“My single biggest goal is to try to deliver things the way I wish they were delivered to me.”
— Salman Khan
Today, I discovered an interesting site that I believe will be a game changer for education. I even intend to use it to help educate my own children.
Salman Khan founded the Khan Academy in 2006, and ultimately quit his job as hedge fund manager to run it full-time.
Khan is a talented fellow, having earned three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Khan Academy has an impressive array of over 2,400 educational YouTube videos about a whole host of topics, ranging from differential equations to organic chemistry. Furthermore, Sal Khan does a fantastic job explaining very complex and challenging course material in a very clear and understandable way.
More importantly, he is filling a gap created by a failing public school system, and rising private school tuitions.
And he does it for free.
Making Euler’s Equation Cool
In high school, I held a part-time job at a fast food restaurant. The job could be frustrating, and the customers could be pure torture. To cope with customers who treated me like dirt because I worked at this establishment, I sometimes wrote the proof below on their napkins, just to let them know that I was not as “stupid” as they assumed all fast food workers were.
It was funny to see it again in all its elegance at Khan Academy.
Reflections of a Rational Republican 
Ya, ya, and you finished equations on MIT blackboards late at night during your janitor job, and your best friend is Ben Affleck, and you co-founded Project Greenlight… heard it before Sean! Haha! 🙂
Honestly, though, I think that’s awesome. Subtle enough to make a statement yet not cause problems. A skill I should probably try to learn…
Nah.
Some of the other workers were not so nuanced in their approach…
“If this does not blow your mind, then you have no emotion.”
Awesome.
I am a math major with a philosophy minor. I was in one of my philosophy classes and we were discussing if ” the universe was based on biology or on mathematics”. My main antagonists in the program made an impassioned speech the story of the universe is made up of the language of biology. His 5 second glance my way was an emphatic end to his nearly 5 minute diatribe.
I simply stood up and said, “I cede to Mark that biology is indeed the language in which the universe communicates. However, it is mathematics that is the alphabet of his language.”
I love math.
I am a big fan myself. It is one of those rare things in life that just clicks together in a way that is universal.