The requirement was added to the Core this year because Faculty members say a quantitative course fills a gap in the College curriculum. All Core classes are designed to teach ways of thinking, in addition to the individual topics addressed by each course.

"People need to learn how to think quantitatively--we do live in a technological age," says Henry Ehrenreich, Clowes professor of science, who chaired the Core sub-committee on the sciences last year. "We need to understand the numerical ways of expressing trends which have to do with society in a general way. It's very reasonable to add this requirement."

The professors for the four classes currently offered describe their goals differently. Some say that that it is important to put mathematical concepts to use in the real world.

"I think the QR tends to work very well when you combine it with another subject," says Robert S. Huckman, head teaching fellow (TF) of QR 24: "Health Economics." "It convinces [students] it is worthwhile to learn the ins and outs of statistical analysis."

Professor of Statistics Carl N. Morris, who teaches QR 32, also focuses on real-world applications of statistics in his class.

"The course emphasizes statistical issues applied to real situations (science, law, advertising, experiments, surveys, probabilistic reasoning, forecasts, etc.)," he wrote in an e-mail message. "It teaches students about statistics in a way meant to be applicable in the student's daily lives and to their courses."

The other two QR classes, QR 22: "Deductive Logic" and QR 28: "The Magic of Numbers," focus on understanding abstract mathematical principals rather than applications.

"To understand the world, one doesn't need heavy math, one needs to be able to understand how to make sense of numbers, how to deal with quantitative info," says Loeb Professor of Social Sciences David M. Cutler, who teaches "Health Economics."