Up for Debate: Math is something needed by everyone

Updated: Nov. 21, 12:55 p.m. The byline on this story was incorrectly originally Lorilynn Lomeli. It was written by Jean-Paul Udeh.

If you knock math courses out of the college curriculum, then what’s next English?

A math major could argue that English is an unnecessary course requirement to take since they’re only dealing with math equations, but everybody knows that’s ridiculous since there’s such a thing called word problems.

The same goes for math, a person applies some form of math to their daily routine. Whether they’re measuring their living rooms for new carpet to following the recipes of a cookbook by adding a certain amount of ingredients, math is essential.

Regardless the major, we live in a society that deals in numbers. Good luck finding a job if math isn’t part of the college equation, not even McDonalds will hire them if they can’t count the register at the end of their shifts. Than again they might hire them just to mop the floor. Since they’re unable to calculate the number of hours they worked times their hourly wage, the employer might shortchange them every payday, who knows?

Math is critical to the development of the human species. All of our greatest technological advancements were due to brilliant mathematician such as Isaac Newton, Alan Turing, and Archimedes who was solving calculus problems nearly 2000 years before calculus was even thought of. His manuscripts were lost a few hundred years after his death, written over with religious text.

Scientist and Historians alike both agreed if his manuscript were taking more seriously, the Western World wouldn’t have plunged into the Dark Ages and society today would have been further advanced than where we’re at now.

To take away math as part of the college experience will sabotage generations to come. It will create a generation of students unengaged to learn as much as they can about the world and how it works. Taking short cuts in life just because it saves them time and money, and were too lazy to even apply themselves in other fields such as math, English, or science.

There’s a video on youtube were a man asked his wife how long it takes a car traveling 80mph to travel 80 miles. First she said she didn’t know how to work it out, then she assume it took 15mins, then it was 30mins. After comparing the time she could run a mile to how fast car can travel, her husband told her the answer and she didn’t believe him saying he was “guestimating.” There’s no way of knowing if she graduated from college or not, but there’s a good chance a person who passed all their math prerequisite at EC would have gotten this answer right.