Edutopia – Colin Seale
It’s hard to imagine anyone talking about reading like this in a professional setting. So why is it socially acceptable to say, “I don’t do math”? It’s true that students—and adults—have very real fears about their mathematical abilities, a mindset that often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy leading people to handle even simple math problems poorly. I saw this firsthand in law school.
When I taught middle school math while going to law school at night, I took a class on wills, trusts, and estates. One night we discussed a scenario in which a father had three daughters. One of the daughters had three sons. When the father died, each one of his three daughters received one-third of the estate. Simple, right? But here’s what seemed complicated to my classmates: The daughter with three sons died next. What fraction of the estate would each son inherit?