You enjoyed it, that’s cool. I thought it was clever how they captured the feel of a math test, with humor! But there is much more than just humor in the video, there is some serious math too. Is this edutainment? Is anyone willing to talk about the math? The video has real meaning, it actually explains how you can pass a calculus test.
It reminded me of the first time I took the SAT. I did it twice.
For the first half hour it was like the muscles in my body were locked up. I could hardly write. We make too big a deal of these tests and it puts a lot of pressure on kids. After half an hour it just went away and I was back to NORMAL. Maybe my body just couldn’t handle it any longer. But that is why I took it a second time.
Some people can inspire others with math. I see math class as being pretty narrow-minded, a disjointed story of all the different variety of techniques that mathematics has to offer. Math class should include more history of the people who discovered the ideas and their problems that needed a mathematical solution. Math class should demonstrate how to apply mathematics to the world. Math class should teach the science of gathering the data, looking at the trends, and modeling that trend mathematically.
If you have two apples at your home, and I have two at mine, that math lets us predict that if we got together we’d have four apples. This is a real prediction, nothing psychic. And if we compare a seven story building, to a seventy story building, we see how they relate mathematically, the relationship is that the skyscraper is ten times larger. And if we try to add more mass, more and more, hurling each one at the same velocity, we can see its force rising for each new mass as it travels, and see how analyzing this leads to the simple F = mv^2 equation. That could expose student to the excitement of discovery. Wouldn’t that have been a better way of learning how math can be applied to the world?
Yeah, I recall that after using the quadratic equation to solve second order equalities for a semester, that in Algebra 3 in high school, we had to figure out how to derive that equation, and I was really blown away to see how it wasn’t some authority given thing, but could actually come from the properties of those second order equations.
Yeah, I recall that after using the quadratic equation to solve second order equalities for a semester, that in Algebra 3 in high school, we had to figure out how to derive that equation, and I was really blown away to see how it wasn’t some authority given thing, but could actually come from the properties of those second order equations.
Occam
As a student, you had to derive the quadratic equation, you were that creative in HS to do that, to derive any equation, much less one so complex? That sounds amazing, so very creative for HS. I was never that creative in math class, myself. Good for you.
I guess that my biggest problems in school that prevented me from being creative with math were 1) I saw math as a big list of rules, never deviate from what was taught, 2) I didn’t have that broad base of math, that let me see the variety of approaches to solving a math problem can be endless, wide open to creativity.
I had no idea that logic and reason were the primary source of math, I had imagined some vague source like maybe authority, or maybe blind trial-and-error (evolution), or whatever. I was so far off. The people who’ve contributed to math were so creative, reasoning out their own rules, their own techniques, judging a different approach from the past as being creative progress, rather than being against the rules. Now-a-days mathamatics is so very big with so many branches, because people have been so creative. In school, I never dreamed that math could be like that!
Math class should give overviews of math, showing the students where the topic that they’re learning fits into the big bush.
When the world has a man who knew a lot of advanced math, that is a very good world. When he knew this math in the ancient Greek world on the island of Sicily in Syracuse, then that is a surprising story. When he was calculating the area of curves millennia before the likes of Newton and Leibniz, that is amazing. When his works authored on scrolls that barely made the technological transition to codices (books), the two known copies Codex A and Codex B lost in the Middle Ages, a third copy Codex C forgotten untranslated and a hundred years lost the shows up at an auction, this is just short of a miracle. When the new owner wants to decipher the overwritten text of the palimpsest, and also make it available to scholars and everyone else in the world, that is an outstanding gift! And when there is a race to transition Archimedes’ work into the digital age on the web, then isn’t it important that you know about it?
[6:44]
“If you can apply abstract mathematical models to the physical world, and if you can calculate curves, then eventually you can send a rocket to the moon. Which is why Archimedes is the most important scientist who ever lived.”
[56:56]
“The palimpsest is also the unique source of the diagrams that Archimedes drew.”
[57:10]
“Heath’s translation isn’t really a translation at all. Its a modern interpretation of what Archimedes was saying. So actually Archimedes is, you know, a truly foundational figure in the history of Western philosophy and science, that has never been translated into English before.”
Good link psikeyhackr (ψκεακρ). Khan’s software/graphic tablet is good because it allows him to write the math freely and make precise diagrams and plots also. That makes a good dynamic presentation. I think that his “Proof: d/dx(x^n)” is a good intro to calculus. Check it out everyone. “Proof: d/dx(sqrt(x))” is good too. They are very mathy though without much explanation of the practical real world use of a derivative, Khan must be a mathematician. They like pure math, math for the sake of doing math, rather than purely math for the sake of solving real world problems (applied math). And who could blame them?
You enjoyed it, that’s cool. I thought it was clever how they captured the feel of a math test, with humor! But there is much more than just humor in the video, there is some serious math too. Is this edutainment? Is anyone willing to talk about the math? The video has real meaning, it actually explains how you can pass a calculus test.
When his works authored on scrolls that barely made the technological transition to codices (books), the two known copies Codex A and Codex B lost in the Middle Ages, a third copy Codex C forgotten untranslated and a hundred years lost the shows up at an auction, this is just short of a miracle. 
When the new owner wants to decipher the overwritten text of the palimpsest, and also make it available to scholars and everyone else in the world, that is an outstanding gift! 
And when there is a race to transition Archimedes’ work into the digital age on the web, then isn’t it important that you know about it? 
