Posts tagged math
Today's Power of Disenfranchisement: Are Data Scientists the New High Priests?
Today's Power of Disenfranchisement: Are Data Scientists the New High Priests?

Computational Thinking—The New Literacy

Our democracies face a massive challenge today. The battleground for electoral success is based on information that few are equipped to question. A small elite manages our thoughts through knowledge only they possess, to the exclusion of most citizens.

I am talking about the overriding effect of modern data science and more generally computation in our societies. Just a tiny fraction of our populations are educated in directly applying computational thinking to information, arguments and decisions they have to take. Including about government. Including about voting.

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Conrad Wolframdata science, democracy, math Comment
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Has the math(s) brand become toxic?
Has the math(s) brand become toxic?

For once I'm not talking about the contents of school maths but the name and its associations.

The question I'm asking is if our core technical subject wasn't termed "maths" but "nicebrand" would things go better in and out of education?

Sadly, I've started to conclude the answer is yes. I now suspect that using the brand of maths is damaging core technical education, its reform, and efforts to equip society for the AI age.

Believe me, this is not the conclusion I want. I've spent years of my life somehow connected with the word "maths". But much as I might not like my conclusion, I want the essence of subject maths to succeed; so I don't want the name to kill the subject—a much worse outcome.

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Conrad WolframAssessment, Calculus, CBM, Coding, Computational Thinking, computer-based math, curriculum, education, ICT, math, math curriculum, math education, maths, national curriculum, STEM Comments
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Anchoring Computational Thinking in today’s curriculum
Anchoring Computational Thinking in today’s curriculum

There is a lot of talk of "Computational Thinking" as a new imperative of education, so I wanted to address a few questions that keep coming up about it. What is it? Is it important? How does it relate to today's school subjects? Is Computer-Based Maths (CBM) a Computational Thinking curriculum?

Firstly, I've got to say, I really like the term.

To my mind, the overriding purpose of education is "to enrich life" (yours, your society's, not just in "riches" but in meaning) and different ways in which you can think about how you look at ideas, challenges and opportunities seems crucial to achieving that.

Therefore using a term of the form “xxx Thinking" that cuts across boundaries but can support traditional school subjects (eg. History, English, Maths) and emphasises an approach to thinking is important to improving education.

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Conrad WolframComputational Thinking, CBM, math, curriculum, PISA, Coding, Assessment Comments
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How Significant is Significance Arithmetic?

Central to our mission at computerbasedmath.org is thinking through from first principles what's important and what's not to the application of maths in the real, modern, computer-based world. This is one of the most challenging aspects of our project: it's very hard to shake off the dogma of our own maths education and tell whether something is for now and the future, or if really it's for the history of maths.

This week's issue is significance arithmetic, similar to what you might know from school as significant figures. The idea is when you do a calculation not just a single value but bounds that represent the uncertainty of your calculation too are calculated. You can get an idea of how accurate your answer is or indeed if it has any digits of accuracy at all.

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Conrad WolframCBM, math, math education, Mathematica, Risk analysis Comment
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