Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
1–10 of 97 posts
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#2Can I ask who is behind this? For instance, I see that they take donations so presumably not a for-profit.
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#3This is excellent. I'm not sure if this functionality is present, but one thing that would be cool would be some kind of dependency graph for knowledge. For example I can get through the euclidean geometry section without much knowledge of algebra and vice versa, but to understand trig I expect I would need to have taken both. It would be cool to be able to select trig and say "I already know euclidean geometry" and have it say "Then you need to take Algebra as a prerequisite"
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#4Can I ask who is behind this? For instance, I see that they take donations so presumably not a for-profit.
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#5I think this is great, but on first glance https://www.khanacademy.org/ seems to be significantly better. What makes mathigon different?
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#6It really feels like we're on the cusp of a textbook similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'.
As in, something that learns your interests and customizes to your tastes while still teaching. A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods.
If advertising networks have effectively personalized propaganda on Facebook and whatnot and games like The Walking Dead are able to change script based on popular choices made by all players, we should be able to apply the same technology to personalized learning at scale.
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#7I think this is great, but on first glance https://www.khanacademy.org/ seems to be significantly better. What makes mathigon different?
It's not just videos of someone going through the motions of solving problems. These are interactive explorations of mathematics.
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#8It really feels like we're on the cusp of a textbook similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'. As in, something that learns your interests and customizes to your tastes while still teaching. A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods. If advertising networks have ef…
> A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods.
That'd be extremely useful to have.
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#9I think this is great, but on first glance https://www.khanacademy.org/ seems to be significantly better. What makes mathigon different?
It's not just videos of someone going through the motions of solving problems. These are interactive explorations of mathematics.
Hmm, you may have an outdated view of KhanAcademy. Sure, there's videos to supplement, but there's also plenty of exercises and interactive content.
Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
#10It really feels like we're on the cusp of a textbook similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'. As in, something that learns your interests and customizes to your tastes while still teaching. A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods. If advertising networks have ef…
> A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods. That'd be extremely useful to have.
I concur. While I appreciate that math education at the elementary and high school level is easier to author and has more data points, where I think this approach would really shine is at the college level.
The main problem in math is that the higher level you reach, the fewer experts who exist or are willing to sit down 1:1 and tutor students.
I think an automated teaching system for analysis, writing proofs, number theory, etc is the next step in democratizing mathematics and science and bringing what is now college-level education down to high school.
IMO most college level math isn't difficult, but not missing a step in your understanding along the way to that level and the 'math anxiety' that's introduced along the way is the real hurdle to teaching. It creates a situation where autodidacts are most rewarded, so why don't we use technology to enable more people to become autodidacts?