Building a math curriculum in the era of computation — Conrad Wolfram | Computing education research

As part of our seminar series on cross-disciplinary computing, we were delighted to host Conrad Wolfram (co-founder and CEO of Wolfram Research Europe). Conrad has been an influential figure in the areas of AI, data science, and computing education for over 30 years. He co-founded Wolfram Research, an organisation that develops computing technologies including the Wolfram programming language, which is used by the Mathematica and WolframAlpha programs. In the seminar, Conrad spoke about his work on developing a core computational curriculum for the AI age.

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[jpeter]

Great talk by Conrad, regarding a topic I also find very important in today's technological society where computers are so readily available. I plan to buy a copy of the book and look at the referenced websites from the presentation. I for one thought, many years ago, that the Raspberry Pi was such an incredible and a "no-brainer" buy when Wolfram decided to make Mathematica available to every Pi owner. One then has a super calculator at their fingertips for only about $35-55, and it makes an essential computing tool available to teachers who wish to apply these concepts for updating math education for the modern era.

[PatrickCraig-lhis]

I am an ex-developmental maths instructor in the U.S. Believe me, I know just how horrible it is to "teach" procedural hand calculating with no context whatsoever. I love the idea of computer-based maths; my only concern comes from advice I have given to students in that same environment: "You're free to use a calculator for this test, but if the calculator malfunctions, I may not have a spare to loan you." The risk is that the over-dependence on the technology could lead to catastrophic failure on the test. Is the digital computer (or whatever it might evolve into) absolutely guaranteed to be with us for the entire remainder of our species' existence? If a scenario unfolds in which humans stick around but computing technology disappears for whatever reason, how do we resurrect that technology when we came to depend upon it so much to take care of the maths for us? Would we end up having to repeat the entire history of mathematical discovery just to get back to the place where we have the computer as a tool? Could this be part of what the "back to basics" people are trying to get at?