Review of Case Studies for Quantitative Reasoning: A Casebook of Media Articles by Bernard L. Madison, Stuart Boersma, Caren L. Diefenderfer, and Shannon W. Dingman

• Main Author: Samuel L. Tunstall
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Numeracy Network 2015-07-01
• Series: Numeracy
• Subjects: book review; numeracy; quantitative literacy; media articles
• Online Access: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol8/iss2/art12/

Bernard L. Madison, Stuart Boersma, Caren L. Diefenderfer, and Shannon W. Dingman. Case Studies for Quantitative Reasoning: A Casebook of Media Articles (Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012). 215 pp. ISBN 9781256512875. Concisely organized and timely to a tee, Case Studies for Quantitative Reasoning contains a wealth of articles and exercises to promote higher-order thinking in any course where quantitative literacy is a goal. The text is a self-contained package complete with just enough mathematics to ensure that all students can join in. It contains a total of twenty-four case studies, each of which highlights how numbers appear in day-to-day media. The text is broken into six broad mathematical topics, each of which includes any background mathematics necessary for reading. Each individual study includes warm-up exercises and follow-up questions that demand critical thinking. Notwithstanding the elementary mathematics prerequisite to read the text, the topics and questions are sufficiently challenging to keep a class – and accompanying instructor – engaged for an entire semester.