Quantitative Reasoning: Tools for Today’s Informed Citizen

Alicia Sevilla, Moravian College
Kay Somers, Moravian College

The need for quantitative reasoning courses has never been stronger: Citing a recent study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Associated Press reported in 2006 that more than half of the nation’s students at four-year colleges and universities “lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks” such as understanding credit card offers, balancing checkbooks, and computing restaurant tips.

Quantitative Reasoning: Tools for Today’s Informed Citizen 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 developed this engaging, activity-based text for students enrolled in an introductory-level, problem-based general education quantitative reasoning course, often called Quantitative Reasoning, Quantitative Literacy, Statistical Reasoning, Statistical Literacy, (Mathematical) Problem Solving, or Liberal Arts Mathematics. At many colleges and universities, this course satisfies a general education requirement in quantitative reasoning.

Technology is an essential component of the text, and it is integrated in Activities that use Microsoft® Excel or, alternatively, the TI-83/84 Plus graphing calculator. The use of technology helps students concentrate on ideas rather than computational details—allowing them to investigate significant and more realistic problems.

Distinctive Features

• An activity-based approach encourages students to express their ideas with one another and acquire the tools necessary to understand how math is used in the real world.
• Activities featuring Microsoft Excel and the TI-83/84 Plus graphing calculator engage students in in-depth investigations and promote critical thinking.
• Real data from print and electronic sources help students make the connection between the mathematics they learn and issues they encounter in their daily lives.
• Clearly identified Objectives, worked-out Examples, and a Summary for each of the book’s 21 Topics help students focus their studies.
• Explorations at the end of each Topic present additional real-life applications for students to investigate.

Activities Highlight Unique Pedagogy

The text is divided into Topics and Activities. Topics are organized into three categories—Numerical Reasoning, Logical Reasoning, and Statistical Reasoning—helping students understand relationships and explore different approaches to problem solving. Each Topic contains a number of worked-out Examples and concludes with a set of Explorations or short problems that students can investigate.

For each Topic, one or more accompanying Activities explore the applications presented in the Topic in greater detail. Activities feature the use of technology, and instructors may choose between Excel and TI-83/84 graphing calculator versions of the Activities.

• Excel Activities are completed using the accompanying Excel data files found on the Student CD packaged with the text. Students use the data sets in these files to create graphs or calculate in Excel, following the step-by-step instructions provided in the Activity. 
• Alternate versions of the Activities for the TI-83/84 Plus graphing calculators are available on the Student CD. The data sets are embedded within each graphing calculator Activity, and students use their graphing calculators to explore data and solve problems according to the step-by-step instructions provided. 

Instructor Resources

Available to adopters in print or electronic form, the Instructor Resources include teaching strategies developed by the authors through extensive classroom testing, as well as complete solutions to all Explorations and Activities. Additional resources for instructors are available at the Quantitative Reasoning Web Resource Center.