Reflection on the Value of Mathematics in Citizenship and Democracy

There are two goals for competent citizens: to be able to recognize and make sense of our society and the world around us, and to be able to comprehend the current limitations.

While reading this paper, I couldn't help but think about the recent referendum on electoral reform. A significant factor in its defeat was simply due to the fact that some voters were confused by the mathematical formulations required to decide the vote values. Although the STV campaign supporters made attempts to explain the process, many voters I spoke to complained that they didn't trust the complexities in the math and so chose to decline the reform. I feel that in this instance, democracy lost. If voters decided 'no' because they didn't understand the mathematical complexities over the actual concept at hand, then the democratic voice was silenced.

The authors of this paper feel that one important purpose of mathematics education is to teach provide tools for more advanced problem solving. The authors of this paper feel that math education "must stress ... justification and explanation - that is, ways of proving one's assertions and articulating one's understand within a community". The goal here is to create citizens who can think critically for themselves and who conclude for themselves after having done so. There is also significant value in the quantification of facts. The mathematical simplification of certain events emphasizes the predictive quality present in our study of statistics. The paper was also quick to point out the value and prevalence in quantifying the information as statistics. Recognizing this, we must also ensure that as a citizen of our world, we understand two things about simplifying observations into statistics. 1. what the stat is actually implying (ie correlation does NOT equal causation) and 2. the limitations and assumptions made by the statistic.

It seems to me that as we move towards a more mathematically advanced society, the individual has a responsibility and an obligation to keep up with these advancements and at least recognize the concepts that allow him/herself to understand where he/she fits in their role as a citizen.