[Music]
so I’m willing to bet that when you
think of fractions you don’t pause to
consider how deeply they’ve moved your
soul and when you see an algebraic
expression you don’t marvel at its
beauty in its power I have a confession
to make
I love math but that’s a hard thing to
admit when most people think of math is
something that is done to them something
they survive I remember the day my brain
finally came online sitting in mr.
Crouch’s physics 11:00 class where we
learned the astounding fact that we live
in a universe that is describable
through mathematics and up until that
point I thought of math is some set of
strange rituals you perform in order to
get the answer at the end now as a
teacher I’ve always wondered how many of
my lessons stay with my students into
adulthood and so with that in mind we’re
gonna have a pop quiz so I ask you three
questions and I just want you to raise
your hand if you’re confident that you
can answer each of those questions ready
here we go question 1 question 2
question 3 so if you didn’t like that
last part you’re gonna like this next
part even less because these are the
ages where we expect our students to
master those concepts and right about
now you might be trying to rationalize
why it is you can’t solve some of them
yourselves
you might rightly point out well it’s
been a really long time since I learned
this and how can I possibly be expected
to remember okay fair enough we could
just compare these to the other things
you were learning as a 10 12 and 14 year
old student can you write a paragraph
can you explain how and why we breathe
can you navigate the complex social
interactions about out life so you
probably had said that math is like a
language and languages are temperamental
when we use them they stay fresh and
then when we stop they fade but this is
getting to the heart of the problem
because if you don’t truly believe that
you’re using math all the time then
we’ve missed the mark remember when I
asked you if a fraction had ever moved
your soul if you said no then that’s
probably because we neglected to mention
that the meter and scales are music are
nothing but the cometary layerings of
fractions of waves
so granted that’s not exactly the
symphony but that’s not bad for a couple
of test tubes in a 50 minute talk on
multiplying fractions see I worried that
we’re teaching math is a sort of proxy
for logic and math is inherently logical
and yet solving math problems does not
necessarily require any logical thinking
whatsoever I’m worried that we’re
sanitizing these ideas into these
bite-size morsels each one simple enough
to master yet vague enough to lose any
connection to its original meaning now
our students by the time they graduate
well have had at least 12 years of math
instruction and that equates to a
thousands of hours of math learning
what’s our return on that investment
Eric Mazur is a physicist and professor
at Harvard who asserts that any test
question which can be googled is an
invalid test question and I want you to
pause and think for a second how much of
your math education could have been
googled and while you think about that I
want to show you one last thing see
before coming here and trying out my
little pop quiz
I tested on the only person that I could
give minutes to do it unfortunately for
her it was my five-year-old daughter
luckily for her she was armed with the
internet and some speech recognition
software what does this say well that
mean
now I know some of you are probably
saying isn’t he just using this as an
opportunity to make his kid look like
some sort of math genius and to those
people I would say you’re damn right I
am and more to the point what this shows
is that with the right tools all of our
five-year-olds are math geniuses in
terms of their abilities to compute the
mechanics of math have literally become
child’s play but what I want you to do
is pay attention to our answer to that
last question of course she has no idea
what it means
she has no context no foundation for
that knowledge my question for you is
how are we gonna make sure it’s not the
same thing for our 10 12 and 14 year old
students thank you
[Music]
[Applause]
so I’m willing to bet that when you
think of fractions you don’t pause to
consider how deeply they’ve moved your
soul and when you see an algebraic
expression you don’t marvel at its
beauty in its power I have a confession
to make
I love math but that’s a hard thing to
admit when most people think of math is
something that is done to them something
they survive I remember the day my brain
finally came online sitting in mr.
Crouch’s physics 11:00 class where we
learned the astounding fact that we live
in a universe that is describable
through mathematics and up until that
point I thought of math is some set of
strange rituals you perform in order to
get the answer at the end now as a
teacher I’ve always wondered how many of
my lessons stay with my students into
adulthood and so with that in mind we’re
gonna have a pop quiz so I ask you three
questions and I just want you to raise
your hand if you’re confident that you
can answer each of those questions ready
here we go question 1 question 2
question 3 so if you didn’t like that
last part you’re gonna like this next
part even less because these are the
ages where we expect our students to
master those concepts and right about
now you might be trying to rationalize
why it is you can’t solve some of them
yourselves
you might rightly point out well it’s
been a really long time since I learned
this and how can I possibly be expected
to remember okay fair enough we could
just compare these to the other things
you were learning as a 10 12 and 14 year
old student can you write a paragraph
can you explain how and why we breathe
can you navigate the complex social
interactions about out life so you
probably had said that math is like a
language and languages are temperamental
when we use them they stay fresh and
then when we stop they fade but this is
getting to the heart of the problem
because if you don’t truly believe that
you’re using math all the time then
we’ve missed the mark remember when I
asked you if a fraction had ever moved
your soul if you said no then that’s
probably because we neglected to mention
that the meter and scales are music are
nothing but the cometary layerings of
fractions of waves
so granted that’s not exactly the
symphony but that’s not bad for a couple
of test tubes in a 50 minute talk on
multiplying fractions see I worried that
we’re teaching math is a sort of proxy
for logic and math is inherently logical
and yet solving math problems does not
necessarily require any logical thinking
whatsoever I’m worried that we’re
sanitizing these ideas into these
bite-size morsels each one simple enough
to master yet vague enough to lose any
connection to its original meaning now
our students by the time they graduate
well have had at least 12 years of math
instruction and that equates to a
thousands of hours of math learning
what’s our return on that investment
Eric Mazur is a physicist and professor
at Harvard who asserts that any test
question which can be googled is an
invalid test question and I want you to
pause and think for a second how much of
your math education could have been
googled and while you think about that I
want to show you one last thing see
before coming here and trying out my
little pop quiz
I tested on the only person that I could
give minutes to do it unfortunately for
her it was my five-year-old daughter
luckily for her she was armed with the
internet and some speech recognition
software what does this say well that
mean
now I know some of you are probably
saying isn’t he just using this as an
opportunity to make his kid look like
some sort of math genius and to those
people I would say you’re damn right I
am and more to the point what this shows
is that with the right tools all of our
five-year-olds are math geniuses in
terms of their abilities to compute the
mechanics of math have literally become
child’s play but what I want you to do
is pay attention to our answer to that
last question of course she has no idea
what it means
she has no context no foundation for
that knowledge my question for you is
how are we gonna make sure it’s not the
same thing for our 10 12 and 14 year old
students thank you
[Music]
[Applause]
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