Program Overview

Introduction to the First Year Seminar in Numeracy

The First Year Seminar in Numeracy is designed to help students succeed in the math courses they take at SLU. Over the next three weeks, students will gain the skills they need to draw inferences from data and critically evaluate numerical information they encounter in their everyday life, such as in the media, college-level math courses, and in their future careers.

Course Overview

This course is three weeks long. Each week will have a subset of objectives, activities, and readings for students to work through. The course is structured to help students build a strong foundation in numeracy, which is essential for success in college math courses.

Week One – Algebraic and Numerical Methods

The goal of this week is to review the basic concepts students need for introductory math courses at SLU. Students will learn about the order of operations, applying the order of operations to algebra and statistics, and taking word problems and making them numerical.

• Order of Operations: Students will learn how to solve math problems with multiple operations in the correct order.
• Applying the Order of Operations to Algebra and Statistics: Students will practice applying the order of operations within summations and factorials.
• Taking Word Problems and Making them Numerical: Students will learn how to convert word problems into mathematical equations.

Week Two – Interpret and Draw Inferences from Quantitative Representations

Last week, students completed a review of the basic concepts needed for introductory math courses at SLU. This week, students will focus on interpreting real-world data. They will learn about best practices in visualizing data, interpreting data and drawing inferences from existing graphs, and identifying misleading graphs, particularly in the media.

• Visualization of Data: Students will learn how to decide how to best plot their data.
• Drawing Inferences from Graphs: Students will practice inferring research questions and results from existing graphs.
• Evaluating Data in the Media: Students will learn how to identify and improve misleading graphs.

Week Three – Basic Statistical Concepts

Welcome to the final week of the course! This week, students will apply the concepts they've learned into one course they may take at SLU – Statistics for Social Change. In the discussion of statistics, students will primarily focus on how their samples influence the data they collect.

• Populations and Samples: Students will learn the difference between populations and samples, as well as the types of parameters they can collect for one vs. the other.
• Sampling and Probability: Students will learn about how their sampling methods can bias their results.
• Simulation-based Distributions: Students will learn how their data changes as their sample size increases.

Course Conclusion

The goal of this course was to help students succeed in the math courses they take at SLU. Over the last three weeks, students reviewed the basics of algebra, learned how to interpret data in graphs and in the media, and built a foundational knowledge of statistics. The course aims to increase students' confidence in mathematics and prepare them for their upcoming math courses at SLU.