Dear Parent or Guardian:

I am sending this letter to parents of students in my classes because one of the goals that I have set for myself for this year is to try to collect real-world examples of how people in the community use real mathematics in their daily work or home lives. The rationale is that the "word problems" or "applications" traditionally found in mathematics textbooks are often: a) contrived and not realistic (the classic problem is the farmer that wants to maximize the area of his cow pen given a fixed amount of fencing, which is solved by finding the vertex of a quadratic function), b) oversimplified (the airplane tailwind/headwind problem ignores the fact that planes do not travel directly against or with the wind), and c) not necessarily relevant to students' daily lives (“If Mary was 5 years older than John 4 years ago and...how old is Mary now?”).

I am asking that you think about how you may have used any level of mathematics in your job, at home, in your hobby, or in any other part of your daily life and to consider how that information might be used by teachers of mathematics. For some, mathematics is an essential part of the work they do; for others it is incidental, but relevant just the same.

What kinds of information might be useful to a teacher of Mathematics?
• a formula, along with what the variables represent, and how it is used in your work, life, etc.
• a "word problem" along with the formula(s) used to solve it
• a problem that requires mathematics to solve, but you are not sure how to solve it
• an unsolved mathematical problem
• data that needs to be analyzed
• estimations and approximations that are made to solve problems
• other...

I imagine these problems arising in physics, astronomy, engineering, chemistry, the insurance and/or real estate industries, psychology, farming, social science statistics, computer science, small business ventures, environmental science, or practically anywhere else. Do not assume that because the mathematics is too advanced or simplistic for high school students that it would not be useful. It can be very useful to get a better sense of the bigger picture of how mathematics is used in the real world and to be able to make those connections, even if the mathematics is beyond the scope of a particular course. (go to mail.colonial.net/~abeckwith/index2.htm to see how I use a variety of topics in a senior course I teach)


I have already begun to put together a portfolio of problems based on two weeks I spent two summers ago at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. In addition, I have spoken with the director of CCHS’s WIQH about mathematics used in the design and operation of the radio station and with our local police liaison about how the Concord Police Department uses mathematics in, for instance, determining the speed of an automobile based on the skid mark it leaves.

Having this information will benefit students in increasing the relevance of the problems they are seeing, in having a more broad-based understanding of the contexts of problems, and having available resources to try to learn more about mathematics-related fields, if there is interest.

I am well aware of the busy schedules that many of the parents in this community have. I have tried to find ways to make it as easy as possible to contribute an idea to this endeavor. If you find that you do have information that you think might be interesting for me to see, there are several ways to get that information to me:

1) You could fax it to me.
2) You could call me at work and a) tell me about your idea over the phone, b) leave a message with the information , c) schedule an appointment to talk to me to show me your idea in person.
3) You could email it to me.
4) You could mail it to me.
Here's how:
Fax #: (978) 318-1435
Phone #: (978) 341-2490
email: abeckwith@colonial.net
Address: Mathematics Dept., 500 Walden St., Concord, MA 01742


Thank you very much and I look forward to hearing from some of you.







_____________________________________
Anthony Beckwith
CCHS Mathematics Department