I know something about the teaching of statistics. So I took a look at Khan Academy statistics videos. To be fair, the first group are also calling for other people to make better videos and put them out there.įor a good summary of the pros and cons of KA, here is a recent article in the Washington Post: “ How well does Khan Academy teach?” Khan Academy Statistics videos The supporters also either suggest vested interest (for people who make educational materials) or that the writers should try to do better (for those people who don’t make educational materials). The other lot are generally telling the mean teachers to leave Khan alone, that he is the saviour of mathematics teaching, and they would never have understood mathematics without him.

One group is people who know about teaching, who are pleased that someone is pointing out that the emperor, though not naked, is poorly clad.

Critiques of Khan seem to meet with two kinds of comments. The one on multiplying negative numbers was particularly poor and has since been replaced.

Two mathematics teachers made videos after the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000 starring two of Khan’s poorer mathematical contributions. Sal agrees – he says he just makes them up as he goes along.ĭiane Ravitch linked into the Khan Academy debate, beginning with this post, which is what got me looking into this. Other people think that the videos lack pedagogical content knowledge. Now there are heaps of videos, with some back up exercises, and some people think this is the best thing to happen to maths (and other) education. Bill Gates discovered them and threw money at them. Other people watched them and found them useful. Sal Khan made little YouTube videos to teach a family member maths. Just in case you have been living under a rock, with respect to mathematics education, I will explain what Khan Academy is. I’m rather sorry they exist though, as they perpetuate the idea of statistics as mathematics.

I don’t like the Khan Academy videos about statistics.

Khan academy arithmetic