Math-loving People Person

As I've stated many times, I am married to a genuine math whiz!  Everyone in our family knows it - whenever our kids had trouble with math homework growing up, they always went to their mother!  She also happens to be a middle school math teacher, and occasionally she will have me take her tests or answer some of her homework questions, in order to "test them out" so to speak.  Based on my success on these questions, I suppose that I could still pass middle school math, but only just so! 

Just the other night, she asked me a question that involved aysymptotes and growth curves (specifically, could a growth curve actually "grow" more negative).  I questioned her answer, but of course, she was right and I was wrong.  I had suggested that what is true from a purely mathematical standpoint may not be as relevant in the real-world.  She countered with the example of an organization that starts out in debt, which continues to worsen over time (i.e. "growing debt").  I guess that I still have some things to learn (or relearn)!  And I admit that I've gone back to re-learn some of the things I learned in high school algebra and geometry!

Many experts are pointing out that mathematical literacy is becoming increasingly more important in the Information Age.  The U.S. Department of Labor stated that math-related careers will grow at four times the rate of other jobs over the course of the next decade.   A recent study by David Deming at Harvard University concluded that mathematics will be one of the most in demand skills for the future workforce, with jobs that require math skills growing the fastest.  Just as important, however, as both the graphic below demonstrates and an article ("It's never been more lucrative to be a math-loving people person") in Harvard Business Review suggests, math skills are insufficient on their own.  Social skills (often called "soft skills" in leadership) are equally as important.

Catherine Weinberger, a professor at University of California Santa Barbara published the results of a study in the journal The Review of Economics and Statistics ("The Increasing Complementarity between Cognitive and Social Skills") a few years ago.  Professor Weinberger investigated what skills and experiences learned in high school most predicted income-earning potential in adulthood.  She found that the return on being good at math has significantly increased over the last few decades (hooray for math!).  She also found that the return on having leadership and interpersonal skills (learned and developed through participation in extramural activities such as sports, clubs, service organizations, and the arts, for example) has also increased.  Most importantly, however, is the fact that having both math skills and social skills resulted in the highest adult incomes.  Professor Weinberger suggests that, "Just making students sit down and learn math and try to get their test scores up isn’t enough. Giving up recess to focus on math skills might not be the best investment in our future workforce."

In other words, "EQ" (emotional intelligence) may be just as important as "IQ" (here, referring specifically to math intelligence).  I am pretty sure that my wife would agree that "It's never been more important to be a math-loving people person."  I will continue to post about the "soft skills" of leadership, but I hope that you will indulge me as I write about some of the more interesting things I've learned about math in future posts!