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
- world
- question
- computers
- years
- educating
- steps
- problems
- percent
- answer
- applying
- 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
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Important Words
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