Algebra Foundations - Course Trailer

When you're sitting in a math class and the teacher starts writing some symbols on the board that you might not quite understand just yet, it might be tempting to say, "Hey, why do I need to learn this? This seems a little bit abstract for me."

To answer that, I'll tell you a story that one of my early advisors told me when I was just starting Khan Academy. This is someone who doesn't come from engineering, doesn't come from science, doesn't come from mathematics. He's actually a major restaurateur who has a chain of restaurants some of you might have gone to.

He says when he hires people, he thinks about whether they understand algebra or not. In fact, in his mind, he divides the world into people who understand algebra and people who do not understand algebra. The reason why he told me he does that is he says when people understand algebra, it gives him confidence that they have the critical thinking and analytical skills to tackle pretty much any problem in any domain.

I think that is the practical reason why algebra is so powerful. It's really going to start to fine-tune your critical thinking skills and your logic. Beyond that, it's frankly just beautiful. A lot of the equations you're going to learn and the ways of manipulating equations, philosophers and mathematicians were developing these for thousands of years. Now you get to understand the outcome of their thousands of years of hitting a head against the wall and coming up with these beautiful expressions that are really the fundamental truths of the universe.

So when you go into this algebra journey that we're about to start, learn the math, learn the tools you're about to. Because it's really a form of expression, it's a way of representing pure ideas in the universe and our minds.

In these lessons, we're going to talk about some of that history and the origins of algebra. We're also going to think about: what is an algebraic expression and what are things like unknowns and variables? Finally, we're going to really start to build out our toolkit on how do we manipulate these things? How do we speak the language of algebra and utilize these tools to solve everyday problems?

So let's start this adventure together. There might be moments where you're a little bit unsure of yourself, where you're a little bit not sure of how one thing leads to another. But trust me, if you go into the content, pause videos, and see if you can solve things on your own before I work through it with you, and then make sure again that you can do it on your own.

I encourage you to go to khanacademy.org and practice these same concepts on the site where you'll get immediate feedback to make sure that you're understanding them. Algebra is going to be a powerful toolkit, not just for your studies but for your entire life.