SIGMAAQL: Resources

Information & Faculty Development

The following links lead to web sites which hold information about QL. Please email the Web Master if you know of more sites or if you find a dead link below. You can also find abstracts of talks, slides from presentations, and a number of links that were provided during paper sessions on our Meetings Page.

Mathematical Association of America (MAA)
- MAA’s list of SIGMAAs
- MAA Survey on QL conducted by Milo Schield (preliminary results)
- MAA report “Quantitative Reasoning for College Graduates:A Complement to the Standards” (1998)
National Numeracy Network (NNN)

Numeracy, the journal of the NNN

Lynn Steen’s website

List of QL Resources (last updated 1999)

American Institution for Research released a report in 2006 involving quantitative literacy. It has been reported on in The Chronicle of Higher Education, here is a link to the release information (with links to the final report).
- The Literacy of America's College Students
Radical Math
- This website is a resource for educators interested in integrating issues of social and economic justice into math curriculum and classes.
Statistical Literacy
- Statistical Literacy is the study of statistics used in everyday life. Statistical literacy helps citizens in a democracy read and interpret numbers in the news to make intelligent decisions.
Institute for Mathematics and Education
- The Institute is housed at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and offers this mission statement: "We support local, national, and international projects in mathematics education that focus on both the mathematics and the students, can be applied to current needs, build on existing knowledge, and are grounded in the work of educators." This is the Vision statement: "To build capacity for collaboration, store institutional knowledge about collaboration, and coordinate the expertise of different professional cultures to address a critical concern of our time - the mathematical education of future scientists, engineers, workers, citizens, and leaders."
Annenberg Learner Resources for Mathematics Education
- A catalog of videos and resources for mathematics education and assessment. Particularly notable is the statistical literacy course "Against All Odds."
The Algebra Project
- Bob Moses' program for motivating, engaging, and teaching math literacy for middle school students. The history of the project is documented in Radical Equations and the forthcoming Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public School.
NCTM Illuminations Project
- This collection of games and demonstrations for teaching and learning math transcends QL, but includes some gems. On the day this link was created, the highlighted games were about "how to count, collect, exchange, and make change for coins" and using geometry to deliver pizzas efficiently.
Gapminder
- Gapminder is a collector of human development data from a wide variety of international sources, like the UN and the World Bank. It makes its assembled data available through its clever and useful "trendalyzer" visualization software, Gapminder World.
- Hans Rosling, one of the founders of Gapminder, has made a series of videos demonstrating the utility of this software. Here are a few of these videos:
World Mapper
- World Mapper contains graphical representations of the world based on quantitative measures such as land area and population.
Visualizing Economics
- The blog of Catherine Mulbrandon is a series of insightful graphs that aid in understanding economic concepts and current economic situations.
Visualing Finance Lab
- A working group of researchers, artists and educators affiliated with Parsons the New School for Design and Eugene Lang College the New School for Liberal Arts, who are interested in the intersection of finance, education and design.
The Numbers
- The Wall Street Journal has a blog that covers numbers in the news. He specializes in investigations of measurements that affect policy and public opinion.
The Financial Literacy Center
- Hosted by the RAND Corporation web site, the Financial Literacy Center is a joint project of RAND, Dartmouth College, and The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. This center focuses on financial literacy rather than quantitative literacy, but overlaps between the two are substantial.
Common Mistakes Using Statistics
- This site, maintained by Martha K. Smith (emerita, Univ of Texas, Austin), offers a carefully developed taxonomy of statistics misuse. The site also includes suggestions for avoiding misuse, resources about the appropriate use of statistics, and a glossary.
Straight Statistics
- According to the home page of this London-based web site, its maintainers, "are a campaign established by journalists and statisticians to improve the understanding and use of statistics by government, politicians, companies, advertisers and the mass media. By exposing bad practice and rewarding good, we aim to restore public confidence in statistics."
More or Less: Behind the Stats
- This BBC program(me) and podcast was created by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, authors of The Numbers Game, and now is hosted by Tim Harford, more widely known as The Underground Economist and author of The Logic of Life. It delves into the statistics behind news reports with often interesting and surprising results, but it is focused on the UK.
Edward Tufte is a statistician whose thoughts on the effective visual display of quantitative information have had wide influence. In addition to his own web site, which describes and sells his books and courses, there are several Tufte-related web sites:
- Tufte's 2003 essay on PowerPoint from Wired magazine. A longer version is for sale on Tufte's own site.
- Junk Charts is a blog written by Kaiser Fung with a variety of poorly designed graphs, charts, and plots.

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Textbooks

This section is made available for authors and publishers of textbooks which focus on Quantitative Literacy.

The MAA and SIGMAA-QL are posting the information for the benefit of members and the interested public; inclusion in this list is not an endorsement of the text by either the MAA or SIGMAA QL. If you have a text you would like to include in this list, please email the Web Master. Contact information must be provided with each statement.

Quantitative Reasoning: Tools for Today’s Informed Citizen

This text helps students connect mathematics in the classroom with applications in the real world. Through a series of hands-on activities and explorations, the text empowers students by teaching them to apply quantitative reasoning skills to make informed decisions in their daily lives. Authors Alicia Sevilla and Kay Somers (both of Moravian College) developed this engaging, activity-based, technology-integrated text for students enrolled in an introductory-level, problem-based general education quantitative reasoning course.

Quantitative Reasoning: Tools for Today’s Informed Citizen, Alicia Sevilla and Kay Somers (both, Moravian College)
© 2007 & 2008, J Wiley | E-book or Softcover with Student CD | Approximately 626 pages | ISBN 978-0-470-41354-8 (Softcover with CD)
Originally pubished by Key Curriculum Press; available now at J Wiley Site

Models of Conflict and Cooperation

Models of Conflict and Cooperation is a comprehensive, introductory, game theory text for general undergraduate students. As a textbook, it provides a new and distinctive experience for students working to become quantitatively literate. Each chapter begins with a "dialogue" that models quantitative discourse while previewing the topics presented in the rest of the chapter. Subsequent sections develop the key ideas starting with basic models and ending with deep concepts and results. Throughout all of the sections, attention is given to promoting student engagement with the material through relevant models, recommended activities, and exercises. The general game models that are discussed include deterministic, strategic, sequential, bargaining, coalition, and fair division games. A separate, essential chapter discusses player preferences. All of the chapters are designed to strengthen the fundamental mathematical skills of quantitative literacy: logical reasoning, basic algebra and probability skills, geometric reasoning, and problem solving. A distinctive feature of this book is its emphasis on the process of mathematical modeling.

Models of Conflict and Cooperation, Rick Gillman (Valparaiso University) and David Housman (Goshen College)
Available at AMS site

Common Sense: Rethinking Quantitative Reasoning

Common Sense Mathematics is a text written by Ethan Bolker and Maura Mast at the University of Massachusetts, Boston with support from the National Science Foundation DUE.

Math in Society: A survey of mathematics for the liberal arts major

Math in Society is a free, open textbook. This book is a survey of contemporary mathematical topics, most non-algebraic, appropriate for a college-level topics course for liberal arts majors. The text is designed so that most chapters are independent, allowing the instructor to choose a selection of topics to be covered. Emphasis is placed on the applicability of the mathematics. Core material for each topic is covered in the main text, with additional depth available through exploration exercises appropriate for in-class, group, or individual investigation. This book is appropriate for Math 107 (Washington State Community Colleges common course number).

Math in Society, David Lippman (Pierce College at Ft Steilacoom)
Open source (*.doc files) and E-book (*.pdf files) available at Author’s site
Hardcover book available at Lulu