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LOOSE LEAF Math in Our World: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach
LOOSE LEAF Math in Our World: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach

LOOSE LEAF Math in Our World: A Quantitative Reasoning Approach, 2nd Edition

ISBN10: 1260727866 | ISBN13: 9781260727869
By David Sobecki and Brian Mercer
© 2021

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* The estimated amount of time this product will be on the market is based on a number of factors, including faculty input to instructional design and the prior revision cycle and updates to academic research-which typically results in a revision cycle ranging from every two to four years for this product. Pricing subject to change at any time.

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This text exercises students’ brains by challenging them to LEARN, not memorize formulas or mimic procedures. Students will practice reasoning skills and study situations where mathematical thinking can help them be smarter and more successful, both as students and as citizens of society. This text is comprised of a series of activities encouraging students to take responsibility for their learning, with strategically placed solved examples and support to guide them through concepts they may have a hard time discovering on their own.

Unit 1: EVERYONE HAS PROBLEMS 

Lesson 1-1: Be Reasonable (Inductive and Deductive Reasoning) 

Lesson 1-2: More or Less (Estimation and Interpreting Graphs)

Lesson 1-3: You Got a Problem? (Problem-Solving Strategies)

Unit 2: MANAGING YOUR MONEY 

Lesson 2-1: Giving 110 Percent (Review of Percents)

Lesson 2-2: Building It Is the Easy Part . . . (Budgeting)

Lesson 2-3: A Topic of Interest (Simple Interest)

Lesson 2-4: Like a Snowball Rolling Downhill (Compound Interest)

Lesson 2-5: Buying Stuff Without Money (Installment Buying)

Lesson 2-6: Investing in Yourself (Education and Home Loans)

Lesson 2-7: A Walk on Wall Street (Stocks and Bonds)

Lesson 2-8: A Taxing Situation (Income Taxes)

Unit 3: PLACE YOUR BETS 

Lesson 3-1: So You’re Saying There’s a Chance . . . (Basic Probability)

Lesson 3-2: Make It Count (Sample Spaces and Counting Techniques)

Lesson 3-3: Combining Forces (Combinatorics)

Lesson 3-4: Too Good to Be True? (Probability Using Counting Techniques)

Lesson 3-5: Odds and Ends (Odds and Expected Value)

Lesson 3-6: An Exclusive Club (Addition Rules for Probability)

Lesson 3-7: Independence Day (Multiplication Rules and Conditional Probability)

Lesson 3-8: Either/Or (Binomial Probabilities)

Unit 4: STATISTICALLY SPEAKING 

Lesson 4-1: Crunching the Numbers (Gathering and Organizing Data)

Lesson 4-2: Picture This (Representing Data Graphically) 

Lesson 4-3: An Average Joe (Measures of Average)

Lesson 4-4: Your Results May Vary (Measures of Variation)

Lesson 4-5: Where Do You Rank? (Measures of Position in a Data Set)

Lesson 4-6: Just a Normal Day (Normal Distributions and Z Scores)

Lesson 4-7: The Way the Cookie Crumbles (Applications of the Normal Distribution)

Lesson 4-8: Making Connections (Correlation and Regression Analysis)

Lesson 4-9: Trust No One (Misuses of Statistics)

Unit 5: BUILDING MODELS 

Lesson 5-1: Keeping Things in Proportion (Ratios and Proportions)

Lesson 5-2: Making Some Extra Cash (The Basics of Graphing Functions)

Lesson 5-3: A Slippery Slope (Modeling with Linear Functions)

Lesson 5-4: Ahead of the Curve (Modeling with Quadratic Functions)

Lesson 5-5: Progressing Regressively (Linear and Quadratic Regression)

Lesson 5-6: Phone a Friend (Modeling with Exponential and Log Functions)

Unit 6: THE JOY OF SETS 

Lesson 6-1: Setting Up (The Basics of Working with Sets)

Lesson 6-2: Busy Intersections, More Perfect Unions (Operations on Sets)

Lesson 6-3: Worlds Collide (Studying Sets with Two-Circle Venn Diagrams)

Lesson 6-4: A Dollar for Your Thoughts (Using Sets to Solve Problems)

Unit 7: UNCOMMON SENSE 

Lesson 7-1: Opening Statements (Statements and Quantifiers)

Lesson 7-2: Finding the Truth (Truth Tables)

Lesson 7-3: To Be and Not to Be (Types of Statements in Logic)

Lesson 7-4: Being Argumentative (Evaluating Logical Arguments)

Unit 8: HOW DO YOU MEASURE UP? 

Lesson 8-1: Going to Great Lengths (Unit Conversion, Length, and the Metric System)

Lesson 8-2: New Dimensions (Measuring Area, Volume, and Capacity)

Lesson 8-3: Weighty Matters (Units of Weight and Temperature)

Lesson 8-4: Stocking the Shelves (Evaluating Efficiency in Packaging)


Units 9, 10, and 11 are available online. 

About the Author

David Sobecki

I was born and raised in Cleveland, and started college at Bowling Green State University in 1984 majoring in creative writing. Eleven years later, I walked across the graduation stage to receive a PhD in math, a strange journey indeed. After two years at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, I came home to Ohio, accepting a tenure-track job at the Hamilton campus of Miami University. I’ve won a number of teaching awards in my career, and while maintaining an active teaching schedule, I now spend an inordinate amount of time writing textbooks and course materials. I’ve written or co-authored either seven or twelve textbooks, depending on how you count them, as well as several solutions manuals and interactive CD-ROMS. After many years as developmental math coordinator at Miami Hamilton, I share the frustration that goes along with low pass rates in the developmental math curriculum. Far too many students end up on the classic Jetson’s-style treadmill, with the abstract nature of the traditional algebra curriculum keeping them from reaching their goals. Like so many instructors across the country, I believe the time is right to move beyond the one-size-fits-all curriculum that treats students the same whether they hope to be an engineer or a pastry chef. “Because we’ve always done it that way” is NOT a good reason to maintain the status quo in our curriculum. Let’s work together to devise alternate pathways that help students to learn more and learn better while hastening their trip into credit-bearing math courses. Since my book (Math in Our World) is written for the Liberal Arts Math and Quantitative Literacy market, I think I’m in the right place at the right time to make a difference in the new and exciting pathways course. I’m in a very happy place right now: my love of teaching meshes perfectly with my childhood dream of writing. (Don’t tell my publisher this – they think I spend 20 hours a day working on textbooks – but I’m working on my first novel in the limited spare time that I have.) I’m also a former coordinator of Ohio Project NExT, as I believe very strongly in helping young college instructors focus on high-quality teaching as a primary career goal. I live in Fairfield, Ohio with my lovely wife Cat and fuzzy dogs Macleod and Tessa. When not teaching or writing, my passions include Ohio State football, Cleveland Indians baseball, heavy metal music, travel, golf, and home improvement.

Brian Mercer

I can say without a doubt that I was made to be in a classroom. I followed the footsteps of my father, a 35-year middle school math teaching veteran, into this challenging yet rewarding career. My college experience began as a community college student at Lakeland College in Mattoon, Illinois. From there, I received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Science in Mathematics from Southern Illinois University. I accepted a tenure-track faculty position at Parkland College, where I have taught developmental and college-level courses for 15 years. I had the opportunity to begin writing textbooks shortly after I started teaching at Parkland. My then department chair and mentor, James W. Hall, and I co-authored several textbooks in Beginning and Intermediate Algebra. In the fall of 2011, our department began discussing the idea of creating two tracks through our beginning and intermediate algebra courses. The idea stemmed from two issues. First, most of our beginning and intermediate algebra students were headed to either our Liberal Arts Math or our Introduction to Statistics course. Second, we wanted to beef up intermediate algebra to better prepare those students who were headed to college algebra. These were two competing ideas! Increasing the algebraic rigor of these courses seemed to “punish” students who were not heading to college algebra. With the two track system, we implemented a solution that best serves both groups of students. I have to admit that I was initially concerned that offering an alternate path through developmental mathematics for students not planning to take college algebra would lead to a lowering of standards. However, my participation in our committee investigating this idea led me to believe it was possible to offer a rigorous course that was exceedingly more appropriate for this group of students. Since there were no materials for the course, I began creating my own and was paired by McGraw Hill with Dave Sobecki. Together, we have created the material that I have been using for class testing. After a semester and a half of piloting these materials and seeing the level of enthusiasm and engagement in the mathematical conversations of my students, I am now convinced that this is an ideal course to refine and offer. As a trusted colleague told me, “this is just a long overdue idea.” Outside of the classroom and away from the computer, I am kept educated, entertained and ever-busy my wonderful wife, Nikki, and our two children, Charlotte, 6 and Jake, 5. I am an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and enjoy playing recreational softball and golf in the summertime with colleagues and friends.

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