My first intuition… Read article about Bayes Theorem was “take evidence and account for false positives”. Does a lab result mean you’re sick? Well, how rare is the disease, and how often do healthy people test positive? Misleading signals must be considered.

The Fourier Transform is one of deepest insights ever made. Unfortunately, the meaning is buried within dense equations:

Yikes. Rather than deciphering it symbol-by-symbol, let's experience the idea. Here's a plain-English metaphor:

• What does the Fourier Transform do? Given a
… Read article

Despite two linear algebra classes, my knowledge consisted of “Matrices, determinants, eigen something something”.

Why? Well, let’s try this course format:

• Name the course “Linear Algebra” but focus on things called matrices and vectors
• Label items with similar-looking letters (i/j),
… Read article

It’s easy to forget math is a language for communicating ideas… Read article. As words, “two and three is equal to five” is cumbersome. Replacing numbers and operations with symbols helps: “2 + 3 is equal to 5″.

But we can

I cringe when hearing "Math teaches you to think".

It's a well-meaning but ineffective appeal that only satisfies existing fans (see: "Reading takes you anywhere!"). What activity, from crossword puzzles to memorizing song lyrics, doesn't help you think?

Math seems… Read article

I’ve studied probability and statistics without experiencing them. What’s the difference? What are they trying to do?

This analogy helped:

• Probability is starting with an animal, and figuring out what footprints it will make
• Statistics is seeing a footprint, and
… Read article

What’s algebra about? When learning about variables (x, y, z), they seem to “hide” a number:

What number could be hiding inside of x? 2, in this case.

It seems that arithmetic still works, even when we don’t have the… Read article