Professor, Mathematician and Writer J.A. Paulos joins the show to discuss math education, the power of puzzles, cognitive biases, and MUCH more!
Important Links:
- John’s Website - https://math.temple.edu/~paulos/
- John’s Twitter - https://x.com/JohnAllenPaulos
Show Notes:
0:00:00 Intro
0:00:51 Main podcast
0:02:02 Why do People Hate Math?
0:09:15 The Power of Posing Problems with Counterintuitive or Shocking Results
0:14:21 Using Everyday Examples to Understand Math Concepts
0:21:01 Systems Designed to Take Advantage of Innumeracy
0:23:16 People’s Ignorance of Randomness and Random Samples
0:28:48 The Strange Power of Anchoring Bias
0:41:47 Tradeoffs between Probability and Plausibility
0:48:52 The Prisoner’s Dilemma & Math Anxiety
0:52:48 Improving the Monty Hall Problem
0:54:11 Designing an Ideal Intro Math Course
1:00:51 The Big Brother Aspect of Nudging
1:11:14 John as Emperor of the World
Books Mentioned:
- Statistics; by D.A. Freedman, R. Pisani, and R.A. Purves
- Thinking Fast and Slow; by Daniel Kahneman
