Common Sense Mathematics

Ten years from now, what do you want or expect your students to remember from your course? Rather than the particular mathematics chosen for the curriculum, what really matters will be how students approach a problem using the tools they carry with them - common sense and common knowledge. Using this text, students will work regularly with real data in moderately complex everyday contexts, using mathematics as a tool and common sense as a guide. The focus is on problems which arise from the news of the day and the topics that will matter to students, such as credit card debt, loans, tax and bills. By augmenting common sense and some mathematics with instruction on critical use of spreadsheets and the internet, students are provided with tools they can take with them beyond the classroom and into later life.