Sal Khan Quotes

It's such a diversion to be constantly thinking of better ways I can teach people math that my hunger is for that really, for new ways of translating the beauty of it.

You know, I'm not terribly fast at my times tables, because that's not what I think mathematics is about.

I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.

Every math curriculum in the world is based on the idea of hand-calculating, and most of what you're teaching is how to calculate. And I think the resistance to this is very variable.

We have a culture where it’s OK to not know anything about mathematics whereas in Asia, they don’t

What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've learned something about it yourself... The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn't that true?

Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.

Carl Sagan always used to say that when he was trying to explain something to someone, he would go back to that time when he didn't understand it, and then he would retrace his thought steps so that he could make it absolutely clear, and that's one of the infinite number of things I learned from him.

Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it.

Making something simple is very difficult.

My own approach to literary problems is very like the one Dr. Johnson's blind housekeeper used when she poured tea-she put her finger inside the cup.

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

The expression I use: Pain + Reality = Progress. Whenever I would have a painful mistake, I started to view that as puzzles that would give me gems if I could solve the puzzle. So, it made me thoughtful - what should I do differently next time? That was the puzzle. And the gem was some principle for handling the same thing when it came along again, and then I would write it down. And by writing it down and referring to it, and also being able to show it to other people so that we could agree that that was a good way of handling that thing - that was very, very powerful.

A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring.

The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.

President Obama said he plans on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. How about teaching math to that economic team of his?

I don't think any of us have the answers to everything. There's no human being on earth who fits that category. So why wouldn't you ask for help? Why wouldn't you run ideas by people that you respect? Too many young people cast around trying to figure out what the answer is themselves, because they're afraid to come back and say, "I'm not sure I understood you," or "Could you give me a little more information about what you need?" Just do that. It saves you time, it saves your boss's or mentor's time. And it's a great lesson to learn.

You have to seek the simplest implementation of a problem solution in order to know when you've reached your limit in that regard. Then it's easy to make tradeoffs, to back off a little, for performance reasons. You can simplify and simplify and simplify yet still find other incredible ways to simplify further.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life.

Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.

Nearly every problem has been solved by someone, somewhere. The challenge of the 21st century is to find out what works and scale it up.

There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.

The truly educated man will always speak to the understanding of the most unlearned of his audience.

Don't explain why it works; explain how you use it.