The best math teacher in the world, just for you

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The damage that a bad math teacher can do is incalculable.

Literally: it cannot be calculated.

What we call mathematics anxiety, or fear of mathematics, is less anxiety than the purest, simplest and most desperate boredom.

The boy and girl learn with discipline to multiply matrices, intersect sets and derive functions, but they do not understand a word of what they are doing, what that means, what it is for, why it is a way of thinking of extraordinary elegance and effectiveness.

For students to understand fundamental mathematical concepts, to be interested in them, and to incorporate them into their toolbox for the future, it takes a good teacher, perhaps even a great teacher.

But of course, how is that done?

Your teaching staff cannot be made up of Fields medals (one of the most prestigious awards in mathematics) and Abel prizes (considered the

Nobel

of mathematics).

You have to work the miracle with the human resources you have at your disposal, who are normal people with average training.

Then what do we do?

Answer: use your neurons, friends.

Ours and those of the machines.

Artificial intelligence is going to be an invaluable help to improve the teaching of mathematics, language and everything else.

And teachers have to understand that machines are no threat to them or their students, but are here to help them both.

While the social atmosphere is filled with a rejection of artificial intelligence that is not very reflective, sometimes almost religious, experts are proposing very interesting ideas to introduce machines in classrooms.

My favorite is personalization, and I'll try to explain why.

Like all brats, I learned at school to operate with matrices, those

little rectangles

with rows and columns of numbers that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and manipulated in various ways.

We kids learned these procedures as if they were a revealed truth, we passed the exam if we were lucky and we moved on to something else.

That served me more or less the same purpose as memorizing the list of the Gothic kings: for nothing.

Instructing children to behave like human calculators is unhelpful and harmful.

Knowledge takes up space, and it is advisable to reserve our always scarce memory for things more important than those insubstantial sudokus.

I was already an adult with receding hairlines on my forehead, when I was finally able to understand what it was all about, and realize how fascinating, profound and creative the art of playing with matrices, linear algebra in the jargon, is.

And that epiphany was due to my good fortune in discovering Gilbert Strang, the best mathematics teacher in the world.

Strang, a pioneer of online education, had recorded his linear algebra classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and posted them on the university's website.

It was nothing more than the guy explaining the topic to his students with chalk in hand on the blackboard, but suddenly, somehow, there was light and understanding made its way through the thickness of my childhood.

It's as easy as that.

It is enough to have the best teacher in the world in your classroom.

Before it was impossible, but now it is within the reach of any urban or rural school.

And now let's go one step further.

Strang worked well for me, but I'm sure that other students and other teachers will have other preferences, other needs, gaps, demands for additional explanation or to go back to the first box on some point that you're stuck on.

That is where artificial intelligence can provide personalized and very valuable educational resources.

From now on, each student can invent their Gilbert Strang, design their perfect math teacher.

Fear of robots gets us nowhere.

If you can't beat them, join them.

It's for the good of the children, friend.

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