They’re learning how to do computation, and not leaving that to the machines. But what we’re doing in education right now is making people learn how to calculate by hand, but not learn how to do problem solving at a high level. Today, computation now gets done fantastically well by computers-better than anyone could ever have imagined 1,500 years ago. But math to me is a problem-solving system, and with some logic and computation, you can come out with an answer. It’s kind of shocking to many people that I would say that. But in what ways do you think we’re still missing the point when it comes to teaching math or getting kids engaged in the subject?įundamentally, I think it’s somewhat the wrong subject. Today there are many math instructional software and tools. Your recent work and writing has focused on math education. I found it quite fun, and the fact that I seemed somewhat more successful than some of my friends drove me forwards. What really interested me was applying it in physics or in other areas. I wasn’t interested in the actual structure of it and how it worked. Wolfram: Like many people who kind of enjoy math, the reasons I enjoyed it at first was because I beat my friends at school. (Note: the interview has been edited for clarity.) Conrad WolframĮdSurge: How did your interest in math begin? When? And, were you always good at math as a child? Today, Wolfram is the founder of Computers-Based Math, an effort that he described as “building a new math curriculum that assumes computers exist.” In the following interview with EdSurge, he explains what exactly that means. His critique, in a nutshell: math instruction has become too fixated on computation-solving for x, for example-and removed from real-world applications and data. That conclusion may seem startling, especially as Wolfram is the strategic director of Wolfram Research, and one of the brains behind Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica, a system widely used in technical fields to process complex computations and calculations. “Sadly,” he wrote, “I’ve started to conclude that the answer is yes.” Has the math brand become toxic? That was the provocative question posed by Conrad Wolfram in a blog post earlier this summer.
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