full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So let's ask another qouseitn. What is math? What do we mean when we say we're doing math, or eatcundig people to do math? Well, I think it's about four stpes, roughly speaking, starting with posing the right question. What is it that we want to ask? What is it we're trying to find out here? And this is the thing most screwed up in the outside wrlod, beyond virtually any other part of doing math. People ask the wrong question, and surprisingly enough, they get the wrong asnewr, for that reason, if not for others. So the next thing is take that pbrelom and turn it from a real world problem into a math problem. That's stage two. Once you've done that, then there's the computation step. Turn it from that into some answer in a mathematical form. And of course, math is very powerful at doing that. And then finally, turn it back to the real world. Did it answer the question? And also verify it — crucial step. Now here's the crazy thing right now. In math education, we're spending about perhaps 80 pcrneet of the time teaching people to do step three by hand. Yet, that's the one step cuperomts can do better than any human after yreas of practice. Instead, we ought to be using computers to do step three and using the students to spend much more effort on learning how to do steps one, two and four — conceptualizing prleombs, appilyng them, getting the teacher to run them through how to do that.

Open Cloze

So let's ask another ________. What is math? What do we mean when we say we're doing math, or _________ people to do math? Well, I think it's about four _____, roughly speaking, starting with posing the right question. What is it that we want to ask? What is it we're trying to find out here? And this is the thing most screwed up in the outside _____, beyond virtually any other part of doing math. People ask the wrong question, and surprisingly enough, they get the wrong ______, for that reason, if not for others. So the next thing is take that _______ and turn it from a real world problem into a math problem. That's stage two. Once you've done that, then there's the computation step. Turn it from that into some answer in a mathematical form. And of course, math is very powerful at doing that. And then finally, turn it back to the real world. Did it answer the question? And also verify it — crucial step. Now here's the crazy thing right now. In math education, we're spending about perhaps 80 _______ of the time teaching people to do step three by hand. Yet, that's the one step _________ can do better than any human after _____ of practice. Instead, we ought to be using computers to do step three and using the students to spend much more effort on learning how to do steps one, two and four — conceptualizing ________, ________ them, getting the teacher to run them through how to do that.

Solution

  1. world
  2. question
  3. computers
  4. years
  5. educating
  6. steps
  7. problems
  8. percent
  9. answer
  10. applying
  11. problem

Original Text

So let's ask another question. What is math? What do we mean when we say we're doing math, or educating people to do math? Well, I think it's about four steps, roughly speaking, starting with posing the right question. What is it that we want to ask? What is it we're trying to find out here? And this is the thing most screwed up in the outside world, beyond virtually any other part of doing math. People ask the wrong question, and surprisingly enough, they get the wrong answer, for that reason, if not for others. So the next thing is take that problem and turn it from a real world problem into a math problem. That's stage two. Once you've done that, then there's the computation step. Turn it from that into some answer in a mathematical form. And of course, math is very powerful at doing that. And then finally, turn it back to the real world. Did it answer the question? And also verify it — crucial step. Now here's the crazy thing right now. In math education, we're spending about perhaps 80 percent of the time teaching people to do step three by hand. Yet, that's the one step computers can do better than any human after years of practice. Instead, we ought to be using computers to do step three and using the students to spend much more effort on learning how to do steps one, two and four — conceptualizing problems, applying them, getting the teacher to run them through how to do that.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
real world 5
teaching people 5
math education 3
modern world 2
ancient greek 2
minute suggesting 2
hand calculating 2
people bring 2
school math 2
large number 2

Important Words

  1. answer
  2. applying
  3. computation
  4. computers
  5. conceptualizing
  6. crazy
  7. crucial
  8. educating
  9. education
  10. effort
  11. finally
  12. find
  13. form
  14. hand
  15. human
  16. learning
  17. math
  18. mathematical
  19. part
  20. people
  21. percent
  22. posing
  23. powerful
  24. practice
  25. problem
  26. problems
  27. question
  28. real
  29. reason
  30. roughly
  31. run
  32. screwed
  33. speaking
  34. spend
  35. spending
  36. stage
  37. starting
  38. step
  39. steps
  40. students
  41. surprisingly
  42. teacher
  43. teaching
  44. time
  45. turn
  46. verify
  47. virtually
  48. world
  49. wrong
  50. years