There are so many things that make math in middle and high school sooooooooo booooooooring. Math is full of weird formulas and numbers that aren't numbers among all these other concepts that seem too strange to ever be of any use. When I was in high school it was assumed that the only people who needed much math were engineers and if you wanted to go into literature and the language arts, social services, political science, business, etc. that you didn't really need that much math. As long as you knew how to pay bills and make change this here math stuff was a waste. Even my math teachers weren't defending their subject's honor.
That is why I'd show every student the BBC program The Joy of Statistics.
It's an amazing program that showed how math and statistics can be applied to almost every area. It can help law enforcement, social workers, politicians, policy makers. If you're interested in language you can use it to translate information into every different language. If you want to study psychology you can use it to study emotions expressed on the internet. Interested in art and graphic design? Design statistical visualizations and save lives!
Unfortunately the full episode has been removed from youtube due to copy right infringement but there are still some great clips available:
An intro to Hans Rosling and his work.
From the documentary: Stanford University using statistics to study human emotion.
From the documentary: Using statistics to identify and fight crime in San Francisco.
From the documentary: Use statistics to design language translators for Google.
I <3 Hans.
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