One mathematician’s spirited answer to bored, frustrated and reluctant math students. Eduardo Sáenz de Cabezón suspects that when people ask him what's the use of math, they’re really asking a more pointed question. “They're asking you, ‘Why did I have to study that bullshit I never used in my life again?’” he says. Sáenz de Cabezón (TED Talk: ...

Were you intrigued by "The $8 Billion iPod," Rob Reid's short TEDTalk about the new science of Copyright Math (TM)? We were. We needed to know more. More numbers, Rob! we said. And Rob (whose comic novel Year Zero comes out in July) sent us this treatise, a master class in creative mathematics: A few weeks back, I gave a short TED talk ab...

Ready to level up your working knowledge of math? Here's what to read now -- and next.   Math 101, with Jennifer Ouellette First, start with these 5 books... 1. Number: The Language of Science Tobias Dantzig Plume, 2007 "First published in 1930, this classic text traces the evolution of the concept of a number in clear, access...

In his talk at TEDGlobal 2010, Conrad Wolfram championed a radical new way of teaching mathematics: removing the notion that math is the same as calculating, and completely redesigning the curriculum around the new possibilities opened by computers. He's now launched a website to collect ideas, and in November he will be hosting The Computer...

Math class should be fascinating, right? At TED2010, Conrad Wolfram suggests that one reason it often isn't is hand calculation. Most students spend years in math class learning to work sums by hand that a computer can now do. After all, computers are far better at calculation than human beings will ever be, while people are far better at defini...

In New York City, it’s common to hear ten different languages just on your walk to work in the morning. For the students at Lycée Français de New York, that kind of multicultural exposure doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse doors. With a combination French-English curriculum, this PreK-12 school educates students who represent more than 50 natio...

TEDYouth session two has just finished. You can read about each of the 12 speakers below, and also see summaries of the Session 1 speakers here. Olivier Guyon, Optical Physicist and Astronomer Olivier designs powerful telescopes that search for exoplanets — earth-like planets that exist outside of our solar system. The problem with search f...

Mathematics gets down to work in these talks, breathing life and logic into everyday problems. Prepare for math puzzlers both solved and unsolvable, and even some still waiting for solutions. Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs When Ron Eglash first saw an aerial photo of an African village, he couldn’t rest until he...

You learn something new every day. This is especially true if you watch TED-Ed lessons, which use animation to bring to life topics as varied as “Insults by Shakespeare” and “Pizza Physics.” As a holiday gift, we’re bringing you a few of the TED-Ed’s team’s favorite talks of the year. Here, a second look at the lesson How does math guide our ...

Dance -- and physical activity -- should have the same status in schools as math, science and language. Psst: it may even help raise test scores, says Sir Ken Robinson. For several years, I’ve been a patron of the London School of Contemporary Dance. In 2016, I was invited to give the annual lecture in honor of founding principal Robert Cohan, ...

Pixar films are known for their thoughtful storytelling and groundbreaking animation. One of the coolest things about these movies: the math that Pixar’s team is actually inventing to improve the audience experience and the look of the characters. We caught up with Pixar’s Research Lead, Tony DeRose—who gave the TED-Ed Lesson, "The math behi...

Mathematicians Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans have crunched the numbers. Forget utilities -- these are the properties you really should be investing in. To our minds, there is nothing more magical than a full-blown family argument caused by a good old-fashioned game of Monopoly. Officially, Monopoly ends when all players but one go bankrupt...

Cartoonist (and former NASA roboticist) Randall Munroe illustrates the questions that keep you (or at least him) up at night. Whether that’s “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?” or “How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its histo...

How two Australian sisters channeled their love of STEM and coral reefs into the most glorious participatory art project. “We’re used to thinking about math as something you have to learn through textbooks and equations,” says science writer Margaret Wertheim. But through their Institute for Figuring, she and her sister, Christine, have made it...

The TED-Ed Lesson “The case of the missing fractals” isn’t just an introduction to the intricate and beautiful world of fractal geometry; it’s also a fully-realized film noir short complete with plot, drama and a smattering of ridiculous puns. This cinematic creation is the product of a TED-Ed dream team, with writing by veteran TED-Ed Educat...

Shimon Schocken is a professor and founding dean of the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science at IDC Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He starts out with some of his life story, introducing us to his grandfather, Salman Schocken, who dropped out of school aged 14 to help feed the family. He went on to found "a glittering empire of department stores," eve...

When Salman Khan shared his vision for “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere” at TED2011, he turned the education world on its head. As he introduced Khan Academy -- a virtual classroom that uses video lessons to create an individualized, self-paced learning experience -- his alternative model fueled the nascent dialogue about online...

If you’ve Googled anything this morning, you’ve probably noticed that the site’s logo features an orb-shaped graph instead of a second ‘o,’ plus all sorts of equations like “V –E + F = 2.” The doodle is an homage to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who was born on this day in 1707. The man responsible for geometry, trigonometry, algebra, numb...

Adam Spencer isn’t just the host of the Australian radio program Triple J Breakfast Show. He also has a degree in pure mathematics and, in today’s talk, he ascends into “geek heaven” to explains his deep love of massive prime numbers, the largest of which was discovered earlier this year and is 17.5 million digits long. So what is it about...

Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin says that there are three reasons we learn math: calculation, application and inspiration. Yes, inspiration. Math is the science of patterns, and learning it teaches us not just logic but creative thinking, says Benjamin. So why, when math is beautiful and exciting, is so much of what we learn in school about...

When TED asked Hannah Fry to write a book on the mathematics of finding true love, Fry happened to be — of all places — on her honeymoon. “[My husband and I] have been together for a really long time, so the whole newlywed thing didn't quite apply,” she says. “But I did feel like I was in a fortunate position in that I have experienced al...

From dancing math to teaching in languages other than English – this week’s X marks the spot is a selection of TEDx Talks about rethinking education. Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community, and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, find...

John Maeda still remembers a parent-teacher conference from when he was a child. Maeda beamed with pride as his teacher told his father, “John is good at math and art.” However, the next day, when Maeda’s father recounted the conference to a customer at his store, all he remembered was, “John is good at math.” Maeda, now the President of th...

So, you might know me. I ran the digital side of The Onion for a long time; I’m the author of How to Be Black. People call me to do things like host White House events on innovation, do the wrap-up at TED salons, join semi-secret cabals at MIT, and comment on the teevee. The underlying constant in my multi-hyphenate life is running my creative c...

Sean Gourley analyzed real-time data from the Iraq war and discovered a precise mathematical model underlying it. Now he’s expanding on that research at Quid, his startup that maps trends in technology. Having unearthed such powerful information, Sean takes time to help kids understand the importance of math, even while he grapples with the et...

By Baratunde Thurston So, you might know me. I ran the digital side of The Onion for a long time; I’m the author of How To Be Black. People call me to do things like host White House events on innovation, do the wrap-up at TED salons, join semi-secret cabals at MIT, and comment on the teevee. The underlying constant in my multi-hyphenate ...

Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community, and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, give this week’s talks a listen. Why you hate math: Laura Overdeck at TEDxWestVillageWomen When dining out, how often do you slide your check acros...

As of this week, more than 20,000 TEDxTalks have been given at 5,000+ events held in 137 countries around the globe. With the mass scale of the program, it’s a little unpredictable which talks will gain a steady following of fans on the TEDxTalks website and YouTube channel, and which talks will skyrocket into public consciousness practicall...

With just over a month to go before the 2012 presidential election in the US, eyes around the world are on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The election may well come down to a few key issues. So what matters most to Americans? The TED Blog read this Gallup poll from late July on issues that citizens want the next president ...

Most of us take for granted that we can read, say, the street signs outside of our house. But for an overwhelming number of women in the Arab world, basic literacy is not a given. That’s why in 2009, photographer and TED Fellow Laura Boushnak (TED Talk: For these women, reading is a daring act) began “I Read, I Write,” a series that documents th...