full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Arthur Benjamin: Teach statistics before calculus!

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Now, if President Obama invited me to be the next Czar of mmcataiehts, then I would have a suggestion for him that I think would vastly improve the mathematics education in this crntuoy. And it would be easy to implement and inexpensive.

The mathematics cuuilcrurm that we have is baesd on a foundation of arithmetic and algebra. And everything we leran after that is building up towards one subject. And at top of that pyramid, it's calculus. And I'm here to say that I think that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid ... that the correct simumt — that all of our students, every high school graduate should know — should be statistics: probability and statistics. (Applause)

Open Cloze


Now, if President Obama invited me to be the next Czar of ___________, then I would have a suggestion for him that I think would vastly improve the mathematics education in this _______. And it would be easy to implement and inexpensive.

The mathematics __________ that we have is _____ on a foundation of arithmetic and algebra. And everything we _____ after that is building up towards one subject. And at top of that pyramid, it's calculus. And I'm here to say that I think that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid ... that the correct ______ — that all of our students, every high school graduate should know — should be statistics: probability and statistics. (Applause)

Solution


  1. learn
  2. mathematics
  3. based
  4. curriculum
  5. country
  6. summit

Original Text


Now, if President Obama invited me to be the next Czar of Mathematics, then I would have a suggestion for him that I think would vastly improve the mathematics education in this country. And it would be easy to implement and inexpensive.

The mathematics curriculum that we have is based on a foundation of arithmetic and algebra. And everything we learn after that is building up towards one subject. And at top of that pyramid, it's calculus. And I'm here to say that I think that that is the wrong summit of the pyramid ... that the correct summit — that all of our students, every high school graduate should know — should be statistics: probability and statistics. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
mathematics curriculum 2
high school 2


Important Words


  1. algebra
  2. applause
  3. arithmetic
  4. based
  5. building
  6. calculus
  7. correct
  8. country
  9. curriculum
  10. czar
  11. easy
  12. education
  13. foundation
  14. graduate
  15. high
  16. implement
  17. improve
  18. inexpensive
  19. invited
  20. learn
  21. mathematics
  22. obama
  23. president
  24. probability
  25. pyramid
  26. school
  27. statistics
  28. students
  29. subject
  30. suggestion
  31. summit
  32. top
  33. vastly
  34. wrong