Professor, Mathematician and Writer J.A. Paulos joins the show to discuss math education, the power of puzzles, cognitive biases, and MUCH more! Important Links: - John’s Website - https://math.temple.edu/~paulos/ - John’s Twitter - https://x.com/JohnAllenPaulos Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:00:51 Main podcast 0:02:02 Why do People Hate Math? 0:09:15 The Power of Posing Problems with Counterintuitive or Shocking Results 0:14:21 Using Everyday Examples to Understand Math Concepts 0:21:01 Systems Designed to Take Advantage of Innumeracy 0:23:16 People’s Ignorance of Randomness and Random Samples 0:28:48 The Strange Power of Anchoring Bias 0:41:47 Tradeoffs between Probability and Plausibility 0:48:52 The Prisoner’s Dilemma & Math Anxiety 0:52:48 Improving the Monty Hall Problem 0:54:11 Designing an Ideal Intro Math Course 1:00:51 The Big Brother Aspect of Nudging 1:11:14 John as Emperor of the World Books Mentioned: - Statistics; by D.A. Freedman, R. Pisani, and R.A. Purves - Thinking Fast and Slow; by Daniel Kahneman