School of Hard Sums

If you're not watching this, you should be.

Dara O Briain on the importance of Maths:

“Maths is the language in which the universe is written. It’s innate to the human brain and is a spectacular thing that we’ve discovered/invented. Also it permeates our lives. If you have to discuss something in terms of its utility, we’re moving increasingly to being a technological society and therefore you need to be conversant with it. But in all honesty, I am over discussing things in terms of their utility, as if education is just training for jobs – it isn’t.

"I encounter the same argument in teaching obscure languages: it fires neurons in different ways, helps you with problems. The example I quote is if people really understood probability, they’d save a lot of money on lottery tickets.”