This is not my idea, by the way, I heard it discussed (briefly) on Radio 4's rather excellent "The Infinite Monkey Cage", about a year ago, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced its right.
What we should do more of is probability. Not just the stuff we do already - words, probability lines, fractions / decimals (do any maths teachers use percentages for probability, and if not, should we if the real world do?). Not just Venn diagrams and tree diagrams, but actual probability and risk assessment.
Don't panic. This is not risk assessment from a H and S form point of view, but from a maths point of view!
Why?
Well, every decision we make is based on probabilities and expectations. Should I buy a lottery ticket? What car finance deal should I go for? What stocks and shares should I buy?
Everyone needs to be able to properly weigh up the pros and cons of any situation. We need to teach the appropriate skills to do that. Students need to be able to set up appropriate models (modelling may be the second most important thing we teach!), and interogate those models. We then need to use our understanding of probabilities (using prior information) to make the 'best' decision.
There's a great example of this earlier on my blog - have a look at http://chrismaths.blogspot.com/2010/05/real-functional-maths.html to see why it's important.
Any other thoughts??
