All in for Education Livestream with Sal Khan

And she started using the printing out transcripts of Khan Academy - and get-and giving him these sheets of the stacks of paper when she visited him in prison. Through just the transcripts, Jason was able to start realizing that he, you know, in school, he felt weak in math. But now he's like, "I can learn this stuff." His sentence was taken down from 30 years to still 15 years. So now, in his mid-30s, he's released from prison. He's feeling more confident about his knowledge. He goes to Community College, and then he's able to use Khan Academy properly with the videos and the exercises, what a lot of y'all are familiar with. Then he decides he wants to transfer to a four-year college. He uses the SAT prep that we do in partnership with the College Board, and he starts doing quite well.

I mean, this is what's really mind-blowing: at age 35, he was able to stick to transfer to Stanford University as a computer science student. And that was the Jason who, you know, by the end of the story, we were all tearing up. This was as powerful. Then I asked him, "I was like, hey, whatever one leaves, can I take my phone out and just video you? Because I think your story, obviously, it's something that we love to share in forums like this when we're pleading for people to realize that, hey, Khan Academy needs your help. But it's also an inspiring story because, you know, I think we all have days where we're like, 'Oh, things could be a little bit easier' or 'I had that setback or that setback.' When you hear a story like Jason's, you realize that most of our setbacks are fairly small in comparison to what he has gone through."

And then you see how far he's gone, and he still has setbacks. What's amazing is how positive he is. I mean, you know, when you have a prison record, it's still hard to get internships. It's still hard to get jobs, even if you have Stanford on your resume. So, you know, I think it's always good. I mean, we know where Thanksgiving was last week, but I'm still in kind of the Thanksgiving mode. I think we all need to really appreciate how good most of us have it. Don't look at that, and Jason appreciates how good he has it, even though he's had a tough beginning.

But we have more donations! Rita, thank you, Rita. Really appreciate it! Just joining us live.

"Okay, all right, so you - so just explain what's going on here."

"Yeah, you wanna? Yeah, for sure. So today is Giving Tuesday, and Khan Academy, we are a non-profit, so we are asking for your support today. We have a goal of raising five thousand dollars during this live stream. During this live stream, we'll call out people who do donate and also take your questions. So if you have any questions, please put it in the comments of this livestream, and we'll try to get to as many as we can. We might also call out people who aren't donating; we would do it if we knew how, but we don't know. A few people got scared."

"Well, thanks, Javon, for donating. It means a lot, and people can donate on Facebook. There's a place to do it. On YouTube, there's a place, so that's a new feature they added."

"Yes, yes, there's a place to donate button somewhere around, someplace top right."

"And if we raise $5,000 before we show it, I don’t know, yeah, it should be motivation enough. Khan Academy is a not-for-profit. It has a mission of free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Your donation will literally help us serve tens of millions of people. And as we explained to the Facebook users, we're live streaming on YouTube and Facebook simultaneously. Very high-tech!"

"As we explained, a not-for-profit like Khan Academy, no one owns it. Khan Academy, Lizzy doesn't own Khan Academy. It's a public good. We are employees of Khan Academy, but your donations are what allows us to continue to provide things for free. You see a lot of things on the internet that seem free, but they're making money off of you in some way, shape, or form. They're feeding you ads, which you don't realize it, but that's programming your brain. Sometimes in shady ways, they might have some kind of freemium; they're going to try to sell you something at some point, or they're going to do something suspicious with you. Not always suspicious, but they're gonna do something with your data. But as a not-for-profit—and not only is it not for profit—we're supported by philanthropy. And all right, you know, our goal is to keep Khan Academy free, make sure that our bottom line is not profit; our bottom line is our mission: free world-class education for anyone, anywhere."

"So hopefully that is motivation enough to donate to Khan Academy. But just to put some of you on the edge, over the edge, not on the edge—over the line. On top of that, if we're able to raise $5,000 over the next half hour, I will explain this notorious order of operations problem. It's fascinating how popular this is, but I think, you know, most of you all know this. And also, Lizzy and I are answering questions, and we're also doing shout-outs to people like Adear, who just gave a donation. So thank you, Victoria Frey. I think I mentioned Victoria yet? Well, thank you, Victoria."

"So it does look like we have some questions that are already coming in. So, um, what is your advice for when you can't get your SAT score up?"

"All right, SAT score. So I think there's a couple of things. So before even thinking about how to get the SAT score up, it's just a reminder—we made a video about distressing the SAT. First, appreciate that you are not your SAT score. I think, especially when you are in the later stages of high school, and you're in this period where you're applying to college, I know this is happening to a lot of students right now. Or maybe there's a lot of juniors who are starting to think about the process for next year. It can seem like your whole identity is going to be defined by your grades, your extracurriculars, your SAT score, where you go to college, etc., etc. Everyone's comparing, and that's not the healthiest thing in the world. We've all been there. But I think, you know, what you're going to realize is over the broader sweep of your life that these are all just very minor data points.

"I have people who've, you know, billionaires, some of whom have, you know, donated to the Khan Academy, and their SAT scores were not so impressive. But they are very impressive people; they are very entrepreneurial; they were able to do great things. They might have just not been, you know, for whatever reason, you know, great test-takers or whatever you want to call it. So that's my first foundational: you are not your SAT score. You are not your grades; you are not defined by where you go, where you go to college. Likewise, I know people with very good data points who, you know, for various reasons, have had to, you know, struggle in various ways.

"So once again, that's the disclaimer."

"Yes, and it's easy to pretend that, like, you know, I'm beyond all of this. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. Yeah, sometimes you visit a house with a friend with a massive house, and you're like, 'Oh, this is nice.' No, I'm not defined by the square footage, but my advice for you at four, four, SE T early any test is, you know, there's direct advice. We have the official SAT practice that we've partnered with the College Board, and we have many efficacy studies that have shown that pretty much every hour that you're able to engage on the platform, you are going to grow. And there are better ways to use things like our official SAT practice.

"I would recommend taking as many practice tests as you can. When you take the practice test, try to simulate real testing conditions as well as possible. After you've taken the test and you've graded your tests, look at what you got wrong and go back to those questions and make sure that you understand how they work. You know, I feel a lot of people when they see a test—especially like a test like the SAT, it's like, 'Oh, this is hard. There are just going to be questions I don't know.' But it's worth appreciating that the SAT, especially the SAT over the last several years, really doesn't cover anything that isn't taught outside of Algebra 2 or outside of the 10th grade. So if you feel pretty comfortable in that, you shouldn't look at anything and say, 'Oh, this is some type of mysterious quantum physics calculus.' It's nothing like that's on the SAT; it's all stuff that you should, by the time you're in 10th grade, so you should feel confident that you can do any problem.

"Reflect on what you weren't able to do. Always work on the stuff that you find maybe most challenging. Sometimes it's a temptation for us to work on the stuff that's easy. Easy for us, and what I'm describing you, this would be true if you were preparing for some type of a sport as well. Practice what you're not good at. Try to simulate real conditions when possible. Do kind of that weak point training.

"And I would say rather than binge prepare, you know, just do eight hours all at once. If you have enough time—let's say you're a month away from the SAT—try to put in 20 minutes a day. If some days you're able to put in more, that's great. But if you're able to do that regular practice and then maybe once a week do a full-form practice exam, I think you're going to be in pretty good shape.

"I've already said this advice. I was on—we were on Instagram; there's a pre-live stream. I would say, you know, I've actually been meditating a ton this—especially the last year and a half. It's helped me just with all of the different things in my life—things like, you know, with family and work and raising money. You can kind of sometimes just get really stressed. At first, when you start meditating and you spend, you know, you start maybe five, ten minutes at a time. Now I'd do 30 minutes every morning; you're like, 'What am I doing?' Your brain starts—it goes, 'So, are you wasting your time? You have so much to do.' But slowly your brain starts to still, and when you're in that kind of a mode, everything becomes easier. And ideally, when you take the SAT, you're in that type of a mode. You've gotten your sleep, you've got your food, and you're just ready to kind of just, you know, and you do, and you do what you can, and the chips fall where they do."

"You know, one of the things that, I've been interested in a lot of Eastern philosophy ever since we did some of the world history content on Khan Academy and in Vedic philosophy and in kind of the Hindu philosophy, there's these notions of aspects of the universe, including in work. There’s soft wick work, which is work that is true work that you do because you think it is right, but you're not fixated on the outcome. They could—you know, Rajasa work is work where you are somewhat fixated on the outcome. 'I'm going to do this because we're going to raise five thousand dollars, and if we don't, I'm going to be really disappointed,' which I will be, or 'if I don't do this, I'm going to get in trouble, therefore I do it.' And then you have Tamasic work, which is, 'I'm doing it because someone's forcing me. I don't really want to do it. I'm dragging my feet. I'm not really into it.'

"I think most of us are kind of in this rajasic mode most of our lives. We're like, 'I need a good SAT score, and if I don't get that, I'm going to be miserable and I'm going to suffer.' As Buddha says, suffering is all caused by attachment—especially attachment to outcome. I remind myself every day, and it definitely stresses me. Anyone who's preparing for a test or anything in life, try to take that Sattvic attitude. You definitely put work into it, put energy in it, do what you think is right, but don't be obsessed with the outcome. The outcome is what it is. If you do what you think is right, the chips fall where they do, and then not only will you find yourself less stressed—but you’ll probably have better outcomes as well. When you're not obsessed with them."

"Yeah, that's a long answer. I've gotten a little bit more preachy tonight."

"Yeah, but super helpful and great things to think. Even like what I just said applies well beyond the SAT, and I still work on it. Let's see other people. Monica Khan, I may be related. Thank you for your donation. Rocky, Kirk, thank you. CR Chandramouli, thank you. And Tweed, thank you so much for your donations. Let's see, there's a funny comment. So when I hear Stiles' voice, I want to do that. That's great; go do math! Yes."

"Another question from YouTube: How did you get the idea to start Khan Academy?"

"Oh, that's a lot of the story. I'll give a short version of it. I see, you know, from a very early age, I was actually very fascinated by education. Even in undergrad, you know, when I was a CS major, math major, I was always fascinated by how computers could be used to maybe help teach people. I had some projects there, but I—in, you know, I ended up working in tech. I ended up working eventually at a hedge fund, which is really just a fancy word for an investment firm that has more flexibility. While I was doing that, right after my wedding, my 12-year-old cousin, Nadia, just came out of a conversation that she was having trouble in math, so I offered to tutor her remotely. I was in Boston; she was in New Orleans, so I started working with her. It was actually unit conversion she was having trouble with. She got through that, now she got caught up with her class, a little head of her class, and at that point, it became what I call a tiger cousin. I called up her school and I told them, 'I think Nadia should retake that placement test for this.' 'Who are you?' 'I'm her cousin.' And they let her, and then she was actually put into an advanced math class.

"So I was a little bit hooked. This was 15 years ago, and then I started tutoring her younger brothers, and word spread around my family that free tutoring was going on. So I was tutoring like 10, 15 cousins, and then I fed, 'Hey, these are great guinea pigs for me to test some of my ideas out on, like software.' And so I wrote some software for them, for practice problems because all of them— their main issues were they had gaps. A lot of them—they were trying their best, and they were all A or B students. But the reason why they were having trouble in algebra wasn't that algebra was difficult; it wasn't that they weren't bright. It's that, you know, they might have been a little bit shaky on negative numbers or a little bit shaky on dividing decimals from fifth grade. And so I was their tutor to fill in those gaps. But also, I wanted to give them practice so that they could get that feedback, and that was the first Khan Academy. I had to put it on a website someplace, and the kind of Caterpie domain name was stuff like math planet. But it was kind of—it was kind of almost just a funny thing. So it's just like me and my cousins, and I kind of dreamt that maybe one day other people could use this stuff.

"It was actually a friend, and it had nothing to do with the videos initially. A friend said, 'How are you scaling your lessons?' and I said, 'I'm not. It's hard to do.' At that point, I had 15 cousins that I was able to do it, Nadia, and he says, 'Why don't you make some videos and upload them onto YouTube for your family?' Immediately, that was a horrible idea. I said, 'You know, YouTube's for cats playing piano, not serious math.' Many people have heard me say that, but it's actually—that was the actual interchange. It was either that or dogs on skateboards, but you get the idea. I got over the idea that it wasn't my idea, which is an important thing in life. I gave it a shot, and you know, those YouTube videos tried to get watched by people who weren't my family, and one thing led to another.

"By 2010, 2009, I had trouble focusing on my day job because there were about a hundred thousand people who were using this thing called Khan Academy. At that time, I had set it up as a not-for-profit, and I was hoping if, hey, if I could do really well in the investment world, maybe one day in 10 years, 20 years, I would have enough money to be able to retire and do this. But then events happened faster than I expected, and I didn't have anywhere near enough money to do it. I was saving up money for a down payment on our house, and our first child had been born. But you know, kind of the zeitgeist of the world—you know, something was pulling, was kind of making me do this. I quit my job. It took a while to get some of that first funding, and then we're still raising money. That's why we're here, trying to raise $5,000. I will do this order of operations problem for you, and you can explain this to family members and impress co-workers and even social gatherings.

"Yeah, like good holiday! I think if you, you know, if you walk up to someone that you might find appealing at a party or something. Yeah, I mean, I think what's cooler than that, right? And say, 'You know, you might think order of operations is boring; let me tell you.' But anyway, that's how Khan Academy—that’s how. And then, you know, that was back in 2009, 2010, and you know we've just been on a ride together since, and to be clear, Khan Academy is much more than me now. You see some great people in this room, and then there are 200 people outside of this room who help further Khan Academy's mission. Your donation helps us have a team that can do this, and there are actually thousands of volunteers on top of that: engineers and content creators, marketers, fundraisers, educators, teachers—we have a thousand. So all of what your donation does, you know, just so people know, we have to spend many millions of dollars just to keep this servers going, yeah, on Khan Academy's operation.

"So, in the course of the next few minutes, if we can raise $5,000..."

"So we have some more questions that came in. Donations, Todd Lee, thank you very much. And Heather. Diego, thank you so much. Donate it on YouTube? You found the blue button? Cool."

"So what is your favorite subject?"

"My favorite subject? You know, it's changed over time, and it's really, um, it's kind of whatever I'm into at the moment, you know? I would say when I was growing up, my favorite subjects were, you know, probably people wouldn't be surprised to hear math and science, but also I was really into art growing up, so those were my favorite subjects. I was—I actually thought I was going to be a cartoonist. So I was—obviously with the videos, I found an outlet to sketch room for people. But now, you know, through Khan Academy, we've worked on many subjects, and I think the key is realizing that almost every subject is actually really, really, really interesting."

"You know, someone on—someone on, I think it was on Instagram had just asked, like, how do I get the motivation to study? And for me, it's because I have to study for Khan Academy. In fact, you know, I'm one of the few people over the age of 40 that study for the same things that many of you all have to study to make sure that I—but I never want—I don't want to study to just, like, be able to go through the motions or just to be able to get an answer right. I want to study to be able to appreciate the mystery of the universe. And what you gotta realize is there's a lot of this stuff that you might see in a textbook or that you might see on Khan Academy or in other places, you know, you might view it as, like, 'Oh, I gotta figure out how this equation works, or I gotta figure out what entropy means, or this or that.' But you have to—you should be excited because if, for example, you know, there's some notions of entropy, these are things that people pondered for hundreds or thousands of years, and some people dedicated their entire careers to some aspect, and you're able to open up a textbook or click on a video. In a sense, you get the answer, and as always, it spoils it, but then you're like, you didn't struggle with it that long. But you should get excited in that way. Think about how someone, you know, Isaac Newton would have given anything to get his hands on all of your textbooks. Like, you know, anyone even a hundred years ago would give their arm to get their hands on, you know, your textbooks, Khan Academy, etc., etc. because there's just so much knowledge in it. So when you have that mindset, any subject becomes really, really, really interesting, and for me, I love to look at subjects and start to realize connections that I had never seen before.

"So like I've actually recently really gotten into etymology because when you look at where words come from, it starts to actually even explain a lot. You know, one of my favorite ones is, you know, and if this doesn't impress you, people—that impresses people at social gatherings what I'm about to tell you will. So you know, I was talking about Eastern philosophy in the Vedas. The Vedas are 3500 or older year old texts that are kind of the basis of Hinduism and Hindu philosophy. And in the Vedas, the most mentioned God is Indra, who's kind of the sky God, and he has kind of aspects of, like, Thor in Nordic mythology. And their father is mentioned in the Vedas ten times as sky father, and sky father is deus pater in Sanskrit: dios pater, Jupiter, Zeus, pater. So Jupiter, Zeus, pater, and dios pater are all essentially— and this was one of the first pieces of evidence when the British came to India, and they got some of the Hindu priests to say, 'Hey, teach Sanskrit.' That was the first time they realized these connections between all of these languages.

"It actually wasn't as obvious that even the Germanic languages and the Latin-based languages were so closely connected when they saw Sanskrit. And India is so closely tied to these languages, in some ways blew everyone's mind, and they started realizing, 'Wow, there must have been a people.' You know, a lot of Western historians would say people who originated in Central Asia or out of the Caucasus; a lot of Indians would say maybe out of even North India. But you know, you share this common ancestry. But when you know things like that, at least for me, give me chills because you're like, 'Wow, there's like this just—' you know, just over the last three, four thousand years, the things that have happened, and humanity, you know, modern humans have been, you know, physiologically modern humans have been around for several hundreds of thousands of years. So, just even think about all the things we don't know—all the stories!"

"Yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff gives me chills. So that's the kind of thing. When I was a kid, I was always interested in kind of epic stories, but sometimes—and if I was sitting in like my seventh-grade history class, I wasn't as interested. But when I started to view history like this, then it all became super interesting. So, long answer to my favorite, favorite subject."

"That's awesome! So we have some board donations that have come in! Oh so much! Yes, thank you, Margaret, really appreciate the donation! Mohammed, thank you for your donation! Your mom was—my mother's maiden name is Ramon, so maybe we're related!"

"Thank you, we're all related, as we just talked about."

"It's actually a fun game, once again, if you can't impress people with this—to just think about how far you have to go back to have a common ancestor. And obviously, I mean me, I don't know, maybe 23andMe and stuff can answer these questions, but it's fun to just think about—well, maybe someone in Genghis Khan's army!"

"Thank you! Thank you, Russell, for your donation! Thank you, Katerina, for your donation. Thank you, Daniel, for your donation! Thanks so much! Makes a huge difference, and it means a lot. Look, it both helps us fuel what we do, but hopefully, as you donate, you feel like you are part of our team and our adventure and our mission, and you become an ambassador for what we do as well because it's not going to happen. You know, we have a lot of people here who are gung-ho about what we need to do, but obviously something like a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere is a very, very big statement. It takes all of us, and we're gonna need a lot of partners, and hopefully, you also view yourself as part of that army—that movement, yeah—that can help the world get there. So thank you! Thank you so much!"

"This reminder, we're trying to raise $5,000, yes, during this live stream!"

"Awesome! And you can donate on YouTube, on Facebook, or you can go to our website at khanacademy.org/donate."

"What I like, that question is my least favorite subject—yeah, celebrity gossip. And I say that because sometimes I too get drawn in. I know what you're thinking: 'So now you're always studying Sanskrit and I mind it, there's no way you...' Yeah, you're drawn to clickbait. But yes, I too. But I don't feel good after I've read some of those things, so it's my least favorite."

"So, I don't know. What's your least favorite something?"

"I think my least favorite subject will probably be math because I never felt like I was good at math, but I didn't have Khan Academy when I was growing up, so I didn’t as well."

"You are here! You should be beginning, Annika!"

"I know! I have started a little bit! I have been working through some algebra."

"Good, good! You know, actually, one of the people who almost was one of the people who helped me, who convinced me to quit my job to work on Khan Academy, he said—and this was a man who had actually started a bunch of restaurants—a very successful restaurateur. And he said, 'His name is Jeremiah Hennessey; he's the founder of BJ's restaurants,' and he just randomly started calling me in 2008 saying like, 'You need to quit your job.' Because Khan Academy—kind of nice to him. I was like, 'Really? Who are you?' And he said, 'Geez, restaurants, I've been there. That's good casual dining.'

"But he was telling me that when he hires people, he divides the world between people who know algebra and don't know algebra. Not that, like, you know, a restaurant manager is going to have to solve simultaneous equations and things like that, but algebra builds those critical thinking skills, and that kind of metacognition that you feel confident that they could learn higher-order things. So, I actually do think that, you know, if everyone in the—almost everyone has taken algebra, at least in places like the US. But if everyone really mastered algebra, I actually think our level of discourse would go up. It's not like algebra is the end-all and be-all, but it's one of many things that people got their critical thinking, and public discourse would go up; people would feel more confident engaging; they wouldn't just defer to experts, things like that. So learning algebra..."

"I'm trying!"

"All right, so some other questions: What are your plans for creating content in other languages?"

"So we have 40 translation and localization projects going on at Khan Academy around the world, and these are done by incredible volunteers. Some of them have local sponsorships; some of them are just very similar to what I was doing 10 years ago, you know, kind of in their equivalent of their walk-in closets, just trying to make it work. Trying to be of service to the people in their geographies. We have more formal projects in Latin America; we have a partnership with the Lemon Foundation in Brazil, the Slim Foundation in Mexico. Carlos Rodriguez, pasture, and Peru have been incredible supporters, and we have teams in those places that are doing localization not just of the videos but the exercises. They're creating some new content; they're aligning it to the various standards in those areas. We also have a fairly decent-sized team—14 people in India—that are—and we just had a presentation from them yesterday, where they are not only localizing the content, but making that new content. India's interesting 'cause there's many languages in India, but making it work for the various languages, the various standards. So that's our plans right now; that's what we're currently doing. But obviously over the long arc, we want to be able to reach everyone on the planet mission."

"All right, we have some other ones here: What do you think are the main hurdles for Khan Academy to achieve its mission?"

"The main hurdles for Khan Academy to achieve its mission, so I mean it might sound a little bit too obvious at a fundraising livestream, detecting, but yes, it takes resources! As I said—I said before, you know, our mission—the government's are spending trillions of dollars trying to essentially tackle the same mission, and there a lot is good coming out of it. But we are—you know, Khan Academy is the budget of a large school, and we reach on the order of a hundred million people every year. But to do that, it takes resources. So the first thing is—I mean I probably spend forty percent of my time fundraising because if we don't have those resources, we’re not going to be able to do everything we've talked about. So I think that's number one. I think after that, the main thing is—and I think we've been making good progress on there, so I'm not—I don't think it's gonna be like a barrier, but I think it's just—you know, we have to keep pushing, is finding ways that we can work more formally with major school districts. That's something we're doing right now. We have a partnership with Las Vegas/Clark County, where students are using it as part of—you know, they take this assessment called the MAP Growth assessment, and now that assessment acts as a diagnostic and placement for Khan Academy. Then the students are able to work on that, and the district's able to see how Khan Academy is able to not only how the MAP can help influence personalized plans on Khan Academy, but then Khan Academy can—they can understand how Khan Academy is hopefully growing the students more than expected.

"So, I think we need to do more things like that. I think we need to be able to—there's a lot of stuff—I mean, our team has a huge list of stuff we want to improve on the experience on Khan Academy. I got out of a meeting earlier this morning where we were talking about improving our math content even more, adding new content areas. We want to improve the game mechanics, make it even more motivating to use Khan Academy. We're constantly trying to study the efficacy of what we're doing. All of that takes resources, yeah! And then I think we just have to keep doing that, add more subjects. You know, there's some longer big-picture things that I would want to eventually tackle like how does the learning on Khan Academy translate into opportunity, whether that's some form of credential or connections to internships or jobs or higher education. I think that's something that we need to figure out over the next—I’d like to start to get started on to the next five years. Yeah, those are big things, but the resources—look at it this way: Our ideas right now are bigger than our capacity. So if we can raise $5,000, that will move us in that direction, and I'll also do the order of operations problem, which if anyone really wants me to do it, but I'll do it!"

"Yes, we did just receive some more donations! All right! Oh! And Michael or Michelle? Michelle! I'm all con! Thank you so much! Daniel! Yeah! Thank you so much! Thank you so much for the awesome!"

"So we have a few minutes left; we're actually gonna move to what we call the lightning round, okay? We're gonna do ten questions and you have ten seconds to answer each, okay? Each question, or I'll know that—okay?"

"Yeah, that would—that would be really, really hard."

"Okay, time! So tell me when to start."

"Okay, cool! So what's your favorite color?"

"Blue."

"Do you have a black hole badge?"

"I have two! Not nepotism! Yeah, mis-use of power!"

"What is your favorite exercise?"

"Like physical exercise? Yeah—dancing."

"Okay, who's your favorite inventor or scientist?"

"Favorite inventor or scientist? I will just go Leonardo da Vinci. Awesome!"

"Mine too! If you were a classroom teacher, what grade would you want to teach?"

"Oh, oh! I would want a tree. I'm gonna cheat. I would teach a mixed-age classroom, and I would make the older kids teach the younger kids, and I would be kind of the Dumbledore of it all."

"All right, well, we can go through a couple more of these. So, what's your favorite food?"

"Favorite dark chocolate. Awesome!"

"Favorite chemical element?"

"Favorite chem? Oxygen. Awesome!"

"What Hogwarts house do you belong to?"

"Oh, oh! I would like to believe it's a toss-up between Gryffindor. I'll go with Gryffindor. It's a cop-out!"

"What's your favorite TV show?"

"Oh, favorite TV show? I've been enjoying—I've been enjoying—well, there are several. I enjoy Good Place; I actually have been watching with my kids where in the world is Carmen Sandiego on Netflix. Oh, nice! Quite good! I like them! Quite like! I can't wait for season 3! I haven't watched it yet!"

"And then the last one: Star Trek or Star Wars?"

"You know, I think before some of the new ones came out, I would have said Star Wars, but now maybe Star Trek because I think they keep repeating the same plotline! The Empire has this weapon that can destroy a planet! Oh, you thought...Anyway, I'm happy to help!"

"One more donation! Oh, Derek! Thank you so much! Dan, thank you so much! Oh, my seas here too! Why do you want to call? Ups! Here? Oh, yeah, Bar C? Oh, well! Did we get to our target? Do we know?"

"I explained the order of operations regardless? Yeah, all right, 'cause all right, so the reason why I've seen this before, I mean, yeah, the reason why I think this went viral is some people, you know, learn in school order of operations. Some people learn things like PEMDAS, which is like parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. You oftentimes learn in school, you do parentheses first. That's obvious. But then you do, you know, multiplication and division are kind of equal, and when in doubt, you do them left to right, and then addition and subtraction are kind of equal and when in doubt, you do them left to right.

"What's tricky here is, okay, so the obvious part is to do the parentheses first. I don't think anyone debates that. So if there's—that's just four right there. So you have 8 divided by 2 times 4. Now, if you take the left to right attitude about it, you do 8 divided by 2 is 4 times 4, which is 16. That's one way people have died. The other way people have said is, wait, but if I see a number right next to the parentheses, I feel like I have to multiply that first, right? So people say 2 times the 4, that's 8, and then 8/8 would be 1, so you get either a 16 or 1.

"I think maybe other people have got other things, but that might be a little bit more suspicious. My take on it, I mean, one, this tells you why you learn something like order of operations. Order operations are just trying to remove ambiguity from mathematical expressions, like this. My view on this is if I see a number right next to parentheses, I almost view that as like a light form of parentheses. This is a light form of emphasis, like you're going to do that, you're going to do that first. So I would—my inclination would be to go for the—go to the 1, 8 divided by 2 times 4, so 8 divided by 8, which is 1.

"But this is why if you're doing any look— you know, even though you're doing like a math thesis, this is why it's good to even use more parentheses! Why not use extra parentheses if you think what you're saying can be ambiguous? In fact, that's not true just in math; that's true in life, especially if it's something important, explain it, be very clear. But, you know, these are just symbols that are trying to convey an idea, and you don't want to be ambiguous. And so if you think it's going to be ambiguous, just put another parentheses around that, or if you really wanted the 8 to be divided by 2 before you multiply, then put the parentheses around that first. So I would say whoever did this just should have included more parentheses, but my inclination is definitely to do the 2 times the parentheses first because it's right next to it. If there was a multiplication symbol there, then I probably would have gone left to right. Hopefully, that's helpful."

"Yeah, another donation bar? See left? Yeah, was it? It wasn't really interested in my explanation! Yeah! Oh, Cory, so much! Cory, organization! Awesome! So it looks like we've raised about a thousand so far on YouTube and 830 on Facebook, which is super exciting! Thank you all for you! Thank you! Thank you so much, everyone!"

"Yeah, for sure! So like we were talking about earlier, today is Giving Tuesday, and we are a non-profit, so any support is super helpful, and a dollar does provide three hours of learning time. So you can have a huge impact with your gift, and you can always give at KhanAcademy.org/donate. But yeah, I think we're at time for today!"

"Awesome! Do you have any last things you'd like to know?"

"Well, you know, thank you for viewing, and you know it means a lot that y'all are part of this journey with us, you know. It's a big audacious mission. I tell the team here all the time that, you know, there was a time there was just, you know, me in a walk-in closet; that was kind of the first chapter of Khan Academy. Then around 2009-2010, we were able to get some of the first support to start building this incredible team. You know, here's some management advice: hire up, then you can't go wrong that way. And I think kind of—kind of means now entering a phase where, you know, we reach tens of millions of students, but we want to be able to reach hundreds of millions and reach them in a really deep and substantive way so that, you know, that story of Jason, the young man who was in prison for 15 years, and you know, we have people in places like Afghanistan who, you know, the young girls who the Taliban forbade from going to school, who are able to learn on Khan Academy and, you know, now they're doing physics research. We want to multiply those stories by a thousand-fold or million-fold. And, you know, I hope that everyone, all of us and everyone watching, that our kids or our grandchildren can't imagine a world where a free world-class education for anyone, anywhere isn't essentially a human right. So thank you for helping us move toward that vision. Thank you! Thank you so much! Have a great day!"