"I chose journalism because I absolutely HATE math!!"
Sound familiar? haha
I must admit that I am one of these people. Studying numbers and doing math problems this past week made my brain hurt and I am not looking forward to the quiz on Wednesday. Even though I would love to write a blog bashing math and complaining about it, i really have realized more this year how important numbers are--especially in terms of editing.
Numbers are all around us-in tax stories, police stories and much more. One of the main problems I think is that most journalists (of course not all) don't like math and are a little rusty.
"If you don't know the difference between a noun and a verb, you could never get a job as a reporter or editor. But newsrooms are full of people who don't know how to calculate a percentage," said Roger Simons, who was an award winning columnist for both the Sun-Times and Baltimore Sun, in an article I found on poynter's Web site.
I have really become to understand that without decent math skills, one cannot be an effective journalist. There are numbers all around us essential to so many stories and we need to be able to deal with them.
We review the Daily Illini every class period and SO often the numbers are wrong and don't make sense. How embarrassing! It makes me wonder just how often this happens in big newspapers.
It also brings up the issue of both why aren't the editors catching errors in numbers and also why the reporters are being so careless.
If anything, this past week has taught me that I need to refresh myself before this week's quiz. And also, just how important math really is, even though I hate to admit it.
Wish me luck on the quiz Wednesday. Hopefully we can use our calculators.
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I know that frustration, my dad is an engineer and he lives and breathes numbers of all kinds. I'll always remember his frustration when I took calculus in high school. He would sit next to me and do problems over and over for me, while it went in one ear and out the other.
ReplyDeleteMy problems with numbers have always been just the stupid mistakes, adding when you should multiply, misplacing numbers, all sorts of silly mistakes.
But I don't think any journalist has ever really chosen this profession because of his or her hatred of numbers. There are just two different sides of the brain and some are stronger on one than the other.
I feel your pain on this one. I haven't taken math since I was a junior in high school and, needless to say, when we started doing the math problems in class I found that I had become a bit rusty when it comes to performing simple math operations.
ReplyDeleteThat's the good thing when it comes to journalism, though: Only basic math skills are needed to perform our job. No need to review your calculus in order to write a good story, just understand how to find percentages and you're pretty much set.
After reviewing some simple math techniques, I was surprised how quickly it all came back to me. I actually did pretty well on the quiz- I hope you did too.
Mmm, agreed. I was surprised (and disappointed) to find that I didn't remember how to do long division. For the most part, I have a pretty good handle on how to set up problems, but then I make stupid calculation errors that cost me in the end. I would like to believe that most journalists chose this major because they loved writing, not because they hated math (the lack of it was just a perk). However, knowledge of basic math is important not just for writing stories, but for everyday life. It's nice that the types of math problems we did in class were ones that you actually might use, even outside of a story. They weren't page-long theorems or calculus, thank goodness. I will admit, though, that I am not looking forward to fulfilling the economics requirement for our department.
ReplyDeleteI've never really had a problem with numbers. In fact, in high school I did pretty great in math classes and even skipped a year ahead in math, taking a senior math class while I was a junior. It always came pretty naturally to me probably from my mom, who always claimed she was great at math. My hatred for math stemmed from the fact that it's boring. I hate how repetitious math is and how "by the numbers" it is, forgive me for the pun.
ReplyDeleteI only took one math class in college: stats. In high school I ventured all the way up to Calculus. Still, numbers can get quite confusing sometimes. It amazes me that in nearly every story involving numbers in the DI, we can find many problems.
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