A Research Project Comparing an Arithmetic Review with a Consumer Mathematics Approach for General Mathematics Classes

The purpose of this study was to research the comparative contributions of arithmetic review and consumer mathematics as contents of a general mathematics course for schools that could offer only one general mathematics course at the ninth grade level. Because of the close relationship of the ancillary questions: who should be taught general mathematics and how should general mathematics be taught, these were also considered. The study was performed in a typical rural high school and the population was judged to be typical for general mathematics. Subjects were divided into two treatment groups (arithmetic review and consumer mathematics) and pre- and post- collection of data were carried out to assess changes with regard to the dependent variables post-test scores on a computational skills test, a problem-solving test , a mathematical attitude opinionnaire, and the California Test of Personality--over the duration of the study. Because of differences in mean scores on pre-tests, the covariance method for analysis was used to test for significance of any differences between scores of treatment groups on post-test data. Based on the population and the conditions of this study, the most important conclusions reached were: arithmetic review is a better content than consumer mathematics for a general mathematics class when the primary aim is to obtain an increase in computational skill; consumer mathematics is a better choice of content than arithmetic review for a general mathematics class when the primary aim is to obtain an increase in attitude toward mathematics. Differences were not found to be significant on any other dependent variables.