July 9, 2025 • 40 mins
Today, I have the distinct privilege of engaging in a profound discussion with Dr. Craig Hane, a transformative figure in mathematics education. Dr. Haney, an esteemed educator with a PhD in algebraic numeric theory, has devoted his career to dismantling the barriers that obstruct the comprehension of mathematics for students and professionals alike. His mission is to revolutionize the pedagogical approach to mathematics, advocating for the utilization of modern technological tools, such as scientific calculators and resources like Wolfram Alpha, to enhance learning experiences. Throughout our conversation, we delve into the intricacies of practical math, exploring how a simplified, application-oriented curriculum can significantly improve student engagement and success. Dr. Hane’s insights highlight the need to adapt educational methodologies to better prepare individuals for the complexities of contemporary life, ultimately fostering a brighter future for generations to come.
The conversation navigates Dr. Hane's personal journey, revealing the challenges he faced in his early education and the pivotal moments that shaped his career. He recounts instances where he was deemed inadequate in mathematics, only to later excel through the guidance of exceptional mentors. This narrative serves as a testament to the critical role of encouragement and effective teaching in developing mathematical proficiency. Dr. Hane's commitment to demystifying mathematics is further reflected in his innovative teaching methods, which prioritize practical applications and real-world relevance over theoretical abstractions. He posits that by equipping students with the necessary tools and knowledge, we can significantly diminish the anxiety often associated with mathematics, thereby fostering a generation of confident individuals capable of tackling diverse challenges.
Takeaways:
- Dr. Craig Hane emphasizes the importance of practical math skills in education, advocating for teaching methods that enhance understanding rather than relying on outdated manual tools.
- He shares his personal journey from struggling with math to earning a PhD, demonstrating how self-belief can lead to remarkable achievements.
- The podcast discusses the necessity of integrating modern technology, such as calculators and software like Wolfram Alpha, into math education to facilitate learning and reduce anxiety.
- Dr. Hane critiques current public school math curricula, arguing that they often include irrelevant material that does not prepare students for real-world applications of mathematics.
Links referenced in this episode:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:59):
My guest today, Dr.
Craig Haney, also known as Dr.
Dao, is a math educator andinnovator dedicated to transforming
how math is taught and learned.
With a PhD in algebraicnumeric theory and decades of teaching
and business experience, Dr.
Dell empowers students andprofessionals alike to demystify
math, like scientificcalculators and Wolfram Alpha, his
(01:23):
mission is to break down mathbarriers and inspire listeners to
invest in yourself for abrighter future.
Welcome, Dr.
Dale, to the podcast.
Well, Craig, it's so good tohave you on the podcast.
How you doing today, my friend?
Great.
My pleasure, Keith.
Looking forward to this conversation.
Our names are almost the same.
(01:43):
They're a little bit different.
I have a Y, which makes mine alittle bit more Irish, so we'll go
with it.
There we go.
So, Craig, I like to ask myguests this question.
What's the best piece ofadvice you ever received?
When I was 10 years old, mySunday school teacher, Theron York,
taught me all sorts of thingsfrom the New Testament.
(02:05):
But the best piece advice wasCraig, whatever you believe, really
believe, is what will happento you in your life.
Interesting.
Okay.
He said, now it's not what youdesire is what you believe.
It's.
And it's very hard to formyour beliefs.
It's easy to want something right.
Believing is hard, and Ilearned to do that.
(02:27):
And it's happened all my life.
And I've had maybe all sortsof things happen to me that I believed
would happen that were highly improbable.
And they.
Wow, that's really cool.
I love that.
I'm curious, a person of yourstature and accomplishment, who are
some people in your life whohave served as mentors for you along
(02:50):
the way?
Many.
I have a whole set of wisdomtools that I now offer my students,
and I got them from many people.
The wisest woman when I wasyoung was my Aunt Inis.
Very wise woman, very happy woman.
Not educated in any way youthink of being educated, but very
(03:13):
wise.
There's a huge differencebetween intelligence and wisdom.
She had wisdom.
Her.
Her.
Her husband, Uncle Jeff Davis,taught me to count using Cheerios
when I was five years old.
And when I was entered into aschool when I was five years old,
I was the only kid that hadbeen taught to count.
And my teacher had me help myfellow students.
(03:35):
I was five years old, and thatwas the beginning of my learning
and teaching math career.
And then it went off from there.
And I could tell you lots ofexamples of people that gave me great
advice that saved my life.
I could give you lots of Examples.
That's amazing.
Let's talk about yourbackground, because we, as we got
(03:56):
before we got on the podcast,you talked about how you got into
discovering that you weren'tgood at math according to your teachers,
to getting a PhD in math.
So tell us kind of thatjourney of that story, how you got
there.
Well, it's in detail in mybook how and why Public School Math
is destroying the USA.
If you go to my website,craighane.com you get a free PDF
(04:17):
copy.
Cool.
Then you'll know all about it.
C R A I G H A N E dot com.
Now, my uncle, Jack Davis, whowas a barber and a builder, taught
me to count.
Taught me to count.
Then he taught me practicalmath that he wasn't a math teacher,
he was a builder.
(04:37):
And up through the eighthgrade, I always knew more math than
my teacher did because hetaught me practical things.
Then when I took algebra myfreshman year in high school, I didn't
like it.
I didn't do well in it.
And my principal told me,well, you'll never go to college
because you didn't do good in algebra.
And, well, I'm dumb.
I don't know.
(04:59):
My sophomore year, I had agreat teacher.
Ms.
O' Hare taught me geometry.
I loved, did great in geometry.
Then I had algebra again myjunior year, didn't like it again,
Craig, you're not going to college.
My senior year, I was in atown, fortunately, that had a school
there, DePaul University,Greencastle, Indiana.
(05:20):
And my geometry teacher said,craig, your senior year, why don't
you go to DePaul and takecollege algebra and see how you do
there?
She knew that the high schoolalgebra teacher was not any good.
She couldn't say it.
So I went to DePaul and theymade a mistake.
They put me in withsophomores, not freshmen at DePaul.
Dr.
(05:40):
Clint Gast was my teacher, buthe was a good teacher and I got an
A.
He became my mentor and I wenton from there.
And he got me into bestliberal arts college in the United
States at that time in Ohio.
I, with math and Englishmajor, taught high school for a year,
came back, taught at DePaul.
I was 22 years old.
(06:01):
I taught math at DePaul.
I taught their most advancedcourses because I learned them at
Orbital.
Then I went ahead and got aPhD in math.
And then I taught.
I was a professor for seven years.
Then I went out and startedand just applied math to all sorts
of things.
And I can sit here all day andtell you about all sorts of things
I applied math to.
Are you a NASCAR fan?
I watched nascar, all right.
(06:22):
Out of many businesses, I didwith math, Practical math lets you
do all sorts of things.
I developed something in the1970s called the Dyna Brain, testing
racing engines on water brake dynamometers.
And my number one customer wasAustrian Racing in Charlotte, North
Carolina.
And they had a racer namedDame Marcus.
(06:43):
And he wasn't winning races.
They fired him.
I'm down there talking to him,Roland Wolak, who's the general manager,
And I said, I hear you firedyour driver.
And he said, yeah.
He said, we got the bestracing engine because of your Dynamurine.
We got the best racingengines, and he's just not that good
at driving.
So we've hired his new driver.
He's a wild guy, and he'solder and no one else would hire
(07:03):
him.
We've hired, and we're goingto give him a chance.
And he says he's there.
Back him up.
He said, I want you to meetCraig Hayne.
He's the guy that we built theDyna Marine that we got, makes our
engines the best engine.
You're going to have the bestracing engine in nascar, but you
got to go out and be the best driver.
Craig, I want you to meet ournew driver, Dale Earnhardt.
(07:26):
I knew Dale before he ran hisfirst NASCAR race, and then he won
five races that year.
End of the year, then he runRookie of the Year.
They were in Grand National.
I quit making the Dyna Brainwhen I went to produce it.
Intel quit making themicroprocessor chip that went into
it, the 4040 couldn't produce it.
So then I went and did other things.
And then I've applied math tomany other things.
(07:47):
I could sit here if you hadseveral hours.
I could tell you lots of stories.
Wow, that's really cool.
As someone who's passionateabout breaking down the barriers
of math and education, whatare some of the key things you said
that our public schools aredoing to make math harder on our
students?
(08:07):
Three or four things.
Number one, they're stillteaching the old manual tools that
no one would use it anymore.
So the first thing I do with ateenager is I teach them to use a
scientific calculator Schoolslet them use.
They don't teach them.
There's only about 16 thingson this calculator you need to know
(08:28):
to do practical math.
So I teach them that.
They learn it in a couple ofweeks, and it turns their psychology
around.
It gets their psychology right.
The bottom line is, if you Ifa student is afraid of math, doesn't
like math, he's not gonnalearn math.
So this turns the psychology around.
It's almost like playing a game.
And, well, that was easy.
Then I teach them practical algebra.
(08:50):
Ten lessons.
That's all.
That's all you need forpractical algebra.
In high school, they teach allkinds of things you'll never use
in algebra.
Some is manual tools you'llnever use, and some is theory.
Now, algebra is a tool youapply to some.
Then I teach them practical geometry.
19 lessons.
(09:11):
How long is something?
What is the area?
What's the volume?
And they love it.
Now, you can't do anglesadequately with that.
So then I teach trigonometry.
Seven lessons.
They go through all thatpractical algebra, geometry in one
semester.
And at that point, they knowmore math than 95% of all the adults
in the United States.
They know more math than you do.
(09:33):
So explain to me what you meanby practical algebra, because I know
people may not understand thatterm, so kind of break that down
for us.
Well, in any technicalsubject, I had a company for 25 years
where we taught technicians,hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical
rigging, on and on.
In any technical subject, youneed what I call practical math.
(09:57):
That is how to.
How long is something, what'sthe area, what's the volume, what
are the angles?
And to do that, you need touse arithmetic and algebra.
Well, the calculator makes thearithmetic very easy.
There's a $10 calculator, bythe way.
If you'd had this calculatorduring the Manhattan Project in the
early 40s, you.
(10:18):
If you'd had one and no onebeen more than a million dollars.
Wow.
Because you can do things withit you cannot do manually, and you
can do it so much faster and easier.
So forget the manual tools.
Use the tool.
Then in.
In high school today, the matheducators, our math curriculum, start
(10:38):
over 100 years ago, have awhole year of algebra, and they put
all kinds of stuff in ityou'll never use.
For example, you took algebrain high school, didn't you?
Didn't you?
I did.
All right.
Do you remember the quadratic formula?
No.
You don't even remember.
Well, they taught it to you.
Yeah, but have you ever used it?
And the answer is no, you haven't.
(10:59):
No.
So I don't teach that.
The square root of two.
What kind of number.
Square root of two.
It's.
What kind of a number is thesquare root of 2?
The answer is it's anirrational number.
You can't express it.
As a fraction.
That's in the algebra classesthey teach.
That's theory.
(11:19):
Nobody cares about that excepttheoretical mathematicians.
Now, the algebra they teach inhigh school today, the first year
of algebra, 90% of it is stuffyou'll never use.
It's either too much theoryyou'll never use, or it's tools you'll
never use.
I teach just what you need,and it's easy what you need.
The stuff that I teach isburied in that year course.
(11:43):
But for everything you need,there's nine things you don't need.
And they're hard to learn.
And people give up.
Then they grade on thehorrible curve.
Math is something you don'tunderstand it or you don't.
So if somebody does it.
If somebody tells me, well, Itook algebra and I got a B, well,
okay, obviously there's a lotof things you don't understand.
(12:03):
You got a C or a D.
I'll tell you.
Probably didn't learn anythingthat I call the horrible.
I explained that in my book.
If you want to reallyunderstand it, just get my book,
go to my website, read the book.
In part four, I have fourchapters that I explain to you what's
wrong with high school math indetail, and I'll debate it with anybody.
(12:26):
I'm curious.
Yeah, I'm curious because youtalk about using calculators, and
I remember when I was inschool, calculators.
This is back in the 1930s.
But the calculators were a big.
No, no, we couldn't, wecouldn't bring them to school because
they said that was kind of cheating.
Yeah, they want you to learnthe manual, too, Right?
(12:47):
I know.
Well, that's, that's, that'sthe problem.
You're.
You're doing a problem.
You're out there.
Okay, I got 357, and I got tomultiply it times 92.
Well, there's a manual way todo that.
(13:07):
And the answer is 30 2008.
44.
That's the calculator.
How long would it take you todo it manually?
And it's error prone.
Right.
And that's just multiplication.
Long division is even worse.
Oh, yes.
And then taking a square rooteven worse than that.
There's manual ways of doing it.
I taught that.
I was teaching math backbefore calculators came out.
Do you know when the firstscientific calculator came out?
(13:27):
1970.
Something 72.
Yes.
Hewlett Packard 35.
HP 35.
Do you know how much it costin today's dollars?
I know.
Back then it was like almost $100?
No, no, it was $395.
Oh, was it?
Yeah.
Okay.
And today's dollar that was $2,500.
I was a professor at anengineering school in Indiana called
(13:50):
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology.
At that time, I was teachingthe advanced theory.
I was teaching the theory youneed for quantum theory and theoretical
physics.
Okay.
But my fellow professors wereall teaching slide rules, log tables,
trig tables.
That calculator came out.
One of the.
Some of the students had themnow today dollars.
(14:12):
It was $2500 in today dollars.
395.
Then I.
I got one for the student,looked at it, and when I spent 30
minutes on it, I go, oh, my God.
Slide rules are obsolete.
Trig tables and log tables are obsolete.
You're going to use a calculator.
And I told my fellow mathprofessor that.
And they.
Oh, they freaked out becausethat was what they taught.
(14:35):
And it was almost 10 yearsbefore they quit using slide rules.
Now, Hewlett package.
What?
They're going to sell 10,000of them just to engineers, right?
They sold.
They sold 100,000 of them.
Oh, my God.
So they lowered the price to 195.
In the meantime, Texas Citruscame out and made an even better
one for under a hundred dollars.
(14:56):
That's probably about the timeyou came on.
Yeah, that's the one.
I remember the ti.
Yeah.
And then they got better and better.
This calculator today costabout $10.
It's better than any of thoseoriginal calculators.
It's the best littlescientific calculator that I know
of.
It does fractions, for example.
That's one thing that makes it good.
There's a lot of other things.
(15:17):
By the way, half the things onthis calculator you'll never use,
right?
I don't teach them.
I only teach what you're goingto use.
There's a key on here calledthe hype key.
Hyp.
You don't know what it is andyou would never use it if I taught
it.
It's called.
It's for hyperbolic trig functions.
Don't use those.
Use regular trig function,which is on here, too.
And I teach you what you douse, and the students love it.
(15:40):
It takes most students tolearn how to use this calculator
for practical math.
About two weeks.
The way I teach it, I havetutorial videos off Amazon Web Services
and notes and exercises.
Because you really learn bydoing math.
You don't learn by justlistening to somebody talk about
it.
You have to do it and thenquizzes to Be.
(16:00):
And then you climb the ladderand I explain all that in the book.
And then you go.
And then once you've learnedto use the calculator, now all your
arithmetic will be done with a calculator.
Then you can learn practicalalgebra, 10 lessons.
Practical geometry, 19 lessons.
Practical trick, seven lessonsin about one semester.
(16:20):
And you'll know more math.
Now you'll know what you needfor technical school.
You don't you.
Now, if you're going intocollege, you need some more math
for the sat.
And I then.
So I then I have a tier threefor that.
The first is tier one and two,then tier three.
And that's a lot of stuffyou'll never use.
But you need it for the sat.
If you're going to go.
If you're going to take it,still, just use a calculator.
(16:43):
Now, let's say you do good onthe sat.
Are you ready for scienceengineering at a good school like
MIT or Purdue?
No.
Now you need all those subjectI just talked about in a much deeper
level.
Right.
When you do them manually,they're very difficult.
(17:03):
But there's a new tool thatcame out in 2009, the dust for those
subjects for STEM, what thecalculator did for practical math,
you may have heard of it.
It's called Wolfram Alpha.
I haven't heard of that.
(17:23):
And I explain it in this book.
Came out in 2009.
And it now makes the math youneed for science and engineering
all the way through calculusand differential equations, which
I teach at the high school level.
It now takes it from adifficulty level of eight down to
a difficulty level of two.
Wow.
It does for STEM math.
(17:44):
They call it STEM Science,Technology, Engineering, Math.
It does for STEM Math what thecalculator does for practical math.
No one teaches it.
It's not in any textbooks.
That's one reason why they'redestroying usa.
People that might want to gointo science can't get through the
math and they quit because ofthe way it's taught.
(18:06):
It's kind of like if you wantto learn music and I made you spend
a year studying Gregorianchance before you could study anything
else, you might getdiscouraged and drop out of music.
Yeah, I would.
I love Gregorian chant, but.
Well, pick one you don't like, right?
(18:29):
We all have things we like,things we don't like.
But anyway, math is very easy today.
Now when it's taught properlyand there's no one doing it.
I thought someone else wouldbe doing it, but now I started this
about 10 years ago and I'vetrained hundreds of students now,
mostly homeschool students,but any teenager can do it and take
it.
And then it will also make themath they're taking in their school
(18:51):
probably easier for them.
Although I don't teach a lotof the stuff that they're teaching
in the regular school.
So I have a question for you.
You talk about the SAT and the act.
Do they allow students now tobring calculators for the SAT and
ACT?
You can bring the TI30XA.
Okay.
(19:13):
But you can't bring a cell phone.
Okay.
Can't bring a smartphone.
You know why you get on a smartphone?
Go Wolframalpha and it'llanswer all the questions.
Okay?
If you know how to ask.
Wolfram Alpha is a tool.
You gotta know.
You gotta.
Here's the math.
There's two things about math.
There's concepts and there's tools.
(19:34):
The concepts of math are very easy.
Calculus, very easy concepts.
I can teach you.
I can teach you the conceptsof calculus in three hours.
Actually, I do it with.
I've got three videos I do iton that are free on my website.
I have a video library.
I have three videos that willteach you the concepts of calculus
in about an hour.
The concepts.
Now the tools to apply the concepts.
(19:57):
The old manual tools are verydifficult, but with Wolfram Alpha,
once you understand theconcepts, you know how to ask the
question, bingo, bango, solved.
So why, why have we notevolved in our school systems to
address the math disparity?
As you know the math gap there.
(20:18):
By teaching the tools, you'retalking about very simple.
Money, honey.
Oh, money.
If you are.
If you're a math educator andyou're writing the textbooks and
making up the tests, everyhigh school math textbook today is
obsolete.
(20:39):
But it's a billion dollar industry.
So are you going to write a book?
The wipes, nobody's done it.
They don't want to change.
And so they just.
And they make the textbooksthis thick.
I use.
The best high school mathtextbook was ever written was by
the greatest teacher in the20th century, a guy named Simmons.
(21:03):
And he wrote the greatesttopology book, which you used to
use that for quantum theoryand Hilbert spaces.
Then he wrote the greatestdifferential equation book ever read.
Then he wrote the greatestcalculus book.
Then he wrote one called PreCalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell.
Algebra, geometry and trick.
119 pages, less than $20.
(21:28):
Wow.
I came out in 1988.
I was no longer a professor then.
I was now doing business.
But I kind of follow what wasgoing on.
So I bought 20 of these books,and I gave them to various people.
So go start using this in your skills.
Nobody ever adopted it.
It's still in print.
I still use it in tier 3 andtier 4.
(21:51):
119 pages.
And he tells exactly the kindof thing I am about the stuff you
shouldn't teach.
What you should.
It's a really good book.
I gave that book to myyoungest son when he was in the eighth
grade, and he went through iton his own.
And he won a scholarship tothe best engineering school in Indiana,
eighth grade, because of that book.
What's the name of the bookagain, for those who may want to
(22:13):
look it up?
Pre Calculus Mathematics in anutshell by Dr.
George Simmons.
And it's about $20.
Wow.
No school used it.
I never heard of a school thatused it.
I mean, there may be one Idon't know about, but they use the
algebra books that are 300books or 200, expensive, big thick
(22:38):
books, and they're loaded withstuff I just told you about.
You'll never use.
Both theory and practical tool.
And I could give you lots ofexamples we can see here for the
next hour.
And I could give you exampleafter example after example of stuff
they're teaching that you'llnever use.
And it's hard to.
It's hard stuff.
(22:58):
So give us a couple examples.
For those who are listening tothis podcast, I'm sure a lot of people
going, oh, wow, now Iunderstand why math was so hard.
But give us some examples ofthings that they teach you that you'll
never use.
You take a polynomial withinteger coefficients of degree n,
let's say 6, and you can takethe leading coefficient and the last
(23:24):
coefficient, factor it intoprimes, and make all the rational
numbers you can make out ofthose prime numbers.
And if this polynomial has arational root, it'll be one of those
numbers.
So then you test it againstall those numbers.
Now, all this takes a lot oftime and effort and it's error prone.
And that's one way to find outthe root of a high degree polynomial,
(23:47):
because otherwise there's noalgorithm to do it.
The problem is no polynomialever run in the real world has rational
roots.
So who gives a damn?
It's a valueless.
It works, but it's valuelessand it's hard to learn.
(24:08):
The square root of an integeris irrational unless it's a perfect
square.
And I can prove that to you.
It's called reductive autoabsurdum proof.
The Pythagoreans discovered it.
The simplest one Is you take aright triangle where the legs are
1 and 1 and the hypotenuse isthe square root of 2.
(24:30):
Thaggerian theorem.
And they discovered that itwas not a rational number.
And it so upset them.
The guy that discovered it,they threw him out of a boat and
drowned him, they said.
But what they did do, theyretreated from numbers.
It just did geometry.
And then archimedes came along200 years later and started using
(24:52):
numbers.
And he did things that.
Well, give you an example.
In Euclidean geometry, youtake a circle, and it's got a diameter.
If you divide the circle, the.
The length of the circle bythe diameter, that's a number.
Do you know the name of the number?
No.
It's called PI.
(25:13):
You ever hear PI?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's circumference dividedby diameter.
Now, what's the area of a circle?
Euclid didn't know.
They couldn't figure it out.
Archimedes did.
And it turns out if you takethe circumference and divide it by
two and the diameter anddivide it by two and multiply them,
(25:36):
that's the area of a circle.
And Archimedes proved it, andhe used techniques that are precursors
to modern calculus.
Calculus didn't come alonguntil the 1600s with Newton and Leibniz.
And the reason we have modernscience is because of what is called
the fundamental theorem of calculus.
(25:57):
That allows you to take acurve that has area under it and
calculate the area under thatcurve very easily.
The curve is.
There's a formula for itcalled a function.
Then you got to find anotherfunction whose derivative is this
curve, and then you evaluate it.
(26:18):
Finding that other function isextremely difficult.
That flunks more kids out ofengineering school.
They call it an antiderivative.
That flunks more kids out ofengineering school than anything
else.
When I taught engineeringschool, that was.
It's called integral calculus today.
Wolfram Alpha makes it easy.
Done.
You give it to function.
Boom.
And by the way, some functionsdo not have an anti derivative in
(26:40):
terms of other ordinary functions.
You have to have what's calleda special function to involve infinite
series.
Wolframa does all that automatically.
Wow.
So as you think about whereour math education is today, where
do you see the future of itgoing with technology playing.
Playing a big role in ittrying math.
(27:00):
What I do, my program orsomething equally good.
There's no.
There's no one else out theredoing it.
But I've got the only programtoday that I love.
I tell people, if you know ofanother program that does what mine
does, I'll give you a thousand dollars.
All right.
I want to know about it.
And I think I would know.
Yeah, you would.
(27:22):
I'm not too worried aboutlosing my thousand dollar, but, you
know, no big deal.
So tell us about your programa little bit more.
Well, in order to make itaffordable, what I've done, if I
have created what I call theTriad Math army and the Triad Math
(27:44):
Tribe.
They're two, they're similar.
And mostly I go after adultsthat have children.
So if you join the army, it's$30 a month and you have access to
all the math everything.
And it's $30 a month and youcan train it and you can put all
your children into that program.
It's all just for $30.
(28:05):
If you hired a tutor thatcould do what I do.
If you like to hire someonelike me that could do it, it would
cost you thousands of dollarsper month to do it.
And you're getting it for $30a month.
Me Tutorial videos off AmazonWeb Services.
(28:27):
Notes, notebooks.
I used to have to print themout from PDF copies, but I found
a printer that would printthese notebooks.
This is the sample of one.
I found a printer that'llprint this book for just a few dollars
and send it to you.
Okay.
Guess who the.
Guess who the printer is.
It'll do that.
Guess who I use as my printer.
Who?
(28:47):
Amazon.
Oh.
And there's no one elsethat'll do it that I know of.
It's amazing what it do.
Amazon Princess book.
You can go buy the book atAmazon for $4.80.
Amazon will sell me thesebooks $4.80 in retail.
(29:09):
You're an Amazon primecustomer, right?
Right.
You go to Amazon, you buy 480plus state tax, whatever your state
taxes, I would attack.
And it comes to you shippingfree and everything.
And you get it in two days.
One book.
It's unbelievable.
I couldn't believe it when Ifound out they would do that.
Couple of years ago when Ifound out to do that.
(29:30):
So I use Amazon.
The tutorial videos come offAmazon web service.
So this, that's me.
It's called Kitchen table Math.
You don't see my picture.
You just see me working themath that you're.
That's in your notebook so youcan add to it and then do exercise.
I'm just teaching how to dothings concepts and then how to do
things.
All my life I've had a prettyinteresting life.
(29:54):
And I've had a lot of problemsin my life.
Like everybody does ups and downs.
I've lost lots of businesses.
Succeed for a while, then they fail.
Succeed, then they fail.
I told you about theDynamurine, right?
I got lots of other storieslike that.
I've made millions of dollarsthanks to math, but I also invested
(30:15):
and lost millions of dollars.
I'm an adventurer, right?
I've been up the Amazon River,I swum with the Indians.
Okay?
I could tell you all that inone of my businesses I had a motorhome
and I go around the countrydoing training on site training in
technology and technical subjects.
I've been to every state inthe union.
(30:37):
I've taught out on Vancouverisland, all big.
If it wasn't for math, none ofthat would have happened.
Practical math.
Okay, so that's.
You're going to enroll yourson in that and I'll be surprised
if very quickly he doesn'tlike math.
You're going to have to go buyhim a calculator and you're going
(31:01):
to go to Amazon and buy himthe book.
You could print out the PDFs,but I recommend go to Amazon and
buy them and away it goes.
And, and then, or then startsaying so then.
So then people say, what elsebesides Matt?
I said, well, I was veryblessed in my life to have a lot
of what I call wisdom tools.
Right.
Here's what I define a wisdomtool to be.
(31:23):
You take actions and everyaction you take has consequences.
That's just like gravity.
That's taking action has consequences.
Some consequences are good,some are bad.
Depends on your definition.
Right.
Some are short term, some arelong term.
What often happens is you dosomething, it has a good short term
(31:45):
consequence and a bad long term.
Well, a wisdom tool will letyou understand what will be the consequences
of an action and then you candecide what actions you want to take
to get the consequences you desire.
And if you think long term,it'll be different than if you just
(32:08):
think short term.
And I tell that story again in here.
I acquired those wisdom toolsover the years from many, many sources.
Some from the Bible, but a lotof them from other wise people.
And I got about two dozenwisdom tools that you also have access
to.
(32:29):
And all it is, to me, it's avideo explaining a wisdom tool that
I learned.
That's amazing.
So, Craig, I'd like to ask myguest this question because this
has been a fascinatingconversation and I, and I've learned
so much from it.
What do you want your legacyto be?
Well, the most important thingin my life, of course, is my family
(32:52):
and I've had a fabulous family.
I'll soon celebrate.
You know how old I am?
I would say 55.
How old?
55.
Yeah.
You're teasing.
You're teasing.
Of course.
I guess 60 or 60 or 67.
Get your calculator out.
I remember Pearl harbor.
Okay.
(33:13):
I'm 86 years old.
Oh, wow.
I was born November 30, 1938,one week after my third birthday.
Pearl Harbor.
Now I'm 86 years old, and Idon't have any aches or pains, and
I don't take medicine, and I'm active.
I could do two or threepodcasts like this a day.
(33:35):
When I'm doing these podcasts,one of my wisdom tools is get in
a state of flow.
When I'm doing a podcast withyou with a like this, I'm in a state
of flow.
There's a book called Flow bysix Heck Mahaly.
And I explained that you wantto try to get that you want to do
things.
You're intrinsically motivatedversus extrinsically.
You want financial freedom.
You want to know how to dealwith difficult people.
(33:56):
On and on and on.
I learned all these frommostly from other people.
And you had good habits andbad habits.
We all do.
Okay, Legacy.
Well, the most important thingis I have a wonderful family.
I have three children.
They've been fabulous, successful.
I won't get into the detailsof it, but they've done great.
(34:18):
And I have grandchildren thatI think are going to do great.
They're doing great so far.
Right.
But not counting my family, Iwant my leg.
What I would like my legacy tobe as I achieve my mission with tried
math.
My mission for tried math isto train any young adult or teenager
the math they need to live anoptimal life that they want to live.
(34:42):
And that's millions of people.
And if we do that, that will probably.
First of all, we have all thenew AI tools coming out.
You got to know basic math,then you learn AI tools.
If we do that, our economywill get much, much, much stronger.
If Donald Trump's right and webring all these manufactured companies
back to the United States, whothe heck's going to work them, right?
(35:04):
If you don't.
If you don't know practicalmath, they won't hire you.
And most of our young people today.
You talk to Charlie Kirk.
Most of our young people todayhaven't got the skill sets, but with
the practical math, then theycan get the skill set easily.
One of my.
One of my wisdom tools isshould you go to college or not?
(35:24):
And Most kids shouldn't.
They could go into a technicalfield, make 50, $100,000 a year if
they know how to go about itwith no debt.
Now there's some that shouldgo to college.
And then I tell you, if you'regoing to go to college, I teach you
how to do it with no debt.
That's one of my wisdom tools.
Got lots of wisdom tools.
(35:45):
Okay, what I want my, theultimate mission, if we do all that,
is to stop war.
Because believe me, if wedon't stop war, we're going to destroy
ourselves.
Right?
We've had to threat a nuclearwar for many, many, many decades,
but we got many worse thingstoday than nuclear.
(36:06):
And if we don't stop war, thisthing is going on in Gaza and Ukraine
and on and on.
And now we're having the tradewar with China and blah, blah.
If we don't stop the wars.
And just think of all themisery that creates.
Think of the billions ofpeople today that are miserable.
We call it a war.
And the truth of the matter isthe United States, I hate to say
(36:27):
it, it's a warmongering country.
Look at the wars we've gotourselves into and all the people
that have died and then whatcame out of them, let's don't get
into anyway.
So my mission is, is toeducate enough people that we get
a great enough economy andsociety that we can stop war.
(36:48):
And that would be my legacy.
That's awesome.
Where can people find you andfind the materials you have and connect
with you on social media?
Craighane.com c r a I g h a ne dot.com is my website.
I don't get on social media.
I don't use Facebook, I don'tuse X, I don't use Instagram.
(37:08):
I'm on them technically, but Idon't LinkedIn.
I don't use any of that.
But if they go to my website,my email address is there, my phone
number.
Well, I tell them, you send meyour phone number, I'll put you in
my contact list, then you cancall me.
I do a lot of Zoom meetings.
I love Zoom.
And what I do is I record theZoom meetings and I make an unlisted
(37:30):
YouTube video.
So I got a record of it.
I hope you'll give me arecording of this meeting we're having.
Oh, definitely.
And, and then there's, there'stabs on my website that take you
to different web pages.
So for example, one of thetabs, if you want to improve your
(37:52):
life, it takes you to TheTriad Math Army.
And then there's another tabthat takes you to a different one.
And I've got.
And then you also on mywebsite, I've got other coming.
I send you to like Workforce Math.
And today I'm doing a.
Something that some of yourpeople might want to do.
I'm just starting now.
We're going to do what I callpractical math Workforce Math workshops,
(38:18):
camps where kids can enroll inand online and for 10 weeks they
go through all this justworking an hour or so a day at their
own and, and get through the math.
Especially kids that are goingto school and they.
And you know, well, I hate math.
I don't want any more math.
Well, they love this.
So.
(38:38):
So anyway, that would be my,that would be my legacy if I had
my choice.
Well, Craig, thanks so muchfor taking the time and really I
think this was a, a fruitfulconversation and I'm so thankful
what you do to make math notso daunting for people.
And thank you for taking thetime to be on the podcast.
Well, by the way, it's morethan just being not daunting.
(38:59):
They love it.
Yeah, I love it would be great.
They like it.
Well, anything is until you,until you get to certain.
Sports aren't much fun whenyou first get started.
No, not really.
I get you into, I get yousucceeding in Mass so quickly that
you begin to enjoy it.
You become intrinsicallymotivated to do it.
(39:20):
You're not just doing it toget a grade, you're doing it.
Oh boy.
I can see the value of this.
I can see why this is going tohelp me in my life.
And it's fun and it's easy.
It's easy when it's done properly.
Well, that's what we want.
So thank you again, Craig, forbeing adding great content for us
today.
Thank you, Keith.
Thank you.
My guest today, Dr.
Craig Haney, also known as Dr.
Dao, is a math educator andinnovator dedicated to transforming
how math is taught and learned.
With a PhD in algebraicnumeric theory and decades of teaching
and business experience, Dr.
Dell empowers students andprofessionals alike to demystify
math, like scientificcalculators and Wolfram Alpha, his
(01:23):
mission is to break down mathbarriers and inspire listeners to
invest in yourself for abrighter future.
Welcome, Dr.
Dale, to the podcast.
Well, Craig, it's so good tohave you on the podcast.
How you doing today, my friend?
Great.
My pleasure, Keith.
Looking forward to this conversation.
Our names are almost the same.
(01:43):
They're a little bit different.
I have a Y, which makes mine alittle bit more Irish, so we'll go
with it.
There we go.
So, Craig, I like to ask myguests this question.
What's the best piece ofadvice you ever received?
When I was 10 years old, mySunday school teacher, Theron York,
taught me all sorts of thingsfrom the New Testament.
(02:05):
But the best piece advice wasCraig, whatever you believe, really
believe, is what will happento you in your life.
Interesting.
Okay.
He said, now it's not what youdesire is what you believe.
It's.
And it's very hard to formyour beliefs.
It's easy to want something right.
Believing is hard, and Ilearned to do that.
(02:27):
And it's happened all my life.
And I've had maybe all sortsof things happen to me that I believed
would happen that were highly improbable.
And they.
Wow, that's really cool.
I love that.
I'm curious, a person of yourstature and accomplishment, who are
some people in your life whohave served as mentors for you along
(02:50):
the way?
Many.
I have a whole set of wisdomtools that I now offer my students,
and I got them from many people.
The wisest woman when I wasyoung was my Aunt Inis.
Very wise woman, very happy woman.
Not educated in any way youthink of being educated, but very
(03:13):
wise.
There's a huge differencebetween intelligence and wisdom.
She had wisdom.
Her.
Her.
Her husband, Uncle Jeff Davis,taught me to count using Cheerios
when I was five years old.
And when I was entered into aschool when I was five years old,
I was the only kid that hadbeen taught to count.
And my teacher had me help myfellow students.
(03:35):
I was five years old, and thatwas the beginning of my learning
and teaching math career.
And then it went off from there.
And I could tell you lots ofexamples of people that gave me great
advice that saved my life.
I could give you lots of Examples.
That's amazing.
Let's talk about yourbackground, because we, as we got
(03:56):
before we got on the podcast,you talked about how you got into
discovering that you weren'tgood at math according to your teachers,
to getting a PhD in math.
So tell us kind of thatjourney of that story, how you got
there.
Well, it's in detail in mybook how and why Public School Math
is destroying the USA.
If you go to my website,craighane.com you get a free PDF
(04:17):
copy.
Cool.
Then you'll know all about it.
C R A I G H A N E dot com.
Now, my uncle, Jack Davis, whowas a barber and a builder, taught
me to count.
Taught me to count.
Then he taught me practicalmath that he wasn't a math teacher,
he was a builder.
(04:37):
And up through the eighthgrade, I always knew more math than
my teacher did because hetaught me practical things.
Then when I took algebra myfreshman year in high school, I didn't
like it.
I didn't do well in it.
And my principal told me,well, you'll never go to college
because you didn't do good in algebra.
And, well, I'm dumb.
I don't know.
(04:59):
My sophomore year, I had agreat teacher.
Ms.
O' Hare taught me geometry.
I loved, did great in geometry.
Then I had algebra again myjunior year, didn't like it again,
Craig, you're not going to college.
My senior year, I was in atown, fortunately, that had a school
there, DePaul University,Greencastle, Indiana.
(05:20):
And my geometry teacher said,craig, your senior year, why don't
you go to DePaul and takecollege algebra and see how you do
there?
She knew that the high schoolalgebra teacher was not any good.
She couldn't say it.
So I went to DePaul and theymade a mistake.
They put me in withsophomores, not freshmen at DePaul.
Dr.
(05:40):
Clint Gast was my teacher, buthe was a good teacher and I got an
A.
He became my mentor and I wenton from there.
And he got me into bestliberal arts college in the United
States at that time in Ohio.
I, with math and Englishmajor, taught high school for a year,
came back, taught at DePaul.
I was 22 years old.
(06:01):
I taught math at DePaul.
I taught their most advancedcourses because I learned them at
Orbital.
Then I went ahead and got aPhD in math.
And then I taught.
I was a professor for seven years.
Then I went out and startedand just applied math to all sorts
of things.
And I can sit here all day andtell you about all sorts of things
I applied math to.
Are you a NASCAR fan?
I watched nascar, all right.
(06:22):
Out of many businesses, I didwith math, Practical math lets you
do all sorts of things.
I developed something in the1970s called the Dyna Brain, testing
racing engines on water brake dynamometers.
And my number one customer wasAustrian Racing in Charlotte, North
Carolina.
And they had a racer namedDame Marcus.
(06:43):
And he wasn't winning races.
They fired him.
I'm down there talking to him,Roland Wolak, who's the general manager,
And I said, I hear you firedyour driver.
And he said, yeah.
He said, we got the bestracing engine because of your Dynamurine.
We got the best racingengines, and he's just not that good
at driving.
So we've hired his new driver.
He's a wild guy, and he'solder and no one else would hire
(07:03):
him.
We've hired, and we're goingto give him a chance.
And he says he's there.
Back him up.
He said, I want you to meetCraig Hayne.
He's the guy that we built theDyna Marine that we got, makes our
engines the best engine.
You're going to have the bestracing engine in nascar, but you
got to go out and be the best driver.
Craig, I want you to meet ournew driver, Dale Earnhardt.
(07:26):
I knew Dale before he ran hisfirst NASCAR race, and then he won
five races that year.
End of the year, then he runRookie of the Year.
They were in Grand National.
I quit making the Dyna Brainwhen I went to produce it.
Intel quit making themicroprocessor chip that went into
it, the 4040 couldn't produce it.
So then I went and did other things.
And then I've applied math tomany other things.
(07:47):
I could sit here if you hadseveral hours.
I could tell you lots of stories.
Wow, that's really cool.
As someone who's passionateabout breaking down the barriers
of math and education, whatare some of the key things you said
that our public schools aredoing to make math harder on our
students?
(08:07):
Three or four things.
Number one, they're stillteaching the old manual tools that
no one would use it anymore.
So the first thing I do with ateenager is I teach them to use a
scientific calculator Schoolslet them use.
They don't teach them.
There's only about 16 thingson this calculator you need to know
(08:28):
to do practical math.
So I teach them that.
They learn it in a couple ofweeks, and it turns their psychology
around.
It gets their psychology right.
The bottom line is, if you Ifa student is afraid of math, doesn't
like math, he's not gonnalearn math.
So this turns the psychology around.
It's almost like playing a game.
And, well, that was easy.
Then I teach them practical algebra.
(08:50):
Ten lessons.
That's all.
That's all you need forpractical algebra.
In high school, they teach allkinds of things you'll never use
in algebra.
Some is manual tools you'llnever use, and some is theory.
Now, algebra is a tool youapply to some.
Then I teach them practical geometry.
19 lessons.
(09:11):
How long is something?
What is the area?
What's the volume?
And they love it.
Now, you can't do anglesadequately with that.
So then I teach trigonometry.
Seven lessons.
They go through all thatpractical algebra, geometry in one
semester.
And at that point, they knowmore math than 95% of all the adults
in the United States.
They know more math than you do.
(09:33):
So explain to me what you meanby practical algebra, because I know
people may not understand thatterm, so kind of break that down
for us.
Well, in any technicalsubject, I had a company for 25 years
where we taught technicians,hydraulics, pneumatics, electrical
rigging, on and on.
In any technical subject, youneed what I call practical math.
(09:57):
That is how to.
How long is something, what'sthe area, what's the volume, what
are the angles?
And to do that, you need touse arithmetic and algebra.
Well, the calculator makes thearithmetic very easy.
There's a $10 calculator, bythe way.
If you'd had this calculatorduring the Manhattan Project in the
early 40s, you.
(10:18):
If you'd had one and no onebeen more than a million dollars.
Wow.
Because you can do things withit you cannot do manually, and you
can do it so much faster and easier.
So forget the manual tools.
Use the tool.
Then in.
In high school today, the matheducators, our math curriculum, start
(10:38):
over 100 years ago, have awhole year of algebra, and they put
all kinds of stuff in ityou'll never use.
For example, you took algebrain high school, didn't you?
Didn't you?
I did.
All right.
Do you remember the quadratic formula?
No.
You don't even remember.
Well, they taught it to you.
Yeah, but have you ever used it?
And the answer is no, you haven't.
(10:59):
No.
So I don't teach that.
The square root of two.
What kind of number.
Square root of two.
It's.
What kind of a number is thesquare root of 2?
The answer is it's anirrational number.
You can't express it.
As a fraction.
That's in the algebra classesthey teach.
That's theory.
(11:19):
Nobody cares about that excepttheoretical mathematicians.
Now, the algebra they teach inhigh school today, the first year
of algebra, 90% of it is stuffyou'll never use.
It's either too much theoryyou'll never use, or it's tools you'll
never use.
I teach just what you need,and it's easy what you need.
The stuff that I teach isburied in that year course.
(11:43):
But for everything you need,there's nine things you don't need.
And they're hard to learn.
And people give up.
Then they grade on thehorrible curve.
Math is something you don'tunderstand it or you don't.
So if somebody does it.
If somebody tells me, well, Itook algebra and I got a B, well,
okay, obviously there's a lotof things you don't understand.
(12:03):
You got a C or a D.
I'll tell you.
Probably didn't learn anythingthat I call the horrible.
I explained that in my book.
If you want to reallyunderstand it, just get my book,
go to my website, read the book.
In part four, I have fourchapters that I explain to you what's
wrong with high school math indetail, and I'll debate it with anybody.
(12:26):
I'm curious.
Yeah, I'm curious because youtalk about using calculators, and
I remember when I was inschool, calculators.
This is back in the 1930s.
But the calculators were a big.
No, no, we couldn't, wecouldn't bring them to school because
they said that was kind of cheating.
Yeah, they want you to learnthe manual, too, Right?
(12:47):
I know.
Well, that's, that's, that'sthe problem.
You're.
You're doing a problem.
You're out there.
Okay, I got 357, and I got tomultiply it times 92.
Well, there's a manual way todo that.
(13:07):
And the answer is 30 2008.
44.
That's the calculator.
How long would it take you todo it manually?
And it's error prone.
Right.
And that's just multiplication.
Long division is even worse.
Oh, yes.
And then taking a square rooteven worse than that.
There's manual ways of doing it.
I taught that.
I was teaching math backbefore calculators came out.
Do you know when the firstscientific calculator came out?
(13:27):
1970.
Something 72.
Yes.
Hewlett Packard 35.
HP 35.
Do you know how much it costin today's dollars?
I know.
Back then it was like almost $100?
No, no, it was $395.
Oh, was it?
Yeah.
Okay.
And today's dollar that was $2,500.
I was a professor at anengineering school in Indiana called
(13:50):
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology.
At that time, I was teachingthe advanced theory.
I was teaching the theory youneed for quantum theory and theoretical
physics.
Okay.
But my fellow professors wereall teaching slide rules, log tables,
trig tables.
That calculator came out.
One of the.
Some of the students had themnow today dollars.
(14:12):
It was $2500 in today dollars.
395.
Then I.
I got one for the student,looked at it, and when I spent 30
minutes on it, I go, oh, my God.
Slide rules are obsolete.
Trig tables and log tables are obsolete.
You're going to use a calculator.
And I told my fellow mathprofessor that.
And they.
Oh, they freaked out becausethat was what they taught.
(14:35):
And it was almost 10 yearsbefore they quit using slide rules.
Now, Hewlett package.
What?
They're going to sell 10,000of them just to engineers, right?
They sold.
They sold 100,000 of them.
Oh, my God.
So they lowered the price to 195.
In the meantime, Texas Citruscame out and made an even better
one for under a hundred dollars.
(14:56):
That's probably about the timeyou came on.
Yeah, that's the one.
I remember the ti.
Yeah.
And then they got better and better.
This calculator today costabout $10.
It's better than any of thoseoriginal calculators.
It's the best littlescientific calculator that I know
of.
It does fractions, for example.
That's one thing that makes it good.
There's a lot of other things.
(15:17):
By the way, half the things onthis calculator you'll never use,
right?
I don't teach them.
I only teach what you're goingto use.
There's a key on here calledthe hype key.
Hyp.
You don't know what it is andyou would never use it if I taught
it.
It's called.
It's for hyperbolic trig functions.
Don't use those.
Use regular trig function,which is on here, too.
And I teach you what you douse, and the students love it.
(15:40):
It takes most students tolearn how to use this calculator
for practical math.
About two weeks.
The way I teach it, I havetutorial videos off Amazon Web Services
and notes and exercises.
Because you really learn bydoing math.
You don't learn by justlistening to somebody talk about
it.
You have to do it and thenquizzes to Be.
(16:00):
And then you climb the ladderand I explain all that in the book.
And then you go.
And then once you've learnedto use the calculator, now all your
arithmetic will be done with a calculator.
Then you can learn practicalalgebra, 10 lessons.
Practical geometry, 19 lessons.
Practical trick, seven lessonsin about one semester.
(16:20):
And you'll know more math.
Now you'll know what you needfor technical school.
You don't you.
Now, if you're going intocollege, you need some more math
for the sat.
And I then.
So I then I have a tier threefor that.
The first is tier one and two,then tier three.
And that's a lot of stuffyou'll never use.
But you need it for the sat.
If you're going to go.
If you're going to take it,still, just use a calculator.
(16:43):
Now, let's say you do good onthe sat.
Are you ready for scienceengineering at a good school like
MIT or Purdue?
No.
Now you need all those subjectI just talked about in a much deeper
level.
Right.
When you do them manually,they're very difficult.
(17:03):
But there's a new tool thatcame out in 2009, the dust for those
subjects for STEM, what thecalculator did for practical math,
you may have heard of it.
It's called Wolfram Alpha.
I haven't heard of that.
(17:23):
And I explain it in this book.
Came out in 2009.
And it now makes the math youneed for science and engineering
all the way through calculusand differential equations, which
I teach at the high school level.
It now takes it from adifficulty level of eight down to
a difficulty level of two.
Wow.
It does for STEM math.
(17:44):
They call it STEM Science,Technology, Engineering, Math.
It does for STEM Math what thecalculator does for practical math.
No one teaches it.
It's not in any textbooks.
That's one reason why they'redestroying usa.
People that might want to gointo science can't get through the
math and they quit because ofthe way it's taught.
(18:06):
It's kind of like if you wantto learn music and I made you spend
a year studying Gregorianchance before you could study anything
else, you might getdiscouraged and drop out of music.
Yeah, I would.
I love Gregorian chant, but.
Well, pick one you don't like, right?
(18:29):
We all have things we like,things we don't like.
But anyway, math is very easy today.
Now when it's taught properlyand there's no one doing it.
I thought someone else wouldbe doing it, but now I started this
about 10 years ago and I'vetrained hundreds of students now,
mostly homeschool students,but any teenager can do it and take
it.
And then it will also make themath they're taking in their school
(18:51):
probably easier for them.
Although I don't teach a lotof the stuff that they're teaching
in the regular school.
So I have a question for you.
You talk about the SAT and the act.
Do they allow students now tobring calculators for the SAT and
ACT?
You can bring the TI30XA.
Okay.
(19:13):
But you can't bring a cell phone.
Okay.
Can't bring a smartphone.
You know why you get on a smartphone?
Go Wolframalpha and it'llanswer all the questions.
Okay?
If you know how to ask.
Wolfram Alpha is a tool.
You gotta know.
You gotta.
Here's the math.
There's two things about math.
There's concepts and there's tools.
(19:34):
The concepts of math are very easy.
Calculus, very easy concepts.
I can teach you.
I can teach you the conceptsof calculus in three hours.
Actually, I do it with.
I've got three videos I do iton that are free on my website.
I have a video library.
I have three videos that willteach you the concepts of calculus
in about an hour.
The concepts.
Now the tools to apply the concepts.
(19:57):
The old manual tools are verydifficult, but with Wolfram Alpha,
once you understand theconcepts, you know how to ask the
question, bingo, bango, solved.
So why, why have we notevolved in our school systems to
address the math disparity?
As you know the math gap there.
(20:18):
By teaching the tools, you'retalking about very simple.
Money, honey.
Oh, money.
If you are.
If you're a math educator andyou're writing the textbooks and
making up the tests, everyhigh school math textbook today is
obsolete.
(20:39):
But it's a billion dollar industry.
So are you going to write a book?
The wipes, nobody's done it.
They don't want to change.
And so they just.
And they make the textbooksthis thick.
I use.
The best high school mathtextbook was ever written was by
the greatest teacher in the20th century, a guy named Simmons.
(21:03):
And he wrote the greatesttopology book, which you used to
use that for quantum theoryand Hilbert spaces.
Then he wrote the greatestdifferential equation book ever read.
Then he wrote the greatestcalculus book.
Then he wrote one called PreCalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell.
Algebra, geometry and trick.
119 pages, less than $20.
(21:28):
Wow.
I came out in 1988.
I was no longer a professor then.
I was now doing business.
But I kind of follow what wasgoing on.
So I bought 20 of these books,and I gave them to various people.
So go start using this in your skills.
Nobody ever adopted it.
It's still in print.
I still use it in tier 3 andtier 4.
(21:51):
119 pages.
And he tells exactly the kindof thing I am about the stuff you
shouldn't teach.
What you should.
It's a really good book.
I gave that book to myyoungest son when he was in the eighth
grade, and he went through iton his own.
And he won a scholarship tothe best engineering school in Indiana,
eighth grade, because of that book.
What's the name of the bookagain, for those who may want to
(22:13):
look it up?
Pre Calculus Mathematics in anutshell by Dr.
George Simmons.
And it's about $20.
Wow.
No school used it.
I never heard of a school thatused it.
I mean, there may be one Idon't know about, but they use the
algebra books that are 300books or 200, expensive, big thick
(22:38):
books, and they're loaded withstuff I just told you about.
You'll never use.
Both theory and practical tool.
And I could give you lots ofexamples we can see here for the
next hour.
And I could give you exampleafter example after example of stuff
they're teaching that you'llnever use.
And it's hard to.
It's hard stuff.
(22:58):
So give us a couple examples.
For those who are listening tothis podcast, I'm sure a lot of people
going, oh, wow, now Iunderstand why math was so hard.
But give us some examples ofthings that they teach you that you'll
never use.
You take a polynomial withinteger coefficients of degree n,
let's say 6, and you can takethe leading coefficient and the last
(23:24):
coefficient, factor it intoprimes, and make all the rational
numbers you can make out ofthose prime numbers.
And if this polynomial has arational root, it'll be one of those
numbers.
So then you test it againstall those numbers.
Now, all this takes a lot oftime and effort and it's error prone.
And that's one way to find outthe root of a high degree polynomial,
(23:47):
because otherwise there's noalgorithm to do it.
The problem is no polynomialever run in the real world has rational
roots.
So who gives a damn?
It's a valueless.
It works, but it's valuelessand it's hard to learn.
(24:08):
The square root of an integeris irrational unless it's a perfect
square.
And I can prove that to you.
It's called reductive autoabsurdum proof.
The Pythagoreans discovered it.
The simplest one Is you take aright triangle where the legs are
1 and 1 and the hypotenuse isthe square root of 2.
(24:30):
Thaggerian theorem.
And they discovered that itwas not a rational number.
And it so upset them.
The guy that discovered it,they threw him out of a boat and
drowned him, they said.
But what they did do, theyretreated from numbers.
It just did geometry.
And then archimedes came along200 years later and started using
(24:52):
numbers.
And he did things that.
Well, give you an example.
In Euclidean geometry, youtake a circle, and it's got a diameter.
If you divide the circle, the.
The length of the circle bythe diameter, that's a number.
Do you know the name of the number?
No.
It's called PI.
(25:13):
You ever hear PI?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's circumference dividedby diameter.
Now, what's the area of a circle?
Euclid didn't know.
They couldn't figure it out.
Archimedes did.
And it turns out if you takethe circumference and divide it by
two and the diameter anddivide it by two and multiply them,
(25:36):
that's the area of a circle.
And Archimedes proved it, andhe used techniques that are precursors
to modern calculus.
Calculus didn't come alonguntil the 1600s with Newton and Leibniz.
And the reason we have modernscience is because of what is called
the fundamental theorem of calculus.
(25:57):
That allows you to take acurve that has area under it and
calculate the area under thatcurve very easily.
The curve is.
There's a formula for itcalled a function.
Then you got to find anotherfunction whose derivative is this
curve, and then you evaluate it.
(26:18):
Finding that other function isextremely difficult.
That flunks more kids out ofengineering school.
They call it an antiderivative.
That flunks more kids out ofengineering school than anything
else.
When I taught engineeringschool, that was.
It's called integral calculus today.
Wolfram Alpha makes it easy.
Done.
You give it to function.
Boom.
And by the way, some functionsdo not have an anti derivative in
(26:40):
terms of other ordinary functions.
You have to have what's calleda special function to involve infinite
series.
Wolframa does all that automatically.
Wow.
So as you think about whereour math education is today, where
do you see the future of itgoing with technology playing.
Playing a big role in ittrying math.
(27:00):
What I do, my program orsomething equally good.
There's no.
There's no one else out theredoing it.
But I've got the only programtoday that I love.
I tell people, if you know ofanother program that does what mine
does, I'll give you a thousand dollars.
All right.
I want to know about it.
And I think I would know.
Yeah, you would.
(27:22):
I'm not too worried aboutlosing my thousand dollar, but, you
know, no big deal.
So tell us about your programa little bit more.
Well, in order to make itaffordable, what I've done, if I
have created what I call theTriad Math army and the Triad Math
(27:44):
Tribe.
They're two, they're similar.
And mostly I go after adultsthat have children.
So if you join the army, it's$30 a month and you have access to
all the math everything.
And it's $30 a month and youcan train it and you can put all
your children into that program.
It's all just for $30.
(28:05):
If you hired a tutor thatcould do what I do.
If you like to hire someonelike me that could do it, it would
cost you thousands of dollarsper month to do it.
And you're getting it for $30a month.
Me Tutorial videos off AmazonWeb Services.
(28:27):
Notes, notebooks.
I used to have to print themout from PDF copies, but I found
a printer that would printthese notebooks.
This is the sample of one.
I found a printer that'llprint this book for just a few dollars
and send it to you.
Okay.
Guess who the.
Guess who the printer is.
It'll do that.
Guess who I use as my printer.
Who?
(28:47):
Amazon.
Oh.
And there's no one elsethat'll do it that I know of.
It's amazing what it do.
Amazon Princess book.
You can go buy the book atAmazon for $4.80.
Amazon will sell me thesebooks $4.80 in retail.
(29:09):
You're an Amazon primecustomer, right?
Right.
You go to Amazon, you buy 480plus state tax, whatever your state
taxes, I would attack.
And it comes to you shippingfree and everything.
And you get it in two days.
One book.
It's unbelievable.
I couldn't believe it when Ifound out they would do that.
Couple of years ago when Ifound out to do that.
(29:30):
So I use Amazon.
The tutorial videos come offAmazon web service.
So this, that's me.
It's called Kitchen table Math.
You don't see my picture.
You just see me working themath that you're.
That's in your notebook so youcan add to it and then do exercise.
I'm just teaching how to dothings concepts and then how to do
things.
All my life I've had a prettyinteresting life.
(29:54):
And I've had a lot of problemsin my life.
Like everybody does ups and downs.
I've lost lots of businesses.
Succeed for a while, then they fail.
Succeed, then they fail.
I told you about theDynamurine, right?
I got lots of other storieslike that.
I've made millions of dollarsthanks to math, but I also invested
(30:15):
and lost millions of dollars.
I'm an adventurer, right?
I've been up the Amazon River,I swum with the Indians.
Okay?
I could tell you all that inone of my businesses I had a motorhome
and I go around the countrydoing training on site training in
technology and technical subjects.
I've been to every state inthe union.
(30:37):
I've taught out on Vancouverisland, all big.
If it wasn't for math, none ofthat would have happened.
Practical math.
Okay, so that's.
You're going to enroll yourson in that and I'll be surprised
if very quickly he doesn'tlike math.
You're going to have to go buyhim a calculator and you're going
(31:01):
to go to Amazon and buy himthe book.
You could print out the PDFs,but I recommend go to Amazon and
buy them and away it goes.
And, and then, or then startsaying so then.
So then people say, what elsebesides Matt?
I said, well, I was veryblessed in my life to have a lot
of what I call wisdom tools.
Right.
Here's what I define a wisdomtool to be.
(31:23):
You take actions and everyaction you take has consequences.
That's just like gravity.
That's taking action has consequences.
Some consequences are good,some are bad.
Depends on your definition.
Right.
Some are short term, some arelong term.
What often happens is you dosomething, it has a good short term
(31:45):
consequence and a bad long term.
Well, a wisdom tool will letyou understand what will be the consequences
of an action and then you candecide what actions you want to take
to get the consequences you desire.
And if you think long term,it'll be different than if you just
(32:08):
think short term.
And I tell that story again in here.
I acquired those wisdom toolsover the years from many, many sources.
Some from the Bible, but a lotof them from other wise people.
And I got about two dozenwisdom tools that you also have access
to.
(32:29):
And all it is, to me, it's avideo explaining a wisdom tool that
I learned.
That's amazing.
So, Craig, I'd like to ask myguest this question because this
has been a fascinatingconversation and I, and I've learned
so much from it.
What do you want your legacyto be?
Well, the most important thingin my life, of course, is my family
(32:52):
and I've had a fabulous family.
I'll soon celebrate.
You know how old I am?
I would say 55.
How old?
55.
Yeah.
You're teasing.
You're teasing.
Of course.
I guess 60 or 60 or 67.
Get your calculator out.
I remember Pearl harbor.
Okay.
(33:13):
I'm 86 years old.
Oh, wow.
I was born November 30, 1938,one week after my third birthday.
Pearl Harbor.
Now I'm 86 years old, and Idon't have any aches or pains, and
I don't take medicine, and I'm active.
I could do two or threepodcasts like this a day.
(33:35):
When I'm doing these podcasts,one of my wisdom tools is get in
a state of flow.
When I'm doing a podcast withyou with a like this, I'm in a state
of flow.
There's a book called Flow bysix Heck Mahaly.
And I explained that you wantto try to get that you want to do
things.
You're intrinsically motivatedversus extrinsically.
You want financial freedom.
You want to know how to dealwith difficult people.
(33:56):
On and on and on.
I learned all these frommostly from other people.
And you had good habits andbad habits.
We all do.
Okay, Legacy.
Well, the most important thingis I have a wonderful family.
I have three children.
They've been fabulous, successful.
I won't get into the detailsof it, but they've done great.
(34:18):
And I have grandchildren thatI think are going to do great.
They're doing great so far.
Right.
But not counting my family, Iwant my leg.
What I would like my legacy tobe as I achieve my mission with tried
math.
My mission for tried math isto train any young adult or teenager
the math they need to live anoptimal life that they want to live.
(34:42):
And that's millions of people.
And if we do that, that will probably.
First of all, we have all thenew AI tools coming out.
You got to know basic math,then you learn AI tools.
If we do that, our economywill get much, much, much stronger.
If Donald Trump's right and webring all these manufactured companies
back to the United States, whothe heck's going to work them, right?
(35:04):
If you don't.
If you don't know practicalmath, they won't hire you.
And most of our young people today.
You talk to Charlie Kirk.
Most of our young people todayhaven't got the skill sets, but with
the practical math, then theycan get the skill set easily.
One of my.
One of my wisdom tools isshould you go to college or not?
(35:24):
And Most kids shouldn't.
They could go into a technicalfield, make 50, $100,000 a year if
they know how to go about itwith no debt.
Now there's some that shouldgo to college.
And then I tell you, if you'regoing to go to college, I teach you
how to do it with no debt.
That's one of my wisdom tools.
Got lots of wisdom tools.
(35:45):
Okay, what I want my, theultimate mission, if we do all that,
is to stop war.
Because believe me, if wedon't stop war, we're going to destroy
ourselves.
Right?
We've had to threat a nuclearwar for many, many, many decades,
but we got many worse thingstoday than nuclear.
(36:06):
And if we don't stop war, thisthing is going on in Gaza and Ukraine
and on and on.
And now we're having the tradewar with China and blah, blah.
If we don't stop the wars.
And just think of all themisery that creates.
Think of the billions ofpeople today that are miserable.
We call it a war.
And the truth of the matter isthe United States, I hate to say
(36:27):
it, it's a warmongering country.
Look at the wars we've gotourselves into and all the people
that have died and then whatcame out of them, let's don't get
into anyway.
So my mission is, is toeducate enough people that we get
a great enough economy andsociety that we can stop war.
(36:48):
And that would be my legacy.
That's awesome.
Where can people find you andfind the materials you have and connect
with you on social media?
Craighane.com c r a I g h a ne dot.com is my website.
I don't get on social media.
I don't use Facebook, I don'tuse X, I don't use Instagram.
(37:08):
I'm on them technically, but Idon't LinkedIn.
I don't use any of that.
But if they go to my website,my email address is there, my phone
number.
Well, I tell them, you send meyour phone number, I'll put you in
my contact list, then you cancall me.
I do a lot of Zoom meetings.
I love Zoom.
And what I do is I record theZoom meetings and I make an unlisted
(37:30):
YouTube video.
So I got a record of it.
I hope you'll give me arecording of this meeting we're having.
Oh, definitely.
And, and then there's, there'stabs on my website that take you
to different web pages.
So for example, one of thetabs, if you want to improve your
(37:52):
life, it takes you to TheTriad Math Army.
And then there's another tabthat takes you to a different one.
And I've got.
And then you also on mywebsite, I've got other coming.
I send you to like Workforce Math.
And today I'm doing a.
Something that some of yourpeople might want to do.
I'm just starting now.
We're going to do what I callpractical math Workforce Math workshops,
(38:18):
camps where kids can enroll inand online and for 10 weeks they
go through all this justworking an hour or so a day at their
own and, and get through the math.
Especially kids that are goingto school and they.
And you know, well, I hate math.
I don't want any more math.
Well, they love this.
So.
(38:38):
So anyway, that would be my,that would be my legacy if I had
my choice.
Well, Craig, thanks so muchfor taking the time and really I
think this was a, a fruitfulconversation and I'm so thankful
what you do to make math notso daunting for people.
And thank you for taking thetime to be on the podcast.
Well, by the way, it's morethan just being not daunting.
(38:59):
They love it.
Yeah, I love it would be great.
They like it.
Well, anything is until you,until you get to certain.
Sports aren't much fun whenyou first get started.
No, not really.
I get you into, I get yousucceeding in Mass so quickly that
you begin to enjoy it.
You become intrinsicallymotivated to do it.
(39:20):
You're not just doing it toget a grade, you're doing it.
Oh boy.
I can see the value of this.
I can see why this is going tohelp me in my life.
And it's fun and it's easy.
It's easy when it's done properly.
Well, that's what we want.
So thank you again, Craig, forbeing adding great content for us
today.
Thank you, Keith.
Thank you.
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