U.S. researchers find that mathematics is the best course to take in high school to succeed in science in college.

Robert Tai, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and Philip Sadler, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, studied over eight thousands students within over sixty colleges in the United States who were taking introductory science courses.

The pair of researchers found that taking any of the three basic science courses in high school—chemistry, physics, or biology—did not help as much as taking mathematics in high school when it came to doing well in college in any of those three basic science areas.

Their results are reported in the journal Science. Tai and Sadler’s studies were funded by the National Science Foundation's Interagency Educational Research Initiative.

For additional information on the study, go to: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-07/hu-css072407.php.

Their results should not be surprising to educators, but it seems to be and counter to what many are promoting. The learning and understanding of mathematics is very important to being well prepared for a science career, in fact, for any career in an industrialized and highly technical country of the world.