Elementary Practical Mathematics: With Numerous Exercises for the Use of Students, and Especially of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Students (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Elementary Practical Mathematics: With Numerous Exercises for the Use of Students, and Especially of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Students

Academic methods Of teaching Mathematics succeed with about five per cent. Of all students, the small minority who are fond Of abstract reasoning: they fail altogether with the average student. Mathematical study may be made Of great value to the average man if only it is made interesting to him. The name Practical Mathematics has been given to a new method Of study, not because it describes the method but merely to differentiate it from the Older method.

I began to use the new method forty years ago in an English public school, later in Japan. In 1881 I was bold enough to make it part of the curriculum at the City Guilds Technical College, Finsbury. It proved so successful that I induced the Board Of Education to make it part of their scheme for Science classes. The number of Science class students of Practical Mathematics in Great Britain increases at a greater rate than the Compound Interest law, and at present there are more students Of this subject than of any other. Lif a class is formed in September in elementary Pure Mathematics (pure Mathematics is the name given to the Older or academic method of study) and twenty students join it, at Christmas the number has dwindled to seven, and only one or two keep in attendance till May, whereas a class in Practical Mathematics keeps up its attendance almost intact to the end of the session.

There is always a difficulty in Obtaining competent teachers. Any man who has learnt Pure Mathematics is thought by himself and others to be fit to teach, whereas his very fondness for and his fitness to study Pure Mathematics make it difficult for him to understand the simple principles underlying the new method.

We show a student how to work problems, exercising his common sense, and we give him experimental proof of the correctness of his results. Our methods Of reasoning are those logical methods which are adopted in the teaching Of Physics and in common affairs, and we claim that he understands and takes an interest in what he is doing, and feels confidence in his results.

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