In Ms. Mariner's post about math illiteracy, she brought up some everyday points that I had never thought about before. One would think that simple things such as 4 quarters (not 3) makes a whole or 100% is the maximum would be easy concepts for someone to grasp. It amazes me how our society is ignorant to such simple intelligence. A relatable topic, although not related to math, is when people cannot use simple grammar correctly. This shows up in speech, but even more so in text messages. I try my best to send grammatically correct texts and naturally, I do not and have never used any of the text slang such as "u," "lol," "jk," or things of the sort. In the same manner, our society puts little effort into being mathematically correct.
One large reason that I think we brush off being mathematically correct is because a lot of people do not think that math applies. They do not think that it is useful. These (ironically) are the people who cannot do simple math! However, the issue is not that the math does not apply, it is that people in today's society do not apply it correctly.
Calculators and other technologies that do simple math for us are magnificent luxuries, but I believe that they also hurt our ability to do simple math. I appreciate the teachers who, rather than saying "Pull out your calculator!" when figuring out a fairly simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division problem, say "Do it in your head!" Haviing the ability to do simple mental math is another way that we can apply math to our everyday lives.
It is all about the application.
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