Conrad Wolfram

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Conrad Wolfram
Conrad Wolfram Portrait.png
Portrait of Conrad Wolfram
Born (1970-06-10) 10 June 1970 (age 53)
Oxford, England
NationalityBritish
Education Dragon School
Eton College
Alma mater University of Cambridge (MA)
Employer Wolfram Research
Known for Computer-Based Math
Parents
Website www.conradwolfram.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Conrad Wolfram (born 10 June 1970) is a British technologist and businessman known for his work in information technology and mathematics education reform. [1] [2] In June 2020, Wolfram released his first book, The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age. [3] [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Education and early life

Born in Oxford, England, in 1970, Wolfram was educated at Dragon School and Eton College where he learned to program on a BBC Micro. [7] He was an undergraduate student at Pembroke College, Cambridge [8] where he studied the Natural Sciences tripos graduating with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cambridge.[ when? ]

Career

Wolfram has been a proponent of Computer-Based Math—a reform of mathematics education to "rebuild the curriculum assuming computers exist." [9] [10] [11] [12] and is the founder of computerbasedmath.org. [13] [14]

He argues, "There are a few cases where it is important to do calculations by hand, but these are small fractions of cases. The rest of the time you should assume that students should use a computer just like everyone does in the real world." [15] And that "School mathematics is very disconnected from mathematics used to solve problems in the real world". [16] In an interview with the Guardian he described the replacement of hand calculation by computer use as "democratising expertise". [17] He argues that "A good guide to how and what you should do with a computer in the classroom is what you'd do with it outside. As much as possible, use real-world tools in the classroom in an open-ended way not special education-only closed-ended approaches." [18]

In 2009, he spoke about education reform at the TEDx Conference at the EU Parliament. [19] [20] and again at TED Global 2010 where he argued that "Maths should be more practical and more conceptual, but less mechanical," [21] and that "Calculating is the machinery of math - a means to an end."

In August 2012, he was a member of the judging panel at the Festival of Code, the culmination of Young Rewired State 2012. [22] Wolfram is also part of Flooved advisory board. [23]

On 10 June 2020, Wolfram released his first book, The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age. [24] [25] [26] The book summarises Wolfram's thoughts on the current state of mathematics education and sets out a vision for a new core subject based on computational thinking.

Wolfram Research

Wolfram co-founded Wolfram Research Europe Ltd. [27] in 1991 and remains its CEO. [28] In 1996, he additionally became Strategic and International Director [29] of Wolfram Research, Inc., making him also responsible for Wolfram Research Asia Ltd, and communications such as the wolfram.com website.

Wolfram Research was founded by his brother [30] Stephen Wolfram, the maker of Mathematica software and the Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine. [31]

Wolfram has led the effort to move the use of Mathematica from pure computation system to development and deployment engine, [32] [33] instigating technology such as the Mathematica Player family and web Mathematica and by pushing greater automation within the system. [34]

He has also led the focus on interactive publishing technology [35] with the stated aim of "making new applications as everyday as new documents" [36] claiming that "If a picture is worth a thousand words, an interactive document is worth a thousand pictures." [37] These technologies converged to form the Computable Document Format [38] which Wolfram says can "transfer knowledge in a much higher-bandwidth way". [39]

Personal life

Wolfram's father Hugo Wolfram was a textile manufacturer and novelist (Into a Neutral Country) and his mother Sybil Wolfram was a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the younger brother of Stephen Wolfram.[ citation needed ] Wolfram is married to primary care ophthalmology consultant Stella Hornby and has a daughter, Sophia Wolfram.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfram Mathematica</span> Computational software program

Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimization, plotting functions and various types of data, implementation of algorithms, creation of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other programming languages. It was conceived by Stephen Wolfram, and is developed by Wolfram Research of Champaign, Illinois. The Wolfram Language is the programming language used in Mathematica. Mathematica 1.0 was released on June 23, 1988 in Champaign, Illinois and Santa Clara, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Wolfram</span> British-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, writer and businessman (born 1959)

Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

A computer algebra system (CAS) or symbolic algebra system (SAS) is any mathematical software with the ability to manipulate mathematical expressions in a way similar to the traditional manual computations of mathematicians and scientists. The development of the computer algebra systems in the second half of the 20th century is part of the discipline of "computer algebra" or "symbolic computation", which has spurred work in algorithms over mathematical objects such as polynomials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfram Research</span> American multinational company

Wolfram Research, Inc. is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include WolframAlpha, Wolfram SystemModeler, Wolfram Workbench, gridMathematica, Wolfram Finance Platform, webMathematica, the Wolfram Cloud, and the Wolfram Programming Lab. Wolfram Research founder Stephen Wolfram is the CEO. The company is headquartered in Champaign, Illinois, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xcas</span> Computer algebra system

Xcas is a user interface to Giac, which is an open source computer algebra system (CAS) for Windows, macOS and Linux among many other platforms. Xcas is written in C++. Giac can be used directly inside software written in C++.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfram Demonstrations Project</span> Open source software demonstrations

The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an organized, open-source collection of small interactive programmes called Demonstrations, which are meant to visually and interactively represent ideas from a range of fields. It is hosted by Wolfram Research, whose stated goal is to bring computational exploration to a large population. At its launch, it contained 1300 demonstrations but has grown to over 10,000. The site won a Parents' Choice Award in 2008.

Web-based simulation (WBS) is the invocation of computer simulation services over the World Wide Web, specifically through a web browser. Increasingly, the web is being looked upon as an environment for providing modeling and simulation applications, and as such, is an emerging area of investigation within the simulation community.

Computational thinking (CT) refers to the thought processes involved in formulating problems so their solutions can be represented as computational steps and algorithms. In education, CT is a set of problem-solving methods that involve expressing problems and their solutions in ways that a computer could also execute. It involves automation of processes, but also using computing to explore, analyze, and understand processes.

WolframAlpha is an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is offered as an online service that answers factual queries by computing answers from externally sourced data.

Tensor software is a class of mathematical software designed for manipulation and calculation with tensors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computable Document Format</span> File format

Computable Document Format (CDF) is an electronic document format designed to allow authoring dynamically generated, interactive content. CDF was created by Wolfram Research, and CDF files can be created using Mathematica. As of 2021, the Wolfram Research website lists CDF as a "legacy" format.

Wolfram System Modeler, developed by Wolfram MathCore, is a platform for engineering as well as life-science modeling and simulation based on the Modelica language. It provides an interactive graphical modeling and simulation environment and a customizable set of component libraries.

Computer-Based Math is an educational project started by Conrad Wolfram in 2010 to promote the idea that routine mathematical calculations should be done with a computer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolfram Language</span> Programming language and environment developed by Wolfram Research

The Wolfram Language is a proprietary, general very high-level multi-paradigm programming language developed by Wolfram Research. It emphasizes symbolic computation, functional programming, and rule-based programming and can employ arbitrary structures and data. It is the programming language of the mathematical symbolic computation program Mathematica.

The computational knowledge economy is an economy 'where value is derived from the automated generation of knowledge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Notebook interface</span> Programming tool blending code and documents

A notebook interface or computational notebook is a virtual notebook environment used for literate programming, a method of writing computer programs. Some notebooks are WYSIWYG environments including executable calculations embedded in formatted documents; others separate calculations and text into separate sections. Notebooks share some goals and features with spreadsheets and word processors but go beyond their limited data models.

Computational literacy is a term that is used to describe the broad ability to apply computational thinking and awareness of the range, scope and limitations of computational techniques. It is distinct from the ability to perform math calculations by hand, instead anticipating that the actual computations will be performed by computers.

References

  1. ↑ "Stop Calculating And Start Teaching Computational Thinking". Forbes . Archived from the original on 13 May 2023.
  2. ↑ Bing and WolframAlpha catching up with Google in search engine battle?
  3. ↑ The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age
  4. ↑ Jenkins, Simon (2020). "If we can do without GCSEs and university exams now, why go back?". theguardian.com.
  5. ↑ "Wolfram Research blog to which Wolfram contributes". blog.wolfram.com.
  6. ↑ Conrad Wolfram at TED OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  7. ↑ Anon (2011). "The BBC Microcomputer and me, 30 years down the line". bbc.co.uk. BBC News.
  8. ↑ giving away software in push into China, The News Gazette , 9 March 2008.
  9. ↑ Have We Gotten Math Education All Wrong Huffington Post 11 April 2006
  10. ↑ Stop teaching kids to add up - maths is more important Financial Times, 7 October 2015
  11. ↑ We need to base maths lessons on computers, The Daily Telegraph , 3 December 2009.
  12. ↑ Closing the gap between modern life and the math curriculum New York Times, 10 February 2013
  13. ↑ computerbasedmath.org.
  14. ↑ The despair of the dissenting government expert The New Statesman
  15. ↑ Introducing the 'sat-nav' maths exam, Channel 4 News , Channel 4, UK
  16. ↑ Students fleeing mathematics El Pais, Spain,
  17. ↑ WolframAlpha Online Search Engine Calculations, The Guardian , 2 September 2009.
  18. ↑ edtech digest 10 Dec 2010
  19. ↑ I calculate therefore I am, Conrad Wolfram, TedX Brussels, YouTube, 2009.
  20. ↑ "Speakers at TEDxBurssels 2009". Tedxbrussels.eu. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 16 November 2010.
  21. ↑ Conrad Wolfram wants to reboot the maths curriculum Archived 21 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine , Wired Magazine , 19 July 2010.
  22. ↑ Past Judges Archived 4 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine youngrewiredstate.org
  23. ↑ Company Overview of Flooved Limited, Bloomberg. Retrieved 3/10/17.
  24. ↑ Released today: "The Math(s) Fix"
  25. ↑ The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age
  26. ↑ Redefining The Value Proposition Of Math Education Forbes Jan 2022
  27. ↑ Wolfram Alpha goes live, Channel 4 News , Channel 4, UK.
  28. ↑ Knowles, Jamillah (15 September 2009). "Guatemala, Wolfram Alpha, Acquine and news". Radio 5, BBC, UK. Retrieved 16 November 2010.
  29. ↑ A computational knowledge engine for factual queries, The Hindu , India, 25 May 2009.
  30. ↑ Can Wolfram Take on Google?, The Daily Telegraph , UK.
  31. ↑ Wolfram promises new way to probe the web, The Independent , UK.
  32. ↑ Wolfram Releases Mathematica Player 7, Inside HPC, 10 December 2008.
  33. ↑ Wolfram Releases Mathematic Player Pro 7, Dr. Dobb's Journal .
  34. ↑ webMathematica Japanese Edition: Unique Product Brings Computation to the Web Archived 7 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine , Mathematica Journal, volume 8, issue 4.
  35. ↑ Making Science Leap From the Page The New York Times, 17 December 2011
  36. ↑ The day that documents and applications merged, Wolfram Research.
  37. ↑ Interactive deployment, Wolfram Research.
  38. ↑ Wolfram Alpha Creator plans to delete the PDF The Telegraph (UK)
  39. ↑ Conrad Wolfram: computation will release data overload Archived 1 July 2012 at the Wayback Machine Wired 28 June 2012
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