ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A common complaint among students who have to take pre-college math to proceed in college is that the they will never use the material they learn in class in real life.
Jacqueline Mogey, a math lecturer at the University of Auckland in Waipu, New Zealand, has an answer to that problem: fashionmatics.
That’s the term she uses to describe the interplay between the world of fashion and the world of mathematics.
She believes that fashionmatics is one of the best ways to make the often dull and abstract concepts of mathematics more meaningful to students, particularly those who are simply trying to master the basic math classes they must pass in order to take college-level courses.
“Engaging them in a way that makes mathematics meaningful has been somewhat of a challenge,” Mogey said Tuesday during a presentation at the 22nd International Conference of Adults Learning Mathematics, or ALM, being held here this week.
“They do view it as a punitive act,” she said of students who are forced to take pre-college math courses. She teaches such a class at the University of Auckland.
“So it’s really important to me as a teacher and someone who likes to empower, to be able to find content in which students have a good grounding to begin with,” Mogey said. “I have a lot of mathematically disaffected young women. So for them, fashion seemed the obvious choice.”
