I hope you can hear me it’s great to be
here in front of you and to talk to you
about what I did and what I’m what I’m
thinking about all day long so let’s
start with this guy
in 1961 John F Kennedy uttered the words
we choose the moon by doing so he
declared that the US would try to take
the lead in the space race and by that
reclaim the upper hand in one of the
most intense periods of the Cold War the
words of John F Kennedy were call of
duty for the scientists of that time
just to just think about it just think
about the challenge to let a shoe man
take a stroll on the moon all right to
put a human on the moon
just think about the challenge that has
that must have been at that time for
these scientists it must have seemed
impossible so what did the scientists do
did they despair did they decline did
they say no no they didn’t they sat down
and thought about the problem they said
okay let’s think about it how could we
solve this huge challenge and their
approach was to break it down so let’s
break it down step one well we need to
bring the astronauts up there right we
need to bring them to the moon and we
need for that we need a cup of rockets
we need to do a couple of computations
because we don’t want to shoot past moon
we want to go on the moon and then of
course step two we want to walk around
on the moon and plant our beautiful flag
and tell the world we’re the best right
we’re the best and for that of course we
we need a suit because no oxygen
lots of radiation and kind of cold so
that’s what they said okay we need a
suit and we can’t do that too and step
three of course is we want to bring our
guys back home safe and sound to the
families and friends of them right and
they said okay what do we need for that
well we don’t want them to burn up in
the atmosphere so let’s compute the
right angle of entry and we don’t want
them to crash into the ground
so let’s slow them down with it and
that’s how you did it with a couple of
parachutes and landing them in the sea
and not on land
what they did is they broke the problem
down into smaller steps they had one big
challenge and they broke it down into
step 1 step 2 step 3 and what the
scientists of that time did is they did
it again and again with each of these
challenges until they could answer every
question that arose every single problem
they could sink think of in this context
was soft creatively they did it through
logic through creativity they did it by
breaking the problem down they did it by
applying known patterns to new problems
and overcoming the challenge the
scientists of that time that’s something
that is incredible they put a man on the
moon and now you might ask me why should
I care about that why should I care
about bringing a man on the moon well of
course and thankfully not everyone here
has to bring a man on the moon not
everyone has to get the lead in the
space race for the US but still every
single one of us is confronted with big
problems and challenges in their day to
day lives there are just too big to
solve in one swing and we can think of
numerous examples of that let’s say
holding a TED talk and lots of feet in
front of lots of people
you can’t do that overnight or
convincing your boss of an idea that
he’s not fond of but you know that’s a
crucial point for the company or when
you want the blahs a plausible excuse to
why you were late to class a very simple
thing everyone knows very few things we
do in life don’t require this kind of
thinking don’t require this kind of
step-by-step thinking but the
fascinating part about this thinking is
that we acquire this we learn this this
is implanted in our brains through math
education so normally when we look at
math education we look at something like
this a complicated form of formula an
equation and it’s solution but when math
education is actually about is how we
got from there to there how he got from
A to B how we got from the problem to
the solution math education is actually
about the little spaces in between the
formulas it’s about the hence but this
because that it
about the implications about the
equivalences math education is about
having the curiosity to go into
uncharted territory and to understand
things you didn’t understand before math
education is about having a big problem
that you’re confronted with and breaking
it down so that you can solve it math
education is about understanding and
recognizing known patterns and new
problems to overcome the challenge we
can sum all of that up in a couple of
words math education above everything
else teaches you logic creativity and
pattern recognition these are skills
that are universal they go well beyond a
formula or a function they can tell you
whether you pay more or less in the
grocery shop for the salad or this one
they can tell you whether you’ll you’ll
make the goals your company set and they
can even put a man on the moon so these
things are crucial to us and we as
individuals should strive to understand
math if we see this we should as a
society strive to turn out a lot of
people who understand this so let’s go
away from this cute example to the world
of cold hard facts
I’m mathematicians I’d like that math
education and its impact on our lives is
something that was studied quite a bit
actually two scientists one from
Stanford University and one from the
University of Munich published a paper
for the World Bank called the role of
education quality in economic growth we
just looked at among other things the
impact of your math proficiency so how
good you are in math and how it worked
for the success you had in later life
and what it showed was that the better
you perform the math in high school the
more you would earn on in later life and
the better country performed as a whole
in mathematics the better it would
perform as a whole economically so when
we see this as individuals as as and as
a society we should want to be good in
math and we as a society should want to
turn out a lot of mathematically
proficient school leavers so why is it
then when I talk about math education I
look at you and you all go like this
you look at this and say oh my god I
hate math math you know it tortured me
in school had the the homework and the
tests I didn’t like it well it’s because
math has a fundamental flaw in our
school system is that because more and
more students go into our school system
and want to learn math the teacher or
the number of teacher doesn’t keep up we
don’t have enough teachers to teach math
to all of you so if we look back at our
school time well it looked like this at
the beginning had one teacher thirty
students were very motivated in this
case they’re green and they looked at
math and they were curious because I’ve
never heard of a kid that isn’t curious
that didn’t want to understand something
that didn’t want to learn I’ve never
heard of a kid they didn’t want to have
good grades the problem with math is
that at some point you’ll have a concept
that is complex and that one of these
students won’t understand it and when
this problem arises you need a teacher
that has the time to go to the student
and explain what he made wrong and where
he can go right and so that he can take
the next step the problem is that these
teachers don’t have the time so one of
these students is turning red alright
the problem here is that the student
goes into this vicious cycle of not
understanding getting frustrated not
understanding getting frustrated and so
on and so forth you see where I’m going
at some point this student will give up
he will have lost his curiosity his
drive to understand math his drive to
learn math and over the years as math
gets more and more complex a class that
looked like this will look like this
with more red students than green
students more students that as many of
you here and as I as me to at some point
didn’t like math anymore right we all
know this feeling and of course parents
see this of course parents see this of
through the lowering grades of their
children so what is the response the one
come response is let’s get a private
tutor right the great thing about
private tutoring is that you have one
teacher
one child right it gets you ahead it
provides you with the opportunity to
understand on your own with your own
teacher and my problem with privateering
is not that it doesn’t work it’s not
that it’s not effective it’s not that it
helps the kid it doesn’t help the kid my
problem with private tutoring is that
it’s crazy expensive what do I mean by
crazy expensive the private math
tutoring market by 2020 will be close to
a hundred billion dollars meaning that
families around the world will spend
close to a hundred billion dollars on
private tutors for their kids and that’s
a problem why is it a problem because
for all the families that can afford
that you have families that can’t
families that can’t give their children
the opportunity they need to get ahead
in life and I don’t think that’s the way
we should go as a society I don’t think
that the financial burden on families
should bankrupt these families just
because they want to give their children
a chance thankfully we live in a time of
technology and with the accelerated
ascent of technology we have to if we
have the opportunity to stay true to the
purpose of Education so what is the
purpose of Education the purpose of
Education is not having one teacher and
30 students the purpose of education is
to well educate children it’s to teach
them to think for themselves it’s to
teach them how to get ahead in life how
to confront the challenges of life and
that’s what it’s all about and when we
look at technology when we look at smart
phones tablets and apps that are in the
hand of every single student in the
world and every single teacher in the
world
we saw we’ve we suddenly have a platform
where if I develop something in Germany
every single one in the world can use my
tool my help I’m offering to all of you
that’s a great thing about technology
technology is our way to straight stay
true to this promise we make to the
children to stay true to the thing we
say when we say with this education
you’ll get ahead in life that’s what
technology gives us and my brother
and I’m worth 13 and 14 at the time when
we recognized this when we saw this
problem we saw this problem because of
two things first off since I was 10
I gave private math lessons so on a
daily basis I got more and more aware of
the fact that a lot of students had
problems in math and it was that it was
incredibly expensive for the families
and the second thing is that I come from
a family of mathematicians
my father was mathematician my
grandfather and his brother were math
professors my aunt is a math teacher my
cousin studied math my brother and I
studied math I think you get the gist we
quite like math we love you know
torturing our brains for some reason and
the great thing about that for us is
that we never close your minds to math
we never said it’s not important to
learn math because it is for your life
we never said give up we always kept our
mind open to the new challenges that
were posed through math and that’s why
we founded math for you to seven years
ago together with my brother and my
family math 42 is a technology that
helps middle school high school and
college students to understand math we
developed a technology that provides
high quality individual and affordable
education for now 2.5 million students
across the world 2.5 million students
across the world are using our tool to
get ahead in math now why is that why do
they use math for you to well our
approach was that when a student has a
problem the best way to learn is to
understand this problem so when he has a
problem or homework that he doesn’t
understand he comes to our app entrances
problem and just like a private tutor we
give him suggestions on how to solve the
problem and then we give him a
step-by-step solution of this problem we
explain it in in detail so that he can
understand it if you didn’t understand a
step well he can just click on the step
and look at the sub steps of the sub
steps of the sub steps down to four plus
one equals five from where on everyone
understands math we give him definitions
and we give him interactive graphs
that illustrate abstract concepts and
math beyond that we understand students
we know where they go wrong where they
go right where their problems lie and
what they need to do next to overcome
these challenges
that’s what math 42 and what we did was
about we wanted to provide a digital
private friend an assistant a tutor
that’s always in your pocket I want to
conclude by saying a couple of words
about math education why it’s so
important to me we as a society simply
can’t afford it anymore to leave these
children behind we as a society can’t
afford it anymore
to not give the opportunity to these
children and for that we need to change
the way we think about math and how we
think about math education we need to
unlearn the way was before our very
rigid view of Education and we need to
see the benefits of technology the way
that they help every single individual
that they make everything affordable and
we need not only to invest
technologically in math education but we
need to invest psychological math
education we need to stop fearing math
and we need to start fostering it we
need to start being curious again about
math and we need to stop saying it’s
okay it’s not important math is not
important to your life because it is
even if you’ve never felt it it actually
has a huge impact on your life the
question I asked you today is who do you
think will solve the energy problems we
have today in the face of global warming
who do you think
what’s your AIDS and cancer who do you
think will cure all the diseases that
get more and more resistant over time I
know who will it’ll be the kids here in
Paris in Mumbai in New York in George
Town and Johannesburg they’ll receive
great math education thank you very much
here in front of you and to talk to you
about what I did and what I’m what I’m
thinking about all day long so let’s
start with this guy
in 1961 John F Kennedy uttered the words
we choose the moon by doing so he
declared that the US would try to take
the lead in the space race and by that
reclaim the upper hand in one of the
most intense periods of the Cold War the
words of John F Kennedy were call of
duty for the scientists of that time
just to just think about it just think
about the challenge to let a shoe man
take a stroll on the moon all right to
put a human on the moon
just think about the challenge that has
that must have been at that time for
these scientists it must have seemed
impossible so what did the scientists do
did they despair did they decline did
they say no no they didn’t they sat down
and thought about the problem they said
okay let’s think about it how could we
solve this huge challenge and their
approach was to break it down so let’s
break it down step one well we need to
bring the astronauts up there right we
need to bring them to the moon and we
need for that we need a cup of rockets
we need to do a couple of computations
because we don’t want to shoot past moon
we want to go on the moon and then of
course step two we want to walk around
on the moon and plant our beautiful flag
and tell the world we’re the best right
we’re the best and for that of course we
we need a suit because no oxygen
lots of radiation and kind of cold so
that’s what they said okay we need a
suit and we can’t do that too and step
three of course is we want to bring our
guys back home safe and sound to the
families and friends of them right and
they said okay what do we need for that
well we don’t want them to burn up in
the atmosphere so let’s compute the
right angle of entry and we don’t want
them to crash into the ground
so let’s slow them down with it and
that’s how you did it with a couple of
parachutes and landing them in the sea
and not on land
what they did is they broke the problem
down into smaller steps they had one big
challenge and they broke it down into
step 1 step 2 step 3 and what the
scientists of that time did is they did
it again and again with each of these
challenges until they could answer every
question that arose every single problem
they could sink think of in this context
was soft creatively they did it through
logic through creativity they did it by
breaking the problem down they did it by
applying known patterns to new problems
and overcoming the challenge the
scientists of that time that’s something
that is incredible they put a man on the
moon and now you might ask me why should
I care about that why should I care
about bringing a man on the moon well of
course and thankfully not everyone here
has to bring a man on the moon not
everyone has to get the lead in the
space race for the US but still every
single one of us is confronted with big
problems and challenges in their day to
day lives there are just too big to
solve in one swing and we can think of
numerous examples of that let’s say
holding a TED talk and lots of feet in
front of lots of people
you can’t do that overnight or
convincing your boss of an idea that
he’s not fond of but you know that’s a
crucial point for the company or when
you want the blahs a plausible excuse to
why you were late to class a very simple
thing everyone knows very few things we
do in life don’t require this kind of
thinking don’t require this kind of
step-by-step thinking but the
fascinating part about this thinking is
that we acquire this we learn this this
is implanted in our brains through math
education so normally when we look at
math education we look at something like
this a complicated form of formula an
equation and it’s solution but when math
education is actually about is how we
got from there to there how he got from
A to B how we got from the problem to
the solution math education is actually
about the little spaces in between the
formulas it’s about the hence but this
because that it
about the implications about the
equivalences math education is about
having the curiosity to go into
uncharted territory and to understand
things you didn’t understand before math
education is about having a big problem
that you’re confronted with and breaking
it down so that you can solve it math
education is about understanding and
recognizing known patterns and new
problems to overcome the challenge we
can sum all of that up in a couple of
words math education above everything
else teaches you logic creativity and
pattern recognition these are skills
that are universal they go well beyond a
formula or a function they can tell you
whether you pay more or less in the
grocery shop for the salad or this one
they can tell you whether you’ll you’ll
make the goals your company set and they
can even put a man on the moon so these
things are crucial to us and we as
individuals should strive to understand
math if we see this we should as a
society strive to turn out a lot of
people who understand this so let’s go
away from this cute example to the world
of cold hard facts
I’m mathematicians I’d like that math
education and its impact on our lives is
something that was studied quite a bit
actually two scientists one from
Stanford University and one from the
University of Munich published a paper
for the World Bank called the role of
education quality in economic growth we
just looked at among other things the
impact of your math proficiency so how
good you are in math and how it worked
for the success you had in later life
and what it showed was that the better
you perform the math in high school the
more you would earn on in later life and
the better country performed as a whole
in mathematics the better it would
perform as a whole economically so when
we see this as individuals as as and as
a society we should want to be good in
math and we as a society should want to
turn out a lot of mathematically
proficient school leavers so why is it
then when I talk about math education I
look at you and you all go like this
you look at this and say oh my god I
hate math math you know it tortured me
in school had the the homework and the
tests I didn’t like it well it’s because
math has a fundamental flaw in our
school system is that because more and
more students go into our school system
and want to learn math the teacher or
the number of teacher doesn’t keep up we
don’t have enough teachers to teach math
to all of you so if we look back at our
school time well it looked like this at
the beginning had one teacher thirty
students were very motivated in this
case they’re green and they looked at
math and they were curious because I’ve
never heard of a kid that isn’t curious
that didn’t want to understand something
that didn’t want to learn I’ve never
heard of a kid they didn’t want to have
good grades the problem with math is
that at some point you’ll have a concept
that is complex and that one of these
students won’t understand it and when
this problem arises you need a teacher
that has the time to go to the student
and explain what he made wrong and where
he can go right and so that he can take
the next step the problem is that these
teachers don’t have the time so one of
these students is turning red alright
the problem here is that the student
goes into this vicious cycle of not
understanding getting frustrated not
understanding getting frustrated and so
on and so forth you see where I’m going
at some point this student will give up
he will have lost his curiosity his
drive to understand math his drive to
learn math and over the years as math
gets more and more complex a class that
looked like this will look like this
with more red students than green
students more students that as many of
you here and as I as me to at some point
didn’t like math anymore right we all
know this feeling and of course parents
see this of course parents see this of
through the lowering grades of their
children so what is the response the one
come response is let’s get a private
tutor right the great thing about
private tutoring is that you have one
teacher
one child right it gets you ahead it
provides you with the opportunity to
understand on your own with your own
teacher and my problem with privateering
is not that it doesn’t work it’s not
that it’s not effective it’s not that it
helps the kid it doesn’t help the kid my
problem with private tutoring is that
it’s crazy expensive what do I mean by
crazy expensive the private math
tutoring market by 2020 will be close to
a hundred billion dollars meaning that
families around the world will spend
close to a hundred billion dollars on
private tutors for their kids and that’s
a problem why is it a problem because
for all the families that can afford
that you have families that can’t
families that can’t give their children
the opportunity they need to get ahead
in life and I don’t think that’s the way
we should go as a society I don’t think
that the financial burden on families
should bankrupt these families just
because they want to give their children
a chance thankfully we live in a time of
technology and with the accelerated
ascent of technology we have to if we
have the opportunity to stay true to the
purpose of Education so what is the
purpose of Education the purpose of
Education is not having one teacher and
30 students the purpose of education is
to well educate children it’s to teach
them to think for themselves it’s to
teach them how to get ahead in life how
to confront the challenges of life and
that’s what it’s all about and when we
look at technology when we look at smart
phones tablets and apps that are in the
hand of every single student in the
world and every single teacher in the
world
we saw we’ve we suddenly have a platform
where if I develop something in Germany
every single one in the world can use my
tool my help I’m offering to all of you
that’s a great thing about technology
technology is our way to straight stay
true to this promise we make to the
children to stay true to the thing we
say when we say with this education
you’ll get ahead in life that’s what
technology gives us and my brother
and I’m worth 13 and 14 at the time when
we recognized this when we saw this
problem we saw this problem because of
two things first off since I was 10
I gave private math lessons so on a
daily basis I got more and more aware of
the fact that a lot of students had
problems in math and it was that it was
incredibly expensive for the families
and the second thing is that I come from
a family of mathematicians
my father was mathematician my
grandfather and his brother were math
professors my aunt is a math teacher my
cousin studied math my brother and I
studied math I think you get the gist we
quite like math we love you know
torturing our brains for some reason and
the great thing about that for us is
that we never close your minds to math
we never said it’s not important to
learn math because it is for your life
we never said give up we always kept our
mind open to the new challenges that
were posed through math and that’s why
we founded math for you to seven years
ago together with my brother and my
family math 42 is a technology that
helps middle school high school and
college students to understand math we
developed a technology that provides
high quality individual and affordable
education for now 2.5 million students
across the world 2.5 million students
across the world are using our tool to
get ahead in math now why is that why do
they use math for you to well our
approach was that when a student has a
problem the best way to learn is to
understand this problem so when he has a
problem or homework that he doesn’t
understand he comes to our app entrances
problem and just like a private tutor we
give him suggestions on how to solve the
problem and then we give him a
step-by-step solution of this problem we
explain it in in detail so that he can
understand it if you didn’t understand a
step well he can just click on the step
and look at the sub steps of the sub
steps of the sub steps down to four plus
one equals five from where on everyone
understands math we give him definitions
and we give him interactive graphs
that illustrate abstract concepts and
math beyond that we understand students
we know where they go wrong where they
go right where their problems lie and
what they need to do next to overcome
these challenges
that’s what math 42 and what we did was
about we wanted to provide a digital
private friend an assistant a tutor
that’s always in your pocket I want to
conclude by saying a couple of words
about math education why it’s so
important to me we as a society simply
can’t afford it anymore to leave these
children behind we as a society can’t
afford it anymore
to not give the opportunity to these
children and for that we need to change
the way we think about math and how we
think about math education we need to
unlearn the way was before our very
rigid view of Education and we need to
see the benefits of technology the way
that they help every single individual
that they make everything affordable and
we need not only to invest
technologically in math education but we
need to invest psychological math
education we need to stop fearing math
and we need to start fostering it we
need to start being curious again about
math and we need to stop saying it’s
okay it’s not important math is not
important to your life because it is
even if you’ve never felt it it actually
has a huge impact on your life the
question I asked you today is who do you
think will solve the energy problems we
have today in the face of global warming
who do you think
what’s your AIDS and cancer who do you
think will cure all the diseases that
get more and more resistant over time I
know who will it’ll be the kids here in
Paris in Mumbai in New York in George
Town and Johannesburg they’ll receive
great math education thank you very much
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