Microsoft, Khan Academy Partner to Make Khanmigo Teaching Tool Free

Sal Khan did an interview at the Commonwealth Club this past week where he stated that the reason for region locking is one of availability and cost. It seems like MSFT is only footing the bill for US use, rather than for the world, so there's still the matter of figuring out how to further reduce costs to make it cheap enough to give away everywhere.

I'm not sure why that implies that the paid plan is not available outside of the US.

The availability of instant answers requires self discipline. Because it can be used to help make your learning process more efficient, but it can also turn into a crutch where the tool becomes the answer. Anybody who has ever tried to teach math to an unmotivated student would have faced the question, 'Why do we learn math when we could just use a calculator?'

It's quite interesting. All of these things, like the internet, that are or were supposed to 'democratize' learning, knowledge, and so on often end up doing the exact opposite - and just growing divides. The tiny percent of people that truly utilize these tools to their potential do become far more able than ever before, but most people don't. And the tool for self improvement instead just becomes a tool to get the answer, leaving them even worse off than before the tool.

Yes, living in NYC with a my mother working as a schoool teacher for decades, I have come to realize that much of public school is just a glorified daycare center to keep children occupied while their parents work:

pg likens it to a prison: https://paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Some schools are awful: https://nypost.com/2014/01/12/no-space-no-books-no-leader-no...

Newark: Zuck's $100,000,000 barely made a dent in math https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/10/16/21103581/the-100-millio...

On the other hand, I knew since 2011 that this was possible instead:

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

I have proposed specific ways to reform education 10 years ago:

https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=158

> Anybody who has ever tried to teach math to an unmotivated student would have faced the question, 'Why do we learn math when we could just use a calculator?'

If it goes the same as your example for AI then soon people will doubt your knowledge on the grounds of not coming from the assured source. (The ai)

I generally agree with what the OP said: having an instant and correct answering machine available will remove most of the challenge of learning, leaving you completely unable to progress beyond the guided tours also called academic tests / certificates.

But the people talking about the calculator actually have a point, because the only reason to learn math is to understand the concept behind the formula, which can tell you why it works in certain scenarios and not in others. That's usually not what's taught in class however, instead they're made to run through formulas to get a "deeper understanding". And that's pointless beyond training to do exactly that: applying a formula at a pre-selected problem that has a correct answer. This doesn't really transfer to anything you'd do outside of school in any creative profession.

It's perfect for accounting and MBA roles though - even if they're not gonna be doing the calculation themselves, but they Guess identify which formal to apply, so ymmv

The reason you drill math in school is to be able to do it effortlessly and intuitively. It shows up absolutely everywhere in our lives, but people without a mathematical intuition would be largely blind to it. One of the most common examples of this is in probability. People are expected to make very important decisions on these things, but without any understanding of what it means.

For instance imagine something claims to make something bad 90% less likely to happen. People without a mathematical intuition would probably think that means means something goes from being pretty likely to happen to being very unlikely to happen. Of course it means nothing of the sort. Something that is 0.000001% to 0.0000001% is a 90% reduction in probability, but you've gone from absurdly unlikely to absurdly unlikely - for a negligible practical effect.

Or vice versa, if you're investing and think some event is only 2% likely to happen, then many would simply discard it. While failing to consider that such black swan events are arguably the single most important factors in finance. Because you earning a small amount 98% of the time and losing it all 2% of the time, then that means you're going to lose it all on any significant timeframe. See: "hedge" funds continuing to rip off the mathematically naive relative to index funds (which themselves may even provide insufficient security given contemporary issues).

Another would be something like the gambler's fallacy. You're at a roulette wheel and see it's turned up red 17 times in a row. Surely the odds of a black are now way better than 50%, right!?!? Of course not. Such logic is most easily demonstrated with gambling, but it shows up everywhere in real life as well in any field with randomness. For basic mathematics consider something like fertility rates. For those with a strong mathematical intuition fertility rates are absolutely terrifying. For those without such, a fertility rate of 1 and 2 seem pretty much the same - so what's the big deal?

And so on endlessly. Going through life without a mathematical intuition is entirely possible, as most people lack such. But it's akin to going through life colorblind. You simply aren't seeing things that others do, and ideally schools would work to prevent that so much as possible.