= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
bentarm comments on What is wrong with mathematics education? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (56)
If you want good ideas for revolutionising mathematics education, you picked the wrong TED talk. Summary of Wolfram's talk: we still teach people maths as if we were living 50 years ago, when the ability to actually do this stuff on paper was useful. It would be much more sensible to be teaching them how to use computers optimally, as that's what people who use maths in real life actually do.
My summary of Wolfram's talk (which he might not endorse): if it's a choice between teaching people maths and teaching them programming, teach them programming.
Speaking of Wolfram, I learned calculus (in my freshman year of college) in a then-new, Mathematica-based course called Calculus & Mathematica. (My backwoods high school had no pre-calc or calculus).
I really liked it; we were freed of the boring mechanical stuff, leaving time to better learn the underlying concepts. There were plenty of examples that non-programmer-types could copy, paste and tweak. (As a side effect, the then-shiny, new NeXTStations got me interested in then-new Linux).
It seems to still be going today, though I've not kept up with the people.
I thank you for posting this. I took AP CS instead of calculus this year after I watched Wolfram's TED talk. I was worried that eventually I would have to learn calculus the normal way.
Do they offer online classes? How am I going to get around taking calculus the normal way?