This company pays kids to do their math homework | Mohamad Jebara
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 February 2018
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Mohamad Jebara loves mathematics -- but he's concerned that too many students grow up thinking that this beautiful, rewarding subject is difficult and boring. His company is experimenting with a bold idea: paying students for completing weekly math homework. He explores the ethics of this model and how it's helping students -- and why learning math is crucial in the era of fake news.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This TED Talk features education entrepreneur Muhammad Jabara, recorded live at TED at Westpac |
| 0:07.1 | 2017. |
| 0:10.0 | For as long as I remember, I've loved mathematics. |
| 0:15.5 | Actually, it's not 100% true. |
| 0:18.4 | I've loved mathematics for all but a two-week period in senior high school. |
| 0:23.6 | I was top of my class and we were about to start the extension math course. |
| 0:28.6 | I was really excited about this brand new topic coming up. |
| 0:31.6 | Complex numbers. |
| 0:33.6 | I like complex. |
| 0:35.6 | My teacher was priming us for the concepts with some questions about square roots. |
| 0:39.8 | Square root of nine, three. |
| 0:41.6 | Square root of 256, 16. |
| 0:44.4 | Too easy. |
| 0:45.9 | Then she asked the trick question. |
| 0:48.0 | What about the square root of negative one? |
| 0:51.0 | Of course, we were all over it. |
| 0:53.0 | Come on, miss. |
| 0:54.0 | We all know you can't take the square root of the negative. |
| 0:57.3 | That's true in the real world, she said. |
| 0:59.7 | But in the complex world, the square root of negative one |
| 1:03.4 | is the imaginary number I. |
| 1:09.9 | That day, my entire mathematical world came crashing down on me. |
... |
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