Is It a Good Idea to Teach Critical Thinking?

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I think getting people to know a lot, not just facts, but trends and connections between disparate fields like economics and evolution is worthwhile. People always are drawn me on to some fact, the key formula, the key thing. And often there is no clear thing. Well, and often it's sort of against their interests, right? People don't want to reach certain conclusions. The human brain is really, really good at reaching the conclusions we want to reach,. Not the ones that the data are forcing us to go toward.

People have a complicated relationship to mathematics. We all use it in our everyday lives, from calculating a tip at a restaurant to estimating the probability of some future event. But many people find the subject intimidating, if not off-putting. John Allen Paulos has long been working to make mathematics more approachable and encourage people to become more numerate. We talk about how people think about math, what kinds of math they should know, and the role of stories and narrative to make math come alive.

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John Allen Paulos received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is currently a professor of mathematics at Temple University. He s a bestselling author, and frequent contributor to publications such as ABCNews.com, the Guardian, and Scientific American. Among his awards are the Science Communication award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Mathematics Communication Award from the Joint Policy Board of Mathematics. His new book is Who’s Counting? Uniting Numbers and Narratives with Stories from Pop Culture, Puzzles, Politics, and More.

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