STEM subjects are incredibly important — our world depends on them. The country, our general well-being, and economy are all backed by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. As you read this article, students are in their various math classes right now wondering when they’ll ever use these math concepts in real-life?

While current students may feel the need to fuss about doing math homework and memorizing formulas, adults know how valuable learning math can be in everyday life. In fact, most adults use some form of math every day without even realizing it — whether they’re paying bills, checking their accounts, or reviewing their paychecks. These are activities that require math knowledge and problem-solving skills.

If you’re a parent or an educator, then you have the power to change your students’ perspective towards math. How? By making it relevant to their lives through the use of real-world encounters and offering students a variety of ways to add, subtract, divide, and multiply numbers. So, if you’re struggling to find ways to make math fun or struggle with making the connection between math and real-world experiences, here are some great reasons why math is important.

Math Gives Us the Ability to Understand How Things Work: Believe it or not, math gives us the ability to understand how things work. That’s because our daily needs continue to push our minds to prefer knowledge that’s specific to real-world problems today.

Fortunately for us, this has turned out to be a fundamental and positive way for us to progress as a society. Practical applications of math have helped us understand the mechanics of the world around us, enabling us to create things like cars, computers, smartphones, and homes. According to Nancy Miller, the Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Grantham University, math has been used to help us “create things like wearable technology and gave us the ability focus on ways to improve social engineering as well.” The methods of communication we use today, along with our ways of creating new concepts and technologies, are all thanks to math.

It Makes Us Smarter: Have you ever been asked to fill out a multiplication, subtraction, or addition worksheet in 60 seconds? If you have, then you know how stressful it can be trying to fill out every problem on the sheet while making sure they’re right. By practicing problems on worksheets like this, however, the formulas and concepts students learn in math can be extremely useful – even if they never use them again.

The mental gymnastics involved with math have been credited with helping students become better thinkers and problem-solvers. Just like the human body gets stronger as it exercises, so does the brain when new ideas, formulas, theorems, and problems are introduced. The majority of students won’t use advanced math on a daily basis for their future jobs, but just because they won’t use it doesn’t mean it’s not useful. In fact, it helps students make everything they do a lot easier. Here are some examples:

• Math can help students solve difficult problems.
• Math can be used to help students manage data.
• It can help students recognize mistakes and errors in arguments.

Math Will Become More Present Throughout the Years: Whether we believe it or not, math is without a doubt becoming an important factor across most work industries. Decades ago, math was normally associated with specific jobs markets like architecture, teaching, and of course, engineering. Civil engineers, for example, needed to know math for specific building design and layouts, while electrical engineers needed to know math for circuits and measuring of electromagnetic fields. Today, however, everyone uses math skills to analyze more and speak less –– particularly in the journalism and political industries.

Future police officers and military personnel will start to use more technology in their fields, which math skills have helped develop. Teachers and nurses will also continue to rely on measurements, numbers, and technology to foster a positive learning environment and help patients recover in a timely manner, respectively. Not all students will need to become an engineer, scientist or mathematician, but having knowledge of math can make their future jobs a lot easier.

It Helps Us Monitor Our Money: 401(k)s, credit cards, debit cards, and interest rates are all things students will need math to understand. How else will they know if the deals they will be offered when they become adults are actually good offers? How will they know how much money they’ll have to pay every month to pay off their credit card in a reasonable time? To answer these questions, students will need to have exposure to good financial resources, which can only be found in math.

But, in order for students to experience all these opportunities math provides, parents and educators need to find ways to help students have a greater appreciation for math. So, make sure you do your best to teach them these valuable skills.

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H. Davis is passionate about K-12 education and loves exploring different ways to make learning a fun experience. If you can’t catch him the classroom, you might be able to find him at the gym or watching football (Go Broncos!). Thanks!