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I spent a solid 6 months teaching my 8 year old (now 9) fractions in the fall. We did ratios, proportions, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, then common fractions to decimals and back again. We spent forever on fractions- learning when you can cross cancel, when you can simplify, when to use LCM or GCD to find common denominators or simplify. THEN we started AoPS Pre-Algebra in January. Fractions are really the only thing that I have "drilled and killed" into his head. I wanted automaticity so we could move on to the harder "what if" problems in AoPS.

I was recently telling a middle school math teacher about how I did it and she was shocked. "Why did you spend so much time on fractions? We do that in just a few weeks!" She could not believe that I "wasted" all that time. Yet, like the author pointed out, fractions are the base of everything that comes next. If you can't understand fractions, you can't really move on with any long-term success. I don't know why teachers don't spend more time on this!

Biology students may wonder if the math they are required to take will be useful to them in the future or if it just a hurdle they need to jump over. I wonder why pre-meds (who make up a decent fraction of biology majors) are expected to take calculus (and if they come in with AP calculus credit, multivariable calculus) in college, when very few medical students or doctors use calculus. The standard college calculus courses may be better suited to engineering and physics majors. To address this, Harvard recently created a one-semester course on differential equations for biologists with textbook "Modeling Differential Equations in Biology". But even a course designed for biology majors presupposes a certain math level on their part.

The thing is that biology is becoming increasingly mathematical. For example, -omics type studies require significant statistical analyses. So do studies that involve any kind of analysis of a control group vs. a treatment group (that's a lot of studies in biology). While you can hire a statistician to do the analysis for you, you still need to be able to understand what s/he's talking about and the stuff that other people have written. It's also important that people who review papers and grants have at least a rudimentary understanding of the statistics that the writers use. In my experience in grant review, this is often not the case. Reviewers often gloss over the statistics and assume that the writers are correct.

And that's just statistics. There are other areas (e.g. modeling), too. Google "mathematics in biology" for a flavor of the idea, though.

There's a movement to improve mathematical skill in biology students, but it's still in its infancy.