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.
Če bi me predsednik Obama izbral za naslednjega carja matematike, bi zanj imel predlog, ki bi po mojem mnenju znatno izboljšal raven znanja matematike v naši državi. Spremembe bi lahko izvedli enostavno in poceni.
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)
Matematični curriculum, ki ga imamo je osnovan na temeljih aritmetike in algebre. Vse, kar se po tem naučimo se usmerja proti enemu samemu predmetu. Na vrhu te piramide so odvodi in integrali. Tu sem, da povem, da je po mojem mnenju to napačen vrh piramide... in da bi pravilen vrh -- to kar bi morali vsi učenci, in vsi tisti, ki so zaključili srednjo šolo vedeti -- morala biti statistika: verjetnost in statistika. (Aplavz)
I mean, don't get me wrong. Calculus is an important subject. It's one of the great products of the human mind. The laws of nature are written in the language of calculus. And every student who studies math, science, engineering, economics, they should definitely learn calculus by the end of their freshman year of college. But I'm here to say, as a professor of mathematics, that very few people actually use calculus in a conscious, meaningful way, in their day-to-day lives. On the other hand, statistics -- that's a subject that you could, and should, use on daily basis. Right? It's risk. It's reward. It's randomness. It's understanding data.
Ne me narobe razumeti. Mislim, da so odvodi in integrali pomemben predmet. So eden izmed velikih produktov človeškega uma. Zakoni narave so napisani v računskem jeziku. Vsi študentje, ki študirajo matematiko, znanost, inženirstvo, ekonomijo, bi se morali naučiti reševati račune do konca prvega letnika faksa. Ampak, tukaj sem da povem, kot profesor matematike, da je malo takih ljudi, ki dejansko uporablja račune na zaveden in smiseln način v vsakdanjem življenju. Po drugi strani, statistika -- to je predmet, katerega bi lahko in bi morali uporabljati dnevno. Je tako? So tveganja. So nagrade. So naključja. Gre za razumevanje podatkov.
I think if our students, if our high school students -- if all of the American citizens -- knew about probability and statistics, we wouldn't be in the economic mess that we're in today. (Laughter) (Applause) Not only -- thank you -- not only that ... but if it's taught properly, it can be a lot of fun. I mean, probability and statistics, it's the mathematics of games and gambling. It's analyzing trends. It's predicting the future. Look, the world has changed from analog to digital. And it's time for our mathematics curriculum to change from analog to digital, from the more classical, continuous mathematics, to the more modern, discrete mathematics -- the mathematics of uncertainty, of randomness, of data -- that being probability and statistics.
Mislim, da če bi učenci, naši srednješolski učenci-- če bi vsi državljani Amerike -- vedeli o verjetnosti in statistiki, se danes ne bi znašli v gospodarski zmešnjavi. Ne samo -- hvala -- ne samo to... ampak, če je primerno poučevana, je lahko tudi zabavna. Mislim, da je verjetnost in statistika matematika iger in tveganja. Je analiza trendov. Je napoved prihodnosti. Poglejte, svet se je spremenil od analognega k digitalnemu. Čas je, da se tudi naš matematični curriculum spremeni od analognega k digitalnemu. Od klasične, zvezne matematike, do bolj moderne, diskretne matematike. Matematike negotovosti, naključnosti, podatkov -- in to je verjetnost in statistika.
In summary, instead of our students learning about the techniques of calculus, I think it would be far more significant if all of them knew what two standard deviations from the mean means. And I mean it. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Če obnovim, namesto da se naši učenci učijo o tehnikah računanja, mislim, da bi bilo dosti bolj smotrno, če bi vsi učenci vedeli kaj pomenita dva standardna odklona od povprečja. In to je pomembno. Najlepša hvala. (Aplavz)