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Poor Math Skills Cause Exam Failures
Author(s) -
Price Joanne Kirkpatrick
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
opflow
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1551-8701
pISSN - 0149-8029
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8701.1993.tb00312.x
Subject(s) - weakness , certification , mathematics education , series (stratigraphy) , mathematics , computer science , management , medicine , biology , paleontology , economics , anatomy
Many fine water and wastewater treatment plant operators have been stopped cold in their career advancement because of their weakness in math. Statistics presented here show how many operators in grades 1 and 2 failed the California certification exam because of weakness in math. Persistence is the key to overcoming this weakness. For applied math, it is important to understand that although there are hundreds of possible problems, there are relatively few types of problems. In memory studies, it has has long been recognized that as material is studied in information “chunks” rather than as individual data points, a large quantity of information can be retained. For this reason, Opflow is beginning a series called Math in Chunks. This series will teach operators how to do various types of math problems so that they can apply those problems to water and wastewater math.