The "Why" of Math | Po-Shen Loh | TEDxCMU
TLDRThe speaker, a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University and former national coach of the U.S. International Math Olympiad team, addresses the widespread 'pain' of math and the need for a more engaging approach to learning it. He founded social enterprise XP to foster this change and highlights the disparity in societal investment in sports versus math education. The script advocates for a blend of entertainment and education, showcasing real-life math applications and the potential for personalized learning through technology. The goal is to make math accessible and enjoyable, debunking the myth of innate math ability and emphasizing the importance of math as the art of thinking and reasoning.
Takeaways
- 😖 Math is a subject that causes pain for millions, affecting their lives for over a decade.
- 🏆 The speaker is a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the national coach for the U.S. International Math Olympiad team.
- 🤔 The speaker founded a social enterprise, XP, to help change the way people learn math, emphasizing the need for diverse thought and skills.
- 💡 There is a disparity in funding between math education and sports like basketball, with more money spent on advertising for sports than on teaching math.
- 🎥 The speaker is involved in creating a series of videos that combine math, real-life scenarios, and entertainment to make math more appealing.
- 📚 The importance of collaboration is highlighted, as seen in the production involving various partners from the film and entertainment industry.
- 🧠 Math can provide a 'sixth sense', enabling people to see patterns and understand the world around them more clearly.
- 🍻 An example is given about the misconceptions in estimating the volume of cone-shaped cups, showing how math can correct intuition.
- 🚫 The belief that people are born either able to do math or not is debunked, suggesting that with the right approach, everyone can learn math.
- 📱 The speaker advocates for the use of smartphones and technology to provide personalized, one-on-one math learning experiences.
- 🌐 The interconnectedness of computers and smartphones offers a cost-effective way to make personalized math education accessible to everyone.
- 🌟 The ultimate goal is to foster thoughtful reasoning and build a more thoughtful world through the art of math.
Q & A
What is the main issue the speaker addresses in the script?
-The speaker addresses the widespread issue of people struggling with math and the societal approach to teaching and learning math.
What role did the speaker take on that inspired them to think about math education?
-The speaker became the national coach of the United States International Math Olympiad team, which inspired them to consider how to improve math education on a national and international scale.
What is the name of the social enterprise founded by the speaker to help achieve their educational goals?
-The speaker founded a social enterprise called XP to help achieve their goals in math education.
Why does the speaker believe that the approach to teaching math needs to change?
-The speaker believes that the approach to teaching math needs to change because the current methods are not as effective as they could be, and people are not as engaged with math as they are with sports like basketball.
What is the speaker's view on the relationship between advertising and people's engagement with activities like sports?
-The speaker points out that a lot of money is spent on advertising to encourage people to play sports like basketball, whereas there is no similar effort to promote math, suggesting that this could be a reason for the disparity in engagement.
What is the Pythagorean theorem, and how does the speaker use it in a real-life scenario in the script?
-The Pythagorean theorem is a principle in geometry that relates the lengths of the sides of a right-angled triangle. The speaker uses it to calculate distances in a parkour video to demonstrate how math intersects with real life.
What is the significance of involving teenagers in the design and conversation of educational tools according to the speaker?
-The speaker believes that involving teenagers in the design process is crucial because they are the target audience and can provide valuable insights into what will effectively engage their peers.
What is the 'sixth sense' the speaker refers to that math can provide?
-The 'sixth sense' the speaker refers to is the ability to understand and see patterns and relationships in the world around us, which math can help us to perceive more clearly.
Why does the speaker think that math is often perceived as difficult to learn?
-The speaker believes math is perceived as difficult because of the long chains of dependencies between concepts, which can lead to gaps in understanding if a student misses a concept or falls behind.
What is the speaker's proposal to make math more accessible and engaging?
-The speaker proposes leveraging technology, such as smartphones and computer servers, to provide personalized, one-on-one learning experiences that can identify and fill gaps in a student's understanding of math concepts.
What is the ultimate goal of the speaker's project to improve math education?
-The ultimate goal is to build a more thoughtful world by advocating for math as the art of thinking and reasoning, making it accessible to everyone and encouraging a deeper understanding of the world through mathematical literacy.
Outlines
🧑🏫 Transforming Math Education
The speaker, a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses the widespread pain of learning math and the need for a collective approach to improve it. As the national coach of the U.S. International Math Olympiad team, the speaker was inspired to help people learn math on a larger scale. They founded a social enterprise, XP, to tackle this challenge and pondered the disparity in funding between math education and sports like basketball. The speaker suggests that instead of just teaching math, we should be asking why people engage in activities without being taught, hinting at the subconscious motivations behind human actions.
🤸♂️ The Power of Collaboration and Real-Life Math
The speaker emphasizes the importance of collaboration and the role of various partners in creating a series of videos that blend math, real-life scenarios, and entertainment. They highlight the subconscious appeal of these videos to make math more engaging and intuitive. The speaker uses a cone-shaped cup example to demonstrate how math can provide a 'sixth sense' to understand the world better. They debunk the myth that people are born with or without the ability to do math, suggesting that with the right approach, everyone can develop mathematical skills. The analogy of memorizing patterns is used to illustrate the power of understanding concepts over rote memorization.
📱 Democratizing Math Education Through Technology
The speaker discusses the unique opportunity presented by the prevalence of smartphones to make math education accessible to everyone. They analyze the challenges of learning math due to its linear and interdependent concepts, suggesting that identifying and filling gaps in understanding can make learning more coherent. The speaker proposes a strategy to use technology for personalized learning, where computers can process calculations at incredible speeds, allowing for individualized attention to each learner's needs. They also advocate for a diverse approach to learning, suggesting that different methods could be employed for teaching each lesson. The speaker concludes with a profound reason for their dedication to math education: the belief that math is the art of thinking and reasoning, aiming to build a more thoughtful world.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Math
💡Math Olympiad
💡Social Enterprise XP
💡Diversity of Thought
💡Entertainment
💡Pythagorean Theorem
💡Subconscious
💡Sixth Sense
💡Accessibility
💡Smartphones
💡Concepts and Structure
💡Thinking and Reasoning
Highlights
The speaker addresses the widespread issue of 'math anxiety', affecting millions of people globally.
Introduction of the speaker as a math professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the national coach of the U.S. International Math Olympiad team.
The founding of a social enterprise, XP, to help improve math learning on a national and international scale.
The speaker's realization of the disparity in funding between math education and sports, questioning why more isn't spent on encouraging math engagement.
A call to action to understand the underlying reasons behind people's attitudes towards math and how to improve learning outcomes.
The idea of using entertainment as a method to make math more appealing, inspired by the lack of advertisements for math compared to sports.
The demonstration of a real-life application of math using the Pythagorean theorem in a parkour video.
The importance of involving teenagers in the design and conversation of educational tools, as shown by the parkour video collaboration.
The announcement of a series of math, real-life, and entertainment productions in partnership with film and entertainment industries.
The argument that math provides a 'sixth sense', enabling a deeper understanding of the world through patterns and reasoning.
A demonstration of how math can correct common misconceptions, such as the volume of cone-shaped cups.
The debunking of the myth that people are born with or without the ability to do math, suggesting that proper learning methods can enable everyone.
The analogy of learning math to recognizing patterns, like identifying a car in a complex pattern of lines.
The importance of accessibility in learning, drawing a parallel between the widespread availability of basketball hoops and the potential for math learning.
The unique opportunity presented by smartphones to provide personalized, one-on-one math learning experiences.
The speaker's personal motivation for promoting math as the art of thinking and reasoning, aiming to build a more thoughtful world.
Transcripts
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