Mass Communication students fail in Mathematics

     Mass communication is a field that greatly relies on statistics, and to understand statistics (i.e. public opinion polls), they say that Mathematics is undeniably needed.

     When we student, is asked what is our course and we answered, “I am taking up Mass Communication”, people in all probability would say, “So your course description does not have Mathematics?”

     I wonder where they got that idea that Mass Communication does not take up Mathematics subjects. Though, most of Mass Communication students actually hate Math subjects, we cannot escape the reality that a Mass Communication course also offers Mathematics subjects and we do not have any choice but endure it because we like this course, and this is the only field where the course description only offers three Mathematics subjects namely College Algebra, Plane Trigonometry and Elementary Statistics.

    But my Elementary Statistics professor said that the subject Statistics is different from Mathematics. She did not explain why and I did not bother to ask her as well. And having it searched on the Oxford’s Dictionary, Statistics is defined as the science of the collection, organization, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of planning of data, collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments, while mathematics is the investigation of axiomatically defined abstract structures using logic and mathematical notation. And having it analyzed, my own understanding is that, Mathematics is based on numbers and proven formulas while Statistics is based on variables, graphs, etc.

     It has been a cliché that if a person is good in writing and can articulate better in English orally and verbally, that person in all probability is slow in mathematics. So when I started college and took up Mass communication, lots of people would always say that those students taking up Mass Communication are afraid of mathematics. And according to George Herbert Mead, a sociologist, in his Symbolic Interactionism, it is the people around us that assign meaning to us and we become that kind of person because as we may not notice it, we affirm that meaning. I guess Ms. Jeanie Derillo, our chairperson, was right when she said that Mass Communication students have come to fear mathematics subjects mainly because we affirm the meaning what people attached to us  and in result to that, a number of students roughly always fail in math.

Fig. 1.1 Sophomore Mass Communication students in a block section in Plane Trigonometry.

Fig. 1.2 Sophomore Mass Communication students in a block section in Plane Trigonometry.

     As shown above, Fig. 1.1 shows that more than 80% of the students passed and among 20% failed during prelims in Plane Trigonometry. And on Fig. 1.2, it shows that among 60% passed and more than 30% failed on midterms. Having conducted a survey on second year Mass Communication students, who are in a block section, taking up the subject Plane Trigonometry, it shows that less than half of the students failed in their math subject during prelims and it increased on midterms with more than half failing the subject.

     For those students who passed on both periods, they will certainly pass on the next period and on their final grade. But how about those who failed? In a performance based grading system, it is roughly difficult to pass a subject if one fails on two consecutive periods. So are they going to become irregular students and take the same subject for the second time around?

     And talking about irregular students, I happened to have friends taking up their math subjects and they said it is harder for them to pass the said subject starting on prelim and on the following periods because they are an irregular students and the professors do not give considerations as much as they give for those in a block section. As I asked the eight of them, only three passed and five failed on both periods as visualized on Fig. 2.1.

Fig. 2.1 Irregular students who passed and failed on Mathematics during Prelim and Midterms.

     As shown on the chart above, five of eight irregular students fail on mathematics causes dismay because that was only less than of the many irregular Mass Communication students and for sure there are many of them who fails in math subjects.

     What could really be the reason why most Mass Communication students fail in math subjects? Is it because of the students who said that they are doing all their best to understand the subject in order to pass it and could only do as much or is it because of the meaning that other people assigns to us and have lived with the cliché that “a person who is good in English is slow in Mathematics”? Or is it mainly because of the professors who are not sparing us some considerations and thought that we have the intellect of their other students who are Mathematics majors? Are Algebra and Trigonometry really needed in our course? How can it be useful in line with journalism, news reporting, advertising, etc.? Do we need formulas to compose an essay or something?

    As Statistics different from math and focuses on collection, organization, and interpretation of data will be certainly useful for Mass Communication students because it is in line with our course description and this field certainly relies on statistics like public opinions polls to gather some data. Failing a minor subject like math will only add some dirt on our transcript of records when we graduate.