To satisfy the Quantitative Reasoning Flag, a course must require the student to apply quantitative skills (logical, numerical, statistical) to real-world problems. The course must also require students to demonstrate understanding of the reasoning underlying the quantitative concepts in the course. The courses must give students opportunities to apply quantitative skills to problems related to their everyday lives or future professions. These problems should not be formulaic, but rather authentically contextualized so that students develop quantitative reasoning skills that extend beyond the classroom. In any given course, the balance between these two dimensions will vary, but the goal in every case is for students to learn when and how to use logical, numerical, and/or statistical skills and to understand the reasoning behind them.
For a class at UT to satisfy Quantitative Reasoning Flag, it must meet the following criteria:
- At least half the course grade must be based on the use of high-level quantitative skills (e.g., data analysis and modeling, simulation, statistics, probability, and quantitative decision analysis) to analyze real-world problems.
Courses that do not carry the Flag, and cannot be petitioned for Flag credit are:
- Pre-Calculus
- Trigonometry
- College Algebra
What is a Quantitative Reasoning Flag class like?
Quantitative Reasoning courses are taught in departments all over campus, both at the upper and lower divisions, and cover a wide variety of topics. For example, a Quantitative Reasoning class might focus on basic or advanced statistics and modeling of data, understanding analytical tools in economics and the abstract concepts that underlie them, or how to carry out and analyze results from GIS and remote sensing techniques in archaeological research.