She describes the language of maths as full of "beauty and elegance".
She did poorly at maths for several years at school because she was not interested in the subject. "I can see that without being excited, mathematics can look pointless and cold. The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers,"
Believe it or not, math is changing. Or at least the way we use math in the context of our daily lives is changing. The way you learned math will not prepare your children with the mathematical skills they need in the 21st Century.
Math education is stuck in the 19th Century
Numbers and variables are NOT the foundation of math.
This problem isn't remotely unique to Khan, but I'm a bit put off by the "Learn the Skill" call. That said, here are my potential additions:
1) What are the lengths of the hypotenuses? (easy)
2) How many triangles until the hypotenuse length exceeds 5 units?
3) How many triangles until the SUM of hypotenuse lengths exceeds 5 units? (never done this. How would a MS or geometry student attempt?)
4) How many triangles until the figure begins to overlap itself? (never done. How would a MS student attempt?)
There must be many other GREAT problems here. Thoughts?
Very funny (& true) first comment.
I wonder about making this a much more open ended problem. What if you were told that Samantha inserted $20 and got $2.60 in change? What if she inserted $20 and got 12 tokens? What if she got 12 tokens and $2.60 in change, but you weren't told what she inserted?
What would these discussions look like?
Wondering if we can make this a math club problem? Provide a spreadsheet of capital-to-capital distances and ask students to design a "best" path. This is a very famous and very difficult problem. It would connect into the scaling problem we had with the planets in the fall & the US map optimization. Also plays well into the underlying "strategy" conversations we've been having.