Common operational misconceptions

Fri Feb 17 17:36:28 UTC 2012

> BTW, I am a school board member who votes 1:8 often on things.... But
> let me give you a perspective, one of the board members called Golf an
> "Essential Life Skill."  Maybe, but how about balancing a checkbook...
> 
> Ralph Brandt
> Communications Engineer
> HP Enterprise Services

One of the best courses I ever had was in 9th grade math class when Mr. Martin taught us how to do taxes.  And I mean even long forms with all the schedules and stuff for people who had investments and small sole proprietor businesses.  It was a great practical math application, though it was mostly just arithmetic, some of the example cases were quite complex with estimated taxes, carrying forward losses from previous years, depreciation, etc.  It gave us some context in which we could understand why we might need to learn math in real life and made taxes less daunting when we got older.  Thanks, Mr. Martin!