This guide is designed for practitioners, including teachers, lead instructors, and professional developers, who are ready to take up the challenge to change how numeracy is taught in adult education. If instructors shift their teaching to focus more on the use of numeracy skills, they might find that their students not only score better on formal…

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) publishes practice guides in education to bring the best available evidence and expertise to bear on current challenges in education. Authors of practice guides combine their expertise with the findings of rigorous research, when available, to develop specific recommendations for addressing these…

This article describes an alternate way to utilize a circular model to represent thirds by incorporating areas of circular segments, trigonometric functions, and geometric transformations. This method is appropriate for students studying geometry and trigonometry at the high shool level. This task provides valuable learning experiences that…

An investigative activity dealing with where to pitch a tent at a campsite is described. (MNS)

Presented are solutions to variations of a combinatorics problem from a recent International Mathematics Olympiad. In particular, the matrix algebra solution illustrates an interaction among the undergraduate areas of geometry, combinatorics, linear algebra, and group theory. (JJK)

Revisits and discusses the polar bear problem that was published in the March 1997 issue. The problem concerns a riddle: If you walk one mile south, one mile east, and one mile north, and end up in the same spot as you started, what kind of bear would you see? (ASK)

Presents a mathematics problem involving speed of a walking student versus speed of light reflection in a high school hallway. (MKR)

Poses a practical woodwork problem in which maximizing the perimeter of a square-based pyramid is required. The pyramid is constructed from four identical trapezia to be cut from a given rectangle of wood. A simple mathematical analysis suggests a number of different strategies for the solution of the problem. (Author/NB)

Discusses an algorithm from Vedic mathematics that has similarities to FOIL and the standard algorithm for multiplication. (Author/NB)

Describes some real-life problem situations and the mathematical applications used to solve the situations in order to promote an inquiring and problem-posing approach. (MKR)

Least-squares line fitting is developed without calculus. Its rationale and an example with consumption patterns are provided. (MNS)

Contains explanations and examples of mathematical calculations for a secondary level course on personal finance. How to calculate total monetary cost of an item, monthly payments, different types of interest, annual percentage rates, and unit pricing is explained. (RM)

Presents a series of questions designed to help convince students that mathematics is useful, current, and newsworthy through solving systems of linear equations in real world contexts. (KHR)

Endorses the projects approach to learning as helping students acquire contextual, personal knowledge rather than learning only isolated bits of content information. Describes the five-step process for doing projects which includes productive thinking or generating ideas, the planning or organizing of ideas, decision making, communication or…

This book provides a collection of 191 mathematical problems aimed at the advanced high school student level and above. Problems cover general mathematical areas including plane geometry, three-dimensional geometry, number theory, algebra, combinatorics and graph theory, and a number of miscellaneous questions that combine mathematical…