The Math(s) Fix: Now an Audiobook... Narrated by me!
One year ago I released my book The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age. It’s been great to see it so well received in the media—featured in Forbes, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, even winning the 2021 Independent Press Award for Education—as well as praised by individuals from all walks of life.
As I say in the preface, “My hope is to make this book readable for all who care—teachers, parents, students—and who need to care—employers, the educational community, policymakers.” It has started to do exactly this, and importantly, it has set out a real vision to bring those groups together to achieve core computational curriculum change.
Today I’m pleased to release The Math(s) Fix as an audiobook narrated by me. Some people like to read, some to listen, but everyone is needed to fix maths, so I thought it important to add this format.
As with the physical copy, I didn’t want the audiobook to be dry—read by someone without intrinsic interest in the contents. That’s why I’ve spent the past few months recording the book myself, so you can hopefully get the full expression of my educational failures, daughter’s tribulations and all the other anecdotes firsthand—alongside the core stuff.
Making it was a surprisingly gruelling process. The good news is that I still agree with what I wrote. The bad news was it’s amazing how many mispronunciations and wrong words I could produce per unit sentence (all of which I think we’ve fixed)! Still some way for me to go in literacy, but a very long way for our societies to go in computational literacy…
Fixing maths is urgent. I’m releasing this audiobook to help fan the flames and inspire more people to come together, not just to complain about what’s gone wrong but to be part of the solution. Urgent doesn’t mean easy or fast. It’s neither. But with everyone’s collective efforts, we can get this done.
Hope you can come along on this journey, and if so, let me know how you get along. Even more so, do encourage others to take a look, a read or a listen!
If you have read the book or plan on listening to it, and find yourself agreeing, please make sure to add your name and your voice to MFC5: The Maths Fix Campaign for Core Computational Curriculum Change.
Praise for The Math(s) Fix
And if I haven’t convinced you to take a listen, here’s what others thought of the book….
“Give a copy of The Math(s) Fix to your local school superintendent and start a community conversation about how you can make education more relevant and equitable.”
“A devastating assault on this parody of modern education comes from the information technology radical, Conrad Wolfram. Called The Math(s) Fix, it portrays maths as a subject which, perhaps like others, is trapped in the pre-computer age. Wolfram portrays maths exams as like taking a driving test with a horse and cart. It needs to take over where the computer leaves off, in a world of calculated uncertainty, risk and, dare we say it, common sense.”
“Wolfram estimates that about 80% of most math curricula involves rote hand calculations—redundant exercises like long division and exponential functions. Why bother with that mess when a computer can calculate it in seconds and at a much more complex level?”
More praise for The Math(s) Fix »
For Those Interested, Here’s my Home Recording Tech Set-Up
The physical equipment consisted of a RØDE NT1-A microphone, complete with shock mount and pop filter, going into a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface, before being recorded using Audacity. Other bits of recording paraphernalia included a Thomann t.bone Micscreen to reduce echo and room noise, a RØDE PSA-1 to hold the microphone assembly, a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M30x headphones to listen back on and a copy of the The Math(s) Fix Kindle edition to read from.
After recording each chapter (out of order to keep my delivery consistent—on the advice of a friend who works at the BBC), it was uploaded to our cloud file-sharing system, where the Wolfram editing team worked their magic—cutting, editing and mastering, getting the audiobook ready for assembly and delivery to Audible.