several times for help. Not surprisingly, all he did was go back over the formulas with no context. The first segment was on field theory. Our first test started out with a very confusing question (again, no context) and ended with "not necessarily a field".
The only guy who ever topped me in math tests was in the class. He got a 66 on the exam. I got like a 42. There were a few in the 30's and the others were in the teens. It was a tough call, but I decided to drop it and forgo the third degree for the sake of my GPA (3.83 in math, 3.79 or so overall, Magna Cum Laude). I'm still fucking pissed about that. But hey, he's probably dead by now so I need to calm down.
My total was $7.76 & I gave the young checker a ten. She entered the amount I gave her, the change showed as $2.24. I gave her a penny. "I don't know what to do with that," she said. I said, "Give me a quarter instead of 24 cents." "My drawer will be off if I do that," she replied & handed me 24 cents & my penny back. I just shook my head.
For years I believed that I was not smart enough to do anything more than simple math. 
One of the best confidence boosts I got was acing a college algebra class . Math is good for your brain.
More like this...
I also refused to read "1984" in 11th grade on the grounds that it hadn't arrived yet. The teacher, to his credit, agreed to give me an alternative assignment on the promise that I'd read it in 1985. I bought a copy on 2 Jan '85 and read it then and there. As disturbing a reality as it was then, things are way worse now than Orwell could have ever imagined. "Animal Farm" keeps coming to mind when I see rMoney - "All animals are equal. Some are just more equal."
"Graduation from high school should require only 9th grade skills."
McGovern walked that back to 999%
I love McGovern, but that was and is a cringe-worthy moment in American political history, imho.
Say you have 10,000 people in a town, and half of them are men, half of them are women, 70% of them are white, and 30% of them are black. Also, 70% of the white people are over 18 and are eligible to vote while 80% of the black people are over 18 and eligible to vote.
Can you win an election with just black people and half of the white women?
If not, how many of the white men do you need to recruit for your candidate?
