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William Oliver
In the 11th grade, I hated math. Everyday that I had to wake up and go to my Pre-calculus class was another day wasted. Why would I like math? Math classes often have around the same appeal as watching paint dry, and I wanted to be an animator at the time. How was a trig identity going to help me become the next Miyazaki or Brad Bird?
Well, one night in the 11th grade, after what seemed like an absolutely terrible day, I downloaded this calculus series on my iPod. I was never much of a studier, but I wanted to at least try to study for a test I had the next day. I started watching a video, thinking that I would get distracted like I usually do. But I soon found myself watching video after video, binge watching it like it was an HBO series on netflix or something.
Its also worth noting thatI had recently also watched the documentary Between the Folds, a documentary about the relation between origami and mathematics. This documentary set up for me the idea that mathematics wasn't exactly what I thought it was, but this video series of mysterious origin really hit that idea home. Once I finally got to the videos about the relation between the Euler's formula and Euler's identity and the Taylor series, I was hooked; there was no longer a way for me to deny the fact that mathematics was not a creative medium.
I finally looked up who this faceless mathematician was, and realized, of course, that it was none other than Salman Khan. After hearing several of his interviews and speeches, I finally realized that this guy was more than just a good teacher; he also represented an idea: that education did not have to be the way it was, an idea that pretty much every highschooler in america has thought at least once but had no authority say aloud.
Long story short, Salman Khan is successful because he gets people to like to learn, something that many teachers and parents are never really given a chance to do due to the nature of the public school system. I soon found, after doing my own research elsewhere, that his lessons did not dive very far into the topics he covered. But that is not nearly as important as teaching me to dive into the topics he covered on my own. Before Salman Khan, I would have never watched the MIT Series on Calculus or actually believed that I could learn enough about mathematics to understand what they were talking about in Between the Folds. Through Salman Khan I went from strongly disliking math to asking for The Princeton Companion to Mathematics as a graduation present.
Those are the kinds of videos, the kind of videos that can lead to the complete transformation of a person, that are inevitably going to be successful.
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In the 11th grade, I hated math. Everyday that I had to wake up and go to my Pre-calculus class was another day wasted. Why would I like math? Math classes often have around the same appeal as watching paint dry, and I wanted to be an animator at the time. How was a trig identity going to help me become the next Miyazaki or Brad Bird?
Well, one night in the 11th grade, after what seemed like an absolutely terrible day, I downloaded this calculus series on my iPod. I was never much of a studier, but I wanted to at least try to study for a test I had the next day. I started watching a video, thinking that I would get distracted like I usually do. But I soon found myself watching video after video, binge watching it like it was an HBO series on netflix or something.
Its also worth noting thatI had recently also watched the documentary Between the Folds, a documentary about the relation between origami and mathematics. This documentary set up for me the idea that mathematics wasn't exactly what I thought it was, but this video series of mysterious origin really hit that idea home. Once I finally got to the videos about the relation between the Euler's formula and Euler's identity and the Taylor series, I was hooked; there was no longer a way for me to deny the fact that mathematics was not a creative medium.
I finally looked up who this faceless mathematician was, and realized, of course, that it was none other than Salman Khan. After hearing several of his interviews and speeches, I finally realized that this guy was more than just a good teacher; he also represented an idea: that education did not have to be the way it was, an idea that pretty much every highschooler in america has thought at least once but had no authority say aloud.
Long story short, Salman Khan is successful because he gets people to like to learn, something that many teachers and parents are never really given a chance to do due to the nature of the public school system. I soon found, after doing my own research elsewhere, that his lessons did not dive very far into the topics he covered. But that is not nearly as important as teaching me to dive into the topics he covered on my own. Before Salman Khan, I would have never watched the MIT Series on Calculus or actually believed that I could learn enough about mathematics to understand what they were talking about in Between the Folds. Through Salman Khan I went from strongly disliking math to asking for The Princeton Companion to Mathematics as a graduation present.
Those are the kinds of videos, the kind of videos that can lead to the complete transformation of a person, that are inevitably going to be successful.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
