CalcuNATION and The Importance of Math Education.

I've spent the last few months developing the website CalcuNATION.  The website is my way of supporting math education and creating a different way for students of all ages to use math and recognize it's importance.  Up until now, I haven't really blogged about the website.  I guess I'll take a moment to explain how I came up with the idea, and why it's important to me.

Math has always been a big part of my life.  I grew up with parents that emphasized math education and how important it is to have a strong understanding of math.  My mother was a teacher and my father owned a small business.  My father always had a story or example that would emphasize math.  One that I remember was about my great-grandfather during the depression and how he was able to parlay his good math skills to be successful.  Which says a lot considering he was a farmer in central Kansas during the depression.

Now that I'm an adult, I find myself in a career that utilizes math.  I help develop and sell drive systems for heavy machinery.  It involves a lot of math.  A whole lot of math.  But, it is fun to see how calculations are used to develop a large machine.  Many of the machines that I help with are used in construction, mining, agriculture and the military.

I was having a conversation with a customer a few months ago about how to calculate the traction needed to develop a tracked rock-grinding machine when I thought about creating a simple calculation website where he could put in his machine information and it would give him an answer.  I put a lot of thought into what a calculation website would need to be for my customer and then it dawned on me to develop the website to show examples of calculations that are used daily.  That is where the idea for online calculators and CalcuNATION came in.

I thought more about who would use a website like CalcuNATION and who would get the most benefit from a collection of online calculators with formulas.  I decided to develop the website with students and teachers in mind.  The classic "Where will I use math in real life?" comment kept running over and over in my head.
So now it's been four months since I started the website.  I try to get as much feedback and involvement from students, teachers and friends to continue to make improvements.  I average one new calculator per day and I try to blog about math as much as possible.

The website has been very successful.  I get a lot of positive comments on it, and it has been used a lot.  Every month, the amount of visitors to the website doubles and that is encouraging to me.

So, if you read this and want to help me promote math, feel free to submit a new calculator idea, or register for the blog and write some posts about math.  Your help would me much appreciated.

CalcuNATION is a website featuring online calculators and educational resources for mathematics.  Other Mathematical Blogs ( CalcuNATION on EduBlogs and CalcuNATION on Blogger)