I am a school maths teacher and I love teaching maths… but I often get frustrated by some of the content I have to teach that isn’t preparing my students for the technological world they live in and will be working in.
Last year, I became aware of The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age, a ground-breaking book that discusses why maths education is in crisis worldwide and suggests that the only fix is a fundamentally new mainstream subject. It blew my mind!
The Math(s) Fix argues that today’s maths education isn’t working as it doesn’t take into consideration the existence of modern computation, data science and Artificial Intelligence (AI). This book sets out what the problem is, how it came about and how it can be solved. It takes a cold, hard look at what maths education is and lays out what it should be, not only to keep up with AI, but to empower humankind for this upcoming era.
Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of interviewing the author, Conrad Wolfram. In my interview, I chatted to him about why he wrote The Math(s) Fix and I asked him what he envisages for the future of maths education. Here is the interview:
Conrad Wolfram is cofounder and CEO of Wolfram Research Europe and over the last 30 years he has been a key part of the technology transformation that has brought maths, computation and data science to the forefront of today’s world. Conrad regularly appears in the media to speak about subjects ranging from the computational future and AI to twenty-first-century education. I first became aware of him after watching his brilliant 2010 TED talk ‘Teaching Kids Real Maths with Computers’. Since his talk, his team founded www.computerbasedmath.org to build a solution. The Math(s) Fix book is a key milestone in the journey to fundamental reform.
Here is the video of his 2010 TED Talk – ‘Teaching Kids Real Maths with Computers’
If you are a maths teacher and you are interested in finding out more about delivering the Computer Based Maths course and resources, here are some links:
https://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-u/catalog/computational-thinking/
https://www.computerbasedmath.org/download-module/
And if you would like to support ‘The Maths Fix ‘Campaign, go here:
https://www.computerbasedmath.org/take-action/
I hope this post leads to more discussions about how we can improve maths education and make it more relevant to the world we are living in now!
Do The Maths Thing 
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