24th March 2006

Math Will Rock Your World

posted in workshops |

Stephen Baker
“Math Will Rock Your World”
Closing keynote at FETC 2006

About Stephen:
- Writes about “complicated technologies” and leader in “new media” for Businessweek
- Co-author of blogspotting.net
- developing book about math and society now
- tri-lingual

Confession: I don’t know the first thing about math
- I avoid it whenever possible
- this started as a coverstory called “Math With Rock Your World”
- just sold that book to Houghton-Mifflin a week ago
- now working full-time in the math industry

6-7 months ago I had
- possible decline of America’s technology industry
- central reason: we’re not graduating as many engineers and scientists compared to India and China
- editors said this story sounds too familiar, tried to come up with fresh way to look at this
- an editor came up with an idea of just doing a cover story on math

Many hate math in many professions
- maybe that’s why we call them “hard numbers”
- industries are filled with people that had bad run-ins with math in the past
- many of us have been able to thrive as mathnophobes

this story: is math invading all these industries
- spilling into these industries

new book: “The Age of Numbers”
- redefines what we should know

Nanotech is nothing less than the re-engineering of the entire genetic world, molecule by molecule

So if we don’t learn more math, are we all going to be cutting hair or giving other people back rubs?

Meeting at IBM
- learned about post WWII look at supply chain
- if they could represent the entire supply chain as math, they could make it much more efficiency
- this is operations research: Dell, FedEx
- most ambitious ops research project now is focusing on 50,000 consultants in IBM’s payroll
- how are they going to get enough info about those people to turn them into math?

MY THOUGHT, WE’VE CONVERTED ALL OUR STUDENTS TO MATH, IN A SENSE, WITH HIGH-STAKES ACCOUNTABILITY

Divide between the humanities and math/science
-humanities people used to think we were too diverse and changable

We are now producing oceans of data about what we buy, what we listen to, what kinds of diseases we’re interested in
- if someone can distill the real important parts of out that, they could build entire industries out of that data
- take unstructured data, structure it, and find the gems

The only people who can do that are mathematicians and computer scientists
- new project is coming that will be bigger than the pyrammids and the panama canal
- these people are going to model humanity
- in the coming years, as more data comes in, these models will become much more sophisicated, and they will come to resemble us

Industry of advertising
- used to be an industry of relationships
- people used to sit at expensive lunches and come up with the big ideas
- it was all about big ideas and relationships

MY THOUGHT: I REALLY QUESTION IF THIS IS TRUE
- WASN’T THE IDEA ALWAYS ABOUT SPINNING A MESSAGE TO MANIPULATE THE PUBLIC AND CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOR (GE

The internet is changing advertising into a data collection activity

MY THOUGHT: HOW IS THIS SESSION BENEFICIAL AT ALL TO THE CLASSROOM TEACHER WHO IS HERE?

The creative people are still important, but the most important people are the ones who are using the math, are comfortable with numbers and statistics
- more industries are becoming quantified
- journalists’ ar

Math is storming into the humanities in countless areas
- so how much math do we need to know to get buy
- do we need to hit kids harder with the same algebra and geometry that so many of us ran away from

Two types of
1- we need whizzes
– people who can use math to create startling breakthroughs
– if we are going to compete in the global economy, esp with countries that have 5 times our population, we are going to have to

2- others will have to use logic and tools of math to solve problems
- people who can’t solve these problem

I see math as the new literacy of our time
- think back to the middle ages
- back then, practially everyone could be an illiterate
- whole society was built for illiterates

Then came the printing press
- a couple of centuries later new industries came up
- if you were a blacksmith in the 1650s, and you could read, you could exchange best practices with other blacksmiths by reading

MY THOUGHT: THIS IS REALLY MOSTLY BUNK. WHERE IS THE SOURCE HERE? HOW MANY BLACKSMITHS IN THE MID 1600s WERE READING? I THOUGHT CRAFTSMEN AND TRADESMEN LIKE BLACKSMITHS ACQUIRED ALL THEIR SKILLS THROUGH THE APPRENTICE / JOURNEYMAN / MASTER MODEL?

It used to be that people could specialize, burrow into a niche
- people need to be able to communicate outside their specialty, but communicate broadly
- they have to understand people and communicate well

computer science friend told him a story
- point was that mathematicians are good at building models for the data they have, but not always

We all have to questions that go into math

We have to help mathematicians find the key
- this is a big job
- all of us have a big role to play in the age of numbers
- you have to educate people to understand both the words and the symbols
- I wish you the best of luck

MY THOUGHT: HOW MUCH BETTER THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN TO EITHER HAVE AN ACTUAL MATHEMATICIAN OR MATH EDUCATOR TALK, OR HAVE DAN PINK COME AND TALK ABOUT THE DAWNING CONCEPTUAL AGE AND THE QUALITIES

On this day..

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There are currently 2 responses to “Math Will Rock Your World”

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  1. 1 On March 27th, 2006, Conn McQuinn said:

    Briefly, I think this is (to use your word above) bunk. I totally agree that we, as a populace, need to have a more fundamental understanding of math, because so many critical issues facing our country depend on them. But there is much more to it.

    Take his comment (as quoted by you) that we are falling behind in technology because of this “central reason: we’re not graduating as many engineers and scientists compared to India and China.”

    There is a mathematical explanation for this - there are a lot more young people graduating in India and China, period. The current population of the United States is less than 13% of the size of China and India. Even if every student graduating from an American university had a degree in science and engineering, we could never generate anywhere near the numbers that China and India can. We will never pump as much oil as Saudi Arabia, and we will never generate as many engineers and scientists as India and China.

    So how do we compete? We do need to encourage as many kids to pursue math and science as possible (and certainly not to squelch the natural curiosity that almost all kids have), but we need also to make sure that kids have the support to learn to be innovative. All the math and science knowledge in the world is unimportant if you can’t innovate, and that’s where our economy has been traditionally strongest. Where we are losing our lead is not in technical knowledge, but in creative application of knowledge. Albert Einstein wrote “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” and that is more true today than ever. That’s the great irony of the standards movement; that it has the unintended effect of stamping out the very thing that we most need to remain globally competitive.

  2. 2 On March 27th, 2006, Wesley Fryer said:

    We are on the same page with this, Conn. But I am glad to hear those stats on size of students graduating in India/China versus the US. If you have a link on that for reference I’d love to read more. I am struck by how some edtech conference presenters are really selling this message of FEAR big-time. I guess it sells, but I think it may be framing the conversation in misleading ways. I agree innovation and creativity is the key. And neither the standards movement or the high stakes accountability movements seem to have advanced an agenda that supports either.