Why is mathematics course important? Essay

Mathematical thinking starts to become a common skill recently in which it could be used by many professionals across the world such as accountants, teachers, businessmen and marketing managers. The skill is crucially needed by these groups of people since various problems can be solved once an individual possesses such type of thinking. Useful mathematical knowledge and skills are needed especially among the students in order to ensure that they can obtain or achieve their selected professional careers or further their academic studies.
Zakaria (as cited in Kek, Darmawan & Chen, 2007) pointed out the fact where in the context of a changing world and striving to remain as a competitive country, Malaysia has initiated some changes to the higher education system. Many higher education degree programs have included mathematics courses in their curriculums to better prepare their graduates for the work environment and enable them to deploy appropriate and suitable evidences based practices in their work. Hence, nowadays, mathematics courses are studied in many local and international universities or colleges by students majoring in a range of various disciplines (Bilgin & Crowe, 2008).
Mathematics can be considered as a knowledge component that could solve problems in various fields and researches (Ashaari, Judi, Mohamed & Wook, 2011). Hand (as cited in Arumugam, 2014) claimed that mathematics is about solving real world problems. Unfortunately, not all countries possess enough mathematics graduates who could do all the required analyses. Mathematics course aims to train the students in writing basic mathematical notation and symbol as well as allowing the students to describe, analyze data by using numbers and graphs, evaluate data and statistical analyses done by other people and discuss the uses of the techniques in research and everyday life. It is important for the students to recognize when they should apply mathematical thinking that have been learned, use the skills possessed, recognize when and how they require additional mathematical knowledge and skills and obtain additional mathematical understanding.
According to the Department of Applied Science TOC Automotive College (2015), the issue of failing among the students for Engineering Mathematics course should receive high attention from everyone especially the lecturers since the failing rate could reach up until 30% per term. The rate of failure among the students in this course is quite high and crucial. Thus, a research could be conducted where the researcher will have a chance to explore the students learning strategies in studying this course and then compare each of the learning strategy with the scores obtained by the students themselves. Once the data obtained from the survey is analyzed, the most common type of learning strategy practiced by TOC students can be known. It also gives an opportunity for the researcher to compare the students types of learning strategies and their scores for this course. Indirectly, it will help the lecturers or educators as a whole in determining the best learning strategy for the students to score high marks and do not have to fail (resit or repeat) in this mathematics course.