The New New Math

Bret Victor was a designer at Apple. He quit the company because he wanted to do something bigger, something that would be a game-changer. Since he left Apple, he’s come up with one of the most unusual iPad apps… one that is premised on the assumption that learning math is simply a matter of applying the right user interface: “What he wants to kill is math's interface: opaque, abstract, unfamiliar, hard. ‘The power to understand and predict the quantities of the world should not be restricted to those with a freakish knack for manipulating abstract symbols,’ he writes. Now he's created a prototype iPad interface that turns differential equations into something that doesn't feel math-ey at all: visual, intuitive, and touchable.” FastCompany.com, July 19^th.

Simply put, if students could see the impact of changing math variables, watch images and waves move and peak, ebb and flow, they could develop an intuitive feeling and underlying understanding of what math means. Victor’s opinions on the subject of how math is presented are very clear: “So I don't hate math per se; I hate its current representations. Have you ever tried multiplying roman numerals? It’s incredibly, ridiculously difficult. That’s why, before the 14th century, everyone thought that multiplication was an incredibly difficult concept, and only for the mathematical elite. Then arabic numerals came along, with their nice place values, and we discovered that even seven-year-olds can handle multiplication just fine. There was nothing difficult about the concept of multiplication -- the problem was that numbers, at the time, had a bad user interface… The dirty little secret is that the greatest mathematicians don't actually think in symbols…” he noted in the above online piece. These masters work on insight and creativity, maintains Victor, and merely note their solutions in traditional mathematical expressions.

If you would like to see how this system works, try this link : http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664508/could-this-ipad-interface-help-kill-math?partner=homepage_newsletter

The implications for the American educational system, seemingly broken and obviously budget-impaired, could be profound. As scandals rock school districts around the United States, as principals and teachers are being disciplined and even discharged for “fixing” student test results to keep the money flowing to their schools (predicated on minimum aggregate test results), our overall emphasis of how to teach appears to require a ground-up reexamination. Americans have to compete in a global economy with an ability to shift business activities on a moment’s notice to a venue capable of delivering top-level skill-sets at an economically justifiable and competitive value. Basic to our competitive needs is a solid grounding in science and math, areas where our public educational system has been shown to be decreasingly competitive. Strange as it seems, except for the better-heeled school districts in more opulent communities or well-funded experiments in programmed learning, the American public school system is remarkably behind the curve of technological innovation. If we are going to survive as a nation, even if we cannot afford as many teachers as we would like given current budget realities, now is clearly the time for America to look to solutions from the creative minds that have made the Silicon Valley (and her clones) the incredibly productive basin of American values that it is.

I’m Peter Dekom, and to unshred America, we really do need to find better ways of living our lives and teaching our children to prepare for our future.