African Leadership University

ALU Partner, Computer-Based Maths, Announces Annual Summit

ALU is delighted to share that the Computer-Based Maths (CBM) education initiative, an ALU partner company will hold its fourth summit at London’s Royal Institution on November 19-20. Speakers include Fatoumata Fall, ALU Faculty for Data and Decisions and CBM Founder and ALU Global Advisory Council member Conrad Wolfram.

CBM is an educational initiative with the goal to put the computer at the heart of maths education. The CBM vision is to create a new, globally adopted 21st century math curriculum that replaces hand-calculation with computation. In this way, students will have the freedom to understand, interpret and apply math because they won’t have to do the calculations that the computer can do.

ALC (ALU’s inaugural campus in Mauritius) will use CBM in the Data and Decisions class to show how fun, interactive and practical math can be. Fall says, “what fascinates me about CBM is how interactive and easy to understand it is. A student who doesn’t really like equations and abstract operations can find simulations about everyday life topics. For example, a student can explore the question, “Am I normal compared to other people?” These simulations will help them intuitively experience the mathematical concept in question without having to memorize anything or use a jargon they do not understand. In this example, the topic is normal distribution and comparisons.”

“It’s not often you find organisations fundamentally rethinking major societal building blocks like university education or maths, rarer still, that they join forces. Yet that’s what the partnership between ALU and Computer-Based Maths (CBM) means: reconceptualised STEM as a building block for ALU’s new-world subjects. Exciting to be transforming education, not just talking about what could be transformed,” said Wolfram about his appointment to the Council and CBM’s partnership with ALU.

Other speakers at the Summit include former Estonian Education Minister, Jaak Aaviksoo, Raspberry Pi CEO, Eben Upton and Computing at School Chair Simon Peyton Jones. The interactive event will include small group sessions, workshops and social media discussions which will debate the ways in which computers and coding can be embedded into the maths ecosystem. The Summit will also share the latest exciting developments from CBM, which has expanded significantly in Europe and Africa since the last summit. Click here to find out more and register. You may also contact  sallys@wolfram.com with any inquiries.