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‘Make mathematics practical for students to understand’

A former lecturer with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) Ghana, Dr Edward Prempeh, has urged mathematics teachers to make the subject very practical for students to understand.

He said this at the AIMS’ first industry and academia forum which forms part of their 10th anniversary celebration.

Held at the Google office in Accra, the forum, aimed at helping graduates to go into industry, was on the theme “Building Africa’s transformative leaders for the 4th industrial revolution: The role of mathematics and its applications.”

According to Dr Prempeh who was answering questions on maths phobia and maths presentation, said students would understand the subject better when it was made very practical to them.

Dr Prempeh, who doubles as a Coordinator of the Kessben University said there was the need for improvement on how maths ideas were transmitted to students.

“If we can make it easy with the basic language we use, then it will be easier for students to understand maths and remove maths phobia and make it practical for people to understand,” he noted.

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of AIMS, Ms Adelaide Asante, underlined the importance of the forum aimed at demonstrating the impact of maths in various sectors of the economy, the role of universities in training and research, and also to showcase the success stories of AIMS Ghana in industry and academia.

Delivering the keynote address, Mr Ras Boateng, the CEO of Pensions Alliance Trust, asserted that “Maths is fundamental to everything we do. Maths is the omnipresent academic discipline.”

Addressing concerns on data loss and downtime, Stephen Kwaku Amponsah of the Collateral Registry, Bank of Ghana, and an alumnus of AIMS said “there must be controls in place when these risks crystalise as well as remediation in place when data loss occurs.”

Contributing to a discussion on the “Importance of mathematics training in health and energy technologies”, Prof. Nick Monk, Professor of Statistics, University of Sheffield, said the world was able to deal with COVID-19 due to the models already established by mathematicians in the area of infectious diseases. 

There were contributions from Dr Alex Somto Arinze Alochukwu of the University of Johannesburg, a director of Impact Group of Companies, Mra Giles Tetteh, and Dr Joseph Essandoh-Yeddu, Lead Technical Partner for UNEP Project on Electric Vehicles and Climate Smart Agriculture.

In a remark, the Centre President of AIMS Ghana, Dr Prince K. Osei, expressed delight at the ideas shared and expressed the hope that it would improve the tutelage of the subject at the schools.

BY ANDREW NORTEY

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