Jerry Zolynsky

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Math teacher John Barr shows Farber Hebrew Day School students Tal Ershler of
West Bloomfield and Uri Lorkis of Oak Park, both 17, the proper way to approach
the problem using a new math method.

Hate Math?

Local professor’s team brings
math into real-world focus.

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

K

en Chelst, a professor of opera-
tions research in the College
of Engineering at Wayne State
University, was part of a team that
developed a new math
curriculum for students in
grades 11-12. The curricu-
lum is being used at several
local high schools, includ-
ing Farber Hebrew Day
School in Southfield and
Frankel Jewish Academy in
Ken Chelst
West Bloomfield.
Chelst became concerned
about high school math education
when he considered his college stu-
dents.
“Most students by the time they
graduate high school hate math-
ematics,” he said. “They can see no
relevance to their lives, professional
or personal. In fact, the way math
is taught it is impossible to see the
relevance. The problems are silly and
haven’t changed much in 100 years.”
Ironically, mathematical reasoning
is becoming more important than ever,
he said.
The new curriculum is called
Applied Mathematics Practices for
the 21st Century or AMP 21. Chelst
and AMP 21’s co-founder Thomas
Edwards, associate dean of WSU’s
College of Education, led a team of six
that aimed to help students answer

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24 November 17 • 2016

that age-old question: “When will we
ever use this?”
That question became the title of
their two textbooks. Volume I has the
subhead Algebraic Modeling;
the second volume is subtitled
Probabilistic Decision Making
Modeling.
The developers are working
on a middle school math cur-
riculum they hope to roll out
this year.
“My field of operations
research has a wide range of
meaningful examples that can be used
to teach basic concepts in algebra and
probability at the high school level,”
said Chest, 68, of Southfield, a mem-
ber of Young Israel of Southfield.
The team started work on the
course in 2007, with a six-year $3.3
million grant from the National
Science Foundation. The initial devel-
opment was a joint effort of Wayne
State, University of North Carolina at
Charlotte and North Carolina State
University.

REALWORLD EXAMPLES
The high school textbooks use mean-
ingful, real-world contexts to teach
mathematical principals, Chelst said.
The first chapter of the first book uses
basic calculations and algebra to frame
and make multi-criterion decisions,