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description:Conrad Wolfram - mathematician, technologist and entrepreneur - shares his blog posts, recent writings, featured media and more. Conrad is Strategic director and European co-founder/CEO of the Wolfram group (www.wolfram.com) and founder of Computer-Based Math (www.computerbasedmath.org).
Conrad Wolfram April 29, 2020 COVID-19: Mathematical Modelling on Trial April 29, 2020 / Conrad Wolfram Mathematical modelling is at the centre of our lives as never before—invoked and presented daily to justify massive change in our way of life, livelihoods—even as giver of life or death.
It’s presented by experts not only as the best torch to pick in navigating us to the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, but the only one. It predicts the future or how we must change policy to achieve a different future.
Read More April 29, 2020 / / February 26, 2020 The Math(s) Fix - Coming Summer 2020 February 26, 2020 / Conrad Wolfram It’s been a bit quiet on this website for the past year or so, but not without good reason! I'm very excited to announce my new book, The Math(s) Fix will be released this summer.
Read More February 26, 2020 / / October 13, 2018 Today's Power of Disenfranchisement: Are Data Scientists the New High Priests? October 13, 2018 / Conrad Wolfram Computational Thinking—The New LiteracyOur democracies face a massive challenge today. The battleground for electoral success is based on information that few are equipped to question. A small elite manages our thoughts through knowledge only they possess, to the exclusion of most citizens.
I am talking about the overriding effect of modern data science and more generally computation in our societies. Just a tiny fraction of our populations are educated in directly applying computational thinking to information, arguments and decisions they have to take. Including about government. Including about voting.
Read More October 13, 2018 / / June 21, 2018 Has the math(s) brand become toxic? June 21, 2018 / Conrad Wolfram For once I'm not talking about the contents of school maths but the name and its associations.
The question I'm asking is if our core technical subject wasn't termed "maths" but "nicebrand" would things go better in and out of education?
Sadly, I've started to conclude the answer is yes. I now suspect that using the brand of maths is damaging core technical education, its reform, and efforts to equip society for the AI age.
Believe me, this is not the conclusion I want. I've spent years of my life somehow connected with the word "maths". But much as I might not like my conclusion, I want the essence of subject maths to succeed; so I don't want the name to kill the subject—a much worse outcome.
Read More June 21, 2018 / / November 27, 2016 Post-truth: shocking indictment of today's maths education November 27, 2016 / Conrad Wolfram Listening to debates pre-Brexit, one of the most familiar cries from the British public to politicians was "we need more information, a more informed debate", implying "tell us more accurately how our vote will play out, you must know!" but then when trends or figures were presented "you can't believe any expert".
Unpacking these sentiments is enlightening. Effectively the clamour was for a detailed model and computation of what leaving the EU versus staying in might mean, particularly in practical financial ways like affordability of housing.
The fact is, no-one knows, even approximately. In practice you can't predict it. The ecosystem is too complex, with huge numbers of feedback loops and linked components, many of which even individually are almost unknowable.
Read More November 27, 2016 / / October 04, 2016 Anchoring Computational Thinking in today’s curriculum October 04, 2016 / Conrad Wolfram There is a lot of talk of "Computational Thinking" as a new imperative of education, so I wanted to address a few questions that keep coming up about it. What is it? Is it important? How does it relate to today's school subjects? Is Computer-Based Maths (CBM) a Computational Thinking curriculum?
Firstly, I've got to say, I really like the term.
To my mind, the overriding purpose of education is "to enrich life" (yours, your society's, not just in "riches" but in meaning) and different ways in which you can think about how you look at ideas, challenges and opportunities seems crucial to achieving that.
Therefore using a term of the form “xxx Thinking" that cuts across boundaries but can support traditional school subjects (eg. History, English, Maths) and emphasises an approach to thinking is important to improving education.
Read More October 04, 2016 / / September 20, 2016 Enterprise Private Cloud: the core solution for Enterprise Computation September 20, 2016 / Conrad Wolfram Just a quick entry to say we released a product I've been involved with--Enterprise Private Cloud--a few days ago. It's a dramatic feat of engineering, built on the uniquely extensive base of the Wolfram Technology Stack.
I'll leave my main blogpost to do the talking, but suffice it to say that I'm pleased there's a clean, powerful, modern way to put computation at the heart of the enterprise--what I call Enterprise Computation.
It's important for organisations to start to think now about how they manifest this new opportunity which will rapidly become a necessity--one driven particularly by data science.
September 20, 2016 / /
$\setCounter{0}$ August 02, 2016 Seymour Papert (1928-2016) August 02, 2016 / Conrad Wolfram A brief post to say how sad I was to wake up this morning to news of the death of Seymour Papert--the great visionary for the use of computers in education, inventor of the coding language Logo and its associated Turtle (as a route to computational thinking) and instigator of the "constructionism" approach to learning.
I am also sad that I never met Seymour. I even can't say when I consciously became aware of him or different strands of his work either. But his name has seemingly for ever been familiar, cropping up with increasing regularity and force in so many of the interests I've pursued, particularly fundamentally reforming maths education (our computerbasedmath.org or CBM project). So many routes in so many areas lead back to Seymour. I can't help but notice with some wry amusement this morning how constructionist an approach I have taken to learning about Seymour's life and work!
Read More August 02, 2016 / / July 08, 2016 How Significant is Significance Arithmetic? July 08, 2016 / Conrad Wolfram Central to our mission at computerbasedmath.org is thinking through from first principles what's important and what's not to the application of maths in the real, modern, computer-based world. This is one of the most challenging aspects of our project: it's very hard to shake off the dogma of our own maths education and tell whether something is for now and the future, or if really it's for the history of maths.
This week's issue is significance arithmetic, similar to what you might know from school as significant figures. The idea is when you do a calculation not just a single value but bounds that represent the uncertainty of your calculation too are calculated. You can get an idea of how accurate your answer is or indeed if it has any digits of accuracy at all.
Read More July 08, 2016 / / September 15, 2015 Computers in education: Great machines, Wrong results September 15, 2015 / Conrad Wolfram I am not the slightest bit surprised at the recent OECD report that use of computers in education hasn't improved PISA results −and indeed that many countries with the best technology provision have mediocre performance.
Why? Because the world's most transformative machines have been used for entirely the wrong purpose in most classrooms: automating pedagogy not changing the subject taught.
Countries with the most attentive teaching are also likely countries where there is least pressure to computerise pedagogy for teaching today's school subjects. They do best in PISA because they are best at helping students through those subjects.
Read More September 15, 2015 / / September 04, 2015 China: from omnipotent to impotent? September 04, 2015 / Conrad Wolfram I've been struck in the last couple of weeks by China's apparent fall from global economic wonder-kid to the latest problem child.
Neither characterisation is true in my view.
What really seems to have spooked people is the psychological turnaround from apparently omnipotent Chinese government, able to command and fix at will, to a government that's apparently largely as financially impotent as any other.
Haven't we seen this same "country on a pedestal" culture that saw Japan fall from grace in the 1990s, the US in 2000s (along in a small way with the UK) and now China?
Read More September 04, 2015 / / May 22, 2015 Evidence: let's promote not stifle innovation in education May 22, 2015 / Conrad Wolfram Earlier this week I was part of a high-level discussion about maths and computer science education, how we could improve their reach and effectiveness. Rather quickly the question of evidence came up, and its role in driving innovation.
It's taken me a few days to realise that there were actually two very different "importance of evidence" conversations--one with which I completely concur, and one with which I vehemently disagree. In the end, what I believe this exposes is a failure of many in charge of education to understand how major innovation usually happens--whether innovation in science, technology, business or education--and how "evidence" can drive effective innovation rather than stifle it. In an age of massive real-world change, the correct and rapid reflection of this in education is crucial to future curricula, their effective deployment, and achieving optimisation for the right educational outcomes.
Read More May 22, 2015 / / March 02, 2015 Computation meets Data Science in London, Thursday 5 March March 02, 2015 / Conrad Wolfram I'm usually going on about "computation" or in education, "maths". But I've come to appreciate just how much of computation's utility in modern life centres around data (rather than, say, algebraic modelling).
Clearly data science is a major, growing and vital field—one that's relatively new in its current incarnation. It's been born and is driven forward by new technology, our abilities to collect, store, transmit and "process" ever larger quantities of data.
But "processing" has often failed to elucidate what's important in the data. We need answers, not just analytics, we need decisions not just big data.
Read More March 02, 2015 / / January 19, 2015 What are the modern areas of maths? January 19, 2015 / Conrad Wolfram Traditional areas of maths like algebra, calculus or trig don't seem a good way to think about subdividing the subject in the modern world.
You might ask, why subdivide at all?
In a sense, you shouldn't. The expert mathematician utilises whichever maths areas helps them solve the problem at hand. Breadth and ingenuity of application is often key.
But maths represents a massive body of knowledge and expertise, subdividing helps us to think about different areas, for curricula to focus their energies enough that there's sufficient depth of experience gained by students at a given time to get a foothold.
However I believe the subdivisions should be grouped by modern uses of maths, not ancient divisions of tools.
So here goes with our 5 major areas:
Data Science (everything data, incorporating but expanding statistics and probability).Geometry (an ancient subject, but highly relevant today)Information Theory (everything signals--whether images or sound. Right name for area?).Modelling (techniques for good application of maths for real world problems)Architecture of Maths (understanding the coherence of maths that builds its power, closely related to coding).Comments welcome!
January 19, 2015 / /
$\setCounter{0}$ December 03, 2013 PISA results: Let's win on the right playing field, not lose on the wrong one December 03, 2013 / Conrad Wolfram Today's mathsPISA resultsare predictable in the successes that many Asian countries show and the mediocrity of many of the traditional Western countries--like the UK.
I believe PISA is meticulous in conducting its tests and reflects a good evaluation of standards of today's maths education. And yet I think if countries like the UK simply try to climb up today's PISA assessment, they'd be doing the wrong thing.
Read More December 03, 2013 / / my home page/ Bio/ My writings/ Media ">RECENT POSTS Sep 2, 2021 My piano has turned 100...with a few adventures along the way Sep 2, 2021 Sep 2, 2021 Jun 21, 2021 The Math(s) Fix: Now an Audiobook... Narrated by me! Jun 21, 2021 Jun 21, 2021 Oct 6, 2020 COVID-19 and Excel-07: when will we fix the failed education that lead to yet another data science disaster? Oct 6, 2020 Oct 6, 2020 Aug 21, 2020 UK's exam-grade U-turn: A failure of Computational Thinking destroys public trust again Aug 21, 2020 Aug 21, 2020 Jun 10, 2020 Released today: "The Math(s) Fix" Jun 10, 2020 Jun 10, 2020 ALL POSTS
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