Arthur Benjamin's formula for changing math education

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/arthur_benjamin_s_formula_for_changing_math_
education.html
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A. Now, if President Obama invited me to be the next Czar of Mathematics,

then I would have a suggestion for him that I think would vastly improve the
mathematics education in this country. And it would be easy to implement and
inexpensive.

1. What is not a synonym for czar in this situation?

a. boss b. leader c. director d. facilitator

2. What are the features he lists for his suggestion?

B. The mathematics curriculum that we have is based on a foundation of

arithmetic and algebra. And everything we learn after that is building up towards one
subject. And at the top of that pyramid, it's calculus. And I'm here to say that I think
that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid, that the correct summit, that all of our
students, every high school graduate should know, should be statistics - probability
and statistics. (Applause)

3. Think about your high school curriculum. How much and what kind of
math did you study?

4. Where else might we see a summit?

a. a car b. a mountain c. a window d. a city

C. I mean, don't get me wrong. Calculus is an important subject. It's one of the
great products of the human mind. The laws of nature are written in the language of
calculus. And every student who studies math, science, engineering, economics, they
should definitely learn calculus by the end of their freshman year of college. But I'm
here to say, as a professor of mathematics, that very few people actually use calculus
in a conscious, meaningful way, in their day to day lives. On the other hand, statistics
-- that's a subject that you could, and should, use on daily basis. Right? It's risk. It's
reward. It's randomness. It's understanding data.

4. What does he suggest that people who do not attend college should do about
calculus?

5. What is his reason for suggesting that high schools should teach statistics
more instead of calculus?
 6. What are the three things he equates statistics with?
a.
b.
c.

D. I think if our students, if our high school students, if all of the American
citizens knew about probability and statistics, we wouldn't be in the economic mess
that we're in today. Not only -- thank you -- not only that, if it's taught properly, it can
be a lot of fun. I mean, probability and statistics, it's the mathematics of games and
gambling. It's analyzing trends. It's predicting the future. Look, the world has changed
from analog to digital. And it's time for our mathematics curriculum to change from
analog to digital. From the more classical, continuous mathematics, to the more
modern, discrete mathematics. The mathematics of uncertainty, of randomness, of
data -- and that being probability and statistics.

7. What does he suggest would be avoided if Americans had a better

understanding of statistics?

8. Based on what Benjamin says about probability and statistics what might a
clever teacher use for the students to learn about this topic?

9. He equates analog to what kind of mathematics? Digital?

E. In summary, instead of our students learning about the techniques of

calculus, I think it would be far more significant if all of them knew what two
standard deviations from the mean means. And I mean it. Thank you very much.
(Applause)

10. He uses mean in three different ways here. What are they?
a.
b.
c.

11. What is a fourth meaning of mean?

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