Re:Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
by galaxyLogic on Sunday March 24, 2019 @05:40PM
(#19478944)
A thought: Most people who learn to play piano do so by having a piano-teacher whom they privately meet with once a week or so. Whereas this is not the convention for learning math. Maybe it could apply equally well for math as it does for learning to play piano.
Re:Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
by jacobolus on Sunday March 24, 2019 @10:00PM
(#19479832)
Note that hiring a private piano teacher for every child in the country would also be a difficult proposition, politically / economically. Especially if we expected every person to reach the level of competence at music that we expect with numeracy/mathematics.
If we wanted to switch from the current classroom model to a private tutorial model, with the amount we currently spend per student on teachers, we could hire 1:1 tutors for only a few hours per week for each student, which would (a) not really be enough time to cover everything students are expected to learn in school, and (b) would then also leave huge amounts of time where the school wasn’t providing childcare service, which is one of its primary purposes.
However, just as upper middle class families can currently afford weekly private piano lessons or 1:1 sport coaching, you are right that they could likewise afford private math tutorials, and get better results than classroom instruction.
Re:Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook
by galaxyLogic on Monday March 25, 2019 @04:33PM
(#19486505)
Right. It is impractical and probably wasteful for everybody to have their own private (human) tutor. But therefore I find the prospect of AI-based personal tutors intriguing. The concept of Artificial Intelligence making humans more intelligent in general. Even AI teaching itself.
The better the explanation the easier it is to understand for more people. Whereas a bad explanation is something that assumes students understand something most of them don't.
It's really not a blame-game but more an impedance mismatch between the teacher and the students. IF you can have your own tutor the tutor can adjust their level of explanation just to you, but that is not economically feasible for most students. Therefore if automated AI-learning text-books can make progress in this direction it is great.
It may be that the biggest impact of AI will be not by having something smarter than us, but something that can teach more people to understand difficult concepts. In other words biggest impact of AI may be in education.