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.
現在,假如歐巴馬總統 邀請我擔任下一個數學教育總管 我將對他提個建議 我認為將會大幅改善 國內的數學教育 而且可以很容易實施 而且費用不多。
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)
我們現在的數學課程 是以算術與代數為基礎, 而在那之後所學的一切 都在朝著同一個主題發展 在這金字塔的頂端,就是微積分 我在這裡要說 我認為這是個錯誤的目標 而正確的目標,對全體學生而言 每一個畢業生應該知道的 應該是統計 機率與統計 鼓掌聲
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.
請別誤會,微積分是個重要的學科 它是人類心智最重要的產物之一 大自然的定律是以微積分來描述的 每一個學習數學、科學、工程、經濟的學生 他們絕對需要學習微積分 在他們大一就得學會 但身為一個數學教授,我要說 很少人會實際用到微積分 以有意識、有意義的方式,用在日常生活中 但另一方面 統計學--是你可以應用的學科 並且應該在日常生活中使用的,對嗎? 它討論風險、報償、隨機性 它是了解數據的工具
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.
我想,如果我們的學生, 如果所有的美國人民 懂得機率與統計學 我們就不會陷入今天這場經濟風暴 不止這樣 如果教法適當,它可以是很有趣的 機率與統計 它是遊戲與賭博的數學 它分析趨勢、預測未來 你看,這世界已經改變了 從類比式的變成數位式 也是改變我們數學課程的時候了 從類比式變成數位式 從古典、連續式的數學 變成更現代、分離式的數學 探討不確定性的數學 探討數據的隨機性 那就是機率與統計
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)
簡要的說,與其 讓學生學微積分 我想更重要的是 讓他們了解,距離平均值兩個標準差 代表什麼意思,會更有意義 謝謝大家 鼓掌聲