My journalism professor gave my class math problems to do today. Math problems. Involving numbers, division, percentages, area, diameter. I was embarrassed at first that it took me a good portion of the class period to find a percentage using ratios. Just using those terms alone strains the left side of my brain. I was only embarrassed, though, until a girl came up to me after class and said, "Did you think that was as hard as I did? Who knew that we would need to know this?" This relieved me... and scared me. Who knew that we would need to know math for journalism? Clearly not me. I always assumed that as long as I perfected my writing and creativity skills, I would be set for job hunting in the communications world. I don't plan to write about math and numbers... ever. But should everyone know basic math skills, despite their professions? When I'm creating writing samples to send out with my resume to media companies, should I also be reviewing the pythagorean theorem? The next thing I know there will be long division sections of the Leo Burnett application.
For all you writers that are laughing and saying how easy all of this seems, try doing this problem in 20 seconds with no calculator. That's all the time our teacher gave us:
If the restaurant pays the waitress $8 an hour and her boss decides to raise her hourly wage 5% each month, how much will she be earning per hour 4 months from now?
Go.
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