I do think it is still true that most people who do an A-level science subject such as physics or chemistry will also take maths, but since it isn't a requirement, the science subject will be taught as if the students aren't taking maths. At least in physics, this leaves it at mostly a show-and-tell sort of level, rather than giving the students proper understanding of how and why things work. I also think it gives them a very incorrect impression of what university level science is going to be like; the first year, one-third of the courses our physics students do are maths, and another third are (sort of) disguised-maths in the form of computational physics, with only a third being straight up physics. There was a similar level of maths for the first year students in Materials when I was at Imperial, and they too were often surprised by it...
I do recognize that there are niches of science where you can get by without maths, but I usually think they would actually do better if they had a deeper mathematical understanding. While you can use a spectrometer, to take your example, and just take the data it spits out, you will be better able to understand what it means if you understand the working principles and the data analysis that goes on in the 'black box', and that generally means understanding some maths. It isn't necessarily the 'hard core' algebra and calculus, but being able to understand statistics is extremely useful for any discipline that deals in large data sets...
Improving the mathematical literacy of the populous in general, is a topic close to my heart, and it upsets me that we fail people so badly in this. A lot of maths is just a compact way of expressing complex ideas, and being able to understand it allows you to see the underlying principles more clearly.
Sorry, I get quite worked up about this topic, as you may have noticed!
no subject
I do think it is still true that most people who do an A-level science subject such as physics or chemistry will also take maths, but since it isn't a requirement, the science subject will be taught as if the students aren't taking maths. At least in physics, this leaves it at mostly a show-and-tell sort of level, rather than giving the students proper understanding of how and why things work. I also think it gives them a very incorrect impression of what university level science is going to be like; the first year, one-third of the courses our physics students do are maths, and another third are (sort of) disguised-maths in the form of computational physics, with only a third being straight up physics. There was a similar level of maths for the first year students in Materials when I was at Imperial, and they too were often surprised by it...
I do recognize that there are niches of science where you can get by without maths, but I usually think they would actually do better if they had a deeper mathematical understanding. While you can use a spectrometer, to take your example, and just take the data it spits out, you will be better able to understand what it means if you understand the working principles and the data analysis that goes on in the 'black box', and that generally means understanding some maths. It isn't necessarily the 'hard core' algebra and calculus, but being able to understand statistics is extremely useful for any discipline that deals in large data sets...
Improving the mathematical literacy of the populous in general, is a topic close to my heart, and it upsets me that we fail people so badly in this. A lot of maths is just a compact way of expressing complex ideas, and being able to understand it allows you to see the underlying principles more clearly.
Sorry, I get quite worked up about this topic, as you may have noticed!