July 13, 2025 • 51 mins
Welcome to episode 36 of the Designing with Love podcast! In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Craig Hane, a math educator and founder of the Triad Math Army.
Mathematics doesn't have to be intimidating, confusing, or useless. Dr. Craig Hane proves this through his remarkable journey from being told he wasn't "college material" to revolutionizing how math is taught and learned.
Dr. Hane shares how his uncle taught him practical mathematics that put him ahead of his peers, yet traditional algebra instruction nearly derailed his academic future. This contradiction sparked a lifelong mission to transform mathematical education. With refreshing candor, he explains why 90% of what's in standard algebra textbooks is either obsolete or unnecessarily theoretical, serving examinations rather than real-life applications.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dr. Hane introduces Wolfram Alpha, a powerful computational tool that has transformed what's possible in mathematics education. Just as calculators made slide rules obsolete overnight in the 1970s, this technology allows students to focus on understanding concepts rather than struggling with manual calculations. His six-tier educational system progressively builds mathematical competency, starting with essential practical skills and advancing through higher-level concepts as needed.
Beyond mathematics, Dr. Hayne has developed "wisdom tools" – practical knowledge frameworks accumulated through decades of experience addressing everything from breaking bad habits to achieving financial freedom. His Triad Math Army combines mathematical education with these wisdom tools, creating a comprehensive development program that serves both academic and personal growth.
Whether you're a student struggling with mathematics, an educator seeking better approaches, or someone who's always felt alienated by traditional math instruction, this conversation offers a revolutionary perspective on learning and teaching. Dr. Hane’s practical, technology-embracing approach could transform how we think about not just mathematics, but education as a whole.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the Designing with
Love podcast.
I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you
information, tips, and tricks asan instructional designer.
Hello, GCU students, alumni,and educators.
Welcome to episode 36 of theDesigning with Love podcast.
(00:21):
Today I have the pleasure ofinterviewing Dr.
Craig Hane, also known as Dr.
Dell by his students, and anexpert in the education field
and mathematics.
Welcome, Dr.
Hane.
Craig Hane (00:33):
Thank you, Janet.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:34):
Thank you.
So can you tell us a little bitabout yourself?
Craig Hane (00:38):
Well, I've been around a long time, and when I
was a young man a boy I had ahomeschool teacher, my uncle,
jack Davis, who was a barber anda builder, and he taught me
practical math, and I was alwaysahead of my students and my
teachers because of him, and soI started.
I actually had my firstteaching experience when I was
five years old.
He had taught me how to countand none of the other students
(01:01):
had been taught how to count,and so my first grade teacher
enlisted my aid in helping themto learn to count.
My first teacher experience hetaught me all sorts of practical
math.
He was not a math teacher, bythe way, he was a builder and a
barber and I learned things thatmost people don't know, like if
you want a third of a squareangle, how do you do it with
(01:22):
string, and it's called theone-two rule.
Most people don't know that,and things like that.
I excelled at math through theeighth grade, when I was a
freshman in high school inGreencastle Indiana.
I took algebra and I did not dowell in it.
I got a pretty bad grade.
(01:42):
I didn't flunk it, but I got abad grade.
I didn't like it and myprincipal and my counselor told
me Craig, you're not collegematerial, you're not going to go
to college, because if youdon't do well in algebra in high
school you can't go to college.
They recommended I take shopindustrial arts, which I did.
No one in my family had evergone to college.
(02:05):
Then I got saved by twowonderful teachers.
I had a geometry teacher mysophomore year and she taught
great geometry and I did reallywell and I loved it, just like
Uncle Jack.
Then I had the algebra teacheragain in my junior year.
Didn't do good again, but now Iwas a troublemaker.
I argued with him a lot.
Why is this true?
Why is this true?
Where did this come from?
Don't ask that, just do itDidn't get a very good grade.
(02:28):
My senior year Ms O'Hararecommended I go to DePaul
University in Greencastle andtake college algebra as a
special student and I did mysenior year.
By the way, I was the youngestkid in my class.
I was 16 years old when I didit.
When I entered Dr Clint Gass,who was the chairman of the
department was my teacher and Itook college algebra and he was
(02:49):
a good teacher and I got an A.
Jackie Pelegrin (02:51):
Wow, that's amazing, whoa how could that
happen?
Craig Hane (02:55):
Right, he became my mentor.
He got me enrolled in thenumber one liberal arts college
in the United States at thattime Oberlin College.
I could get there on aPennsylvania railroad up near
Cleveland.
I'm from Greencastle, indiana,went to Oberlin, majored in math
and English.
Then I taught and, by the way,I tutored students all through
(03:15):
this time.
Now I made a good livingtutoring students and as a tutor
I never had a failure.
The year after I graduated fromOberlin I taught high school for
a year in Western Reserve HighSchool, wakeman, ohio.
All four grades of math.
And now I had students failingbecause they couldn't keep up
and I couldn't slow down.
I had to be on a schedule andfor the first time ever I had
(03:37):
students fail.
I felt terrible.
I couldn't do anything about it.
I had other students who werebored because I was going too
slow, couldn't do anything aboutit.
That's when I realized there'sa real problem with classroom
teaching and math on a schedule.
Right, I wanted to do somethingabout it.
(03:58):
Well, anyway, that was one year.
I went back that next year backto Greencastle and Dr Gass had
me teach math at DePaul while hewent on sabbatical.
He wanted me to teach theirmost advanced theory that I
learned at Oberlin.
They didn't know so at age 22,from having been told I was not
college material when I was afreshman at age 22, I'm teaching
the most advanced math atDePaul.
(04:19):
He then said why don't you goto graduate school?
Because I didn't know what Iwanted to do.
I'm an adventurer.
So I went to Bloomington,indiana, down about 40 miles
down the road to IndianaUniversity, enrolled as a grad
student.
Well, it was fun.
I loved it.
So I hate tests.
By the way, I didn't take themaster's degree exam.
(04:39):
I don't have a master's degree,but it turns out what's
important is doing research anda dissertation.
And after four years they saidokay, craig, here's a PhD, now
go be a professor, you're out ofhere.
Jackie Pelegrin (04:55):
Wow, that's awesome Now at age 27,.
Craig Hane (04:58):
I'm a professor.
For seven years I was aprofessor.
I went to Terre Haute, indianaState University three years,
rose-hulman Institute ofTechnology, four years.
I also then began to apply math, practical math.
I'm really an adventurer.
I've never done any one thingmore than a few years of my life
(05:20):
.
And one of the things I did Ibuilt the world's first, the
best eighth-mile drag stripaction dragway in Terre Haute,
and it was practical math that.
Let me do it.
Then I invented.
I did some other things too,lots of other things, but the
big thing I did.
I invented what I call thedynabrain to monitor racing
(05:43):
engines as they were beingtested on water break
dynamometers for racers, forracing, oh wow.
And NASCAR became my number onecustomer.
The NASCAR teams Hustle andRacing was my number one
customer, and they had the bestracing engines because they
could test them using mydynabrain.
And, by the way, all I neededto develop all that was
(06:03):
practical math.
I didn't need advanced topologyand Hilbert spaces and all that
which I've been teaching at theadvanced level.
I just need a practical math.
And guess who my first racingcustomer was in?
I was also racing and they hada racer named Daylor I forget
his name, marcus.
(06:23):
They fired him.
They hired had a racer namedDale.
I forget his name, marcus.
They fired him.
They hired a new racer One day.
Ronald Locke, the generalmanager, was standing out back
and he said we've hired this newracer.
He said he's a crazy guy.
No one else would hire him, butwe think he could be a pretty
good racer and we don't know.
We're going to try him andwe've told him.
And to try them, and we've toldhim and he called him up,
introduced me to him.
(06:44):
He says this is Craig Hayne.
He's the guy that got theDynaBrain.
That's why we got the bestracing engines in NASCAR.
You know, you got to go out andwin races.
Craig, meet Dale Earnhardt.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:55):
That's awesome, that's great.
Craig Hane (06:56):
I met Dale Earnhardt before he ran his first race,
and on and on and on.
Well then, I thought I wasgoing to get rich.
On the Dynabrain.
They quit making the processorthat I needed to build and Intel
couldn't make it.
So I ended up forming atraining company called Hain
Training, and we trained skilledtradesmen for the military and
(07:19):
utilities and the big threeautomakers and Caterpillar, and
on and on, all across the UnitedStates, and I hired people to
help me do it.
I had lots of instructors andall that, and we ended up with
about 50 different workshops andevery one of the workshops
technical workshop depended onpractical math.
We teach them just enough mathand they go.
Why didn't somebody teach methis 20 years ago?
(07:41):
Sorry, and here's the reason.
When I teach practical algebratoday and I do it online now I
have an online program how manylessons do you think you need
for practical algebra?
Maybe 16 weeks, Maybe 16?
weeks About 16 weeks, maybe 10lessons, and you're going to go
(08:01):
through them in about two weeks.
Jackie Pelegrin (08:03):
That's it.
That's all you need.
Craig Hane (08:06):
Now, how much math have you had in your life.
Jackie Pelegrin (08:10):
Let's see, I got through algebra.
Craig Hane (08:12):
Okay, do you remember the quadratic equation?
Jackie Pelegrin (08:16):
Barely because I haven't used it much yeah.
Craig Hane (08:20):
You've never used it .
Jackie Pelegrin (08:22):
Yeah, no, no.
Craig Hane (08:24):
You've never used it except for your test.
Now that's an example, and I cantake a typical freshman Algebra
1 book and 90% of it shouldn'tbe in it.
It's either obsolete stuffyou'll never use or it's theory
you'll never use.
For example, the square root of2.
(08:44):
What kind of a number is it?
You were taught that in algebramaybe probably it's in the
books, and the answer is it's anirrational number, meaning you
can't express it as a fraction.
Now the question is who cares?
No scientist cares, no engineercares.
There's no irrational numbersin the real world.
It's a theoretical concept thatonly theoretical mathematicians
(09:07):
care about, and so it's full ofthat.
So I teach 10 lessons in algebra, then I apply it to geometry
and I have 19 lessons forgeometry.
How long is something, what isthe area, what's the volume?
Now that doesn't deal withangles.
You now need trigonometry, butfor practical trigonometry it's
only seven lessons.
Now all that's explained inthis book how and why public
(09:31):
school math is destroying theUSA.
There are no textbooks that dowhat I'm telling you.
I have a program online thatdoes it, with tutorial videos
which is me coming from AmazonWeb Services 24-7, notes and
exercises that you can buy.
You can either print them outyourself from a PDF or you can
buy them very inexpensively fromAmazon Amazon is my cheap
(09:53):
printer Right and you can learnpractical math now in about one
semester to a year, and that'sthe basis.
Now there's a six-tier systemand that's the first two tiers.
Now let's talk about scienceand engineering.
You mentioned that your schoolhas a lot of science and
(10:14):
engineers.
Jackie Pelegrin (10:15):
Correct, yes.
Craig Hane (10:16):
Now you need math at a much deeper level.
You need trigonometry.
Trigonometry is a huge subjectand you need it at a much deeper
level.
Algebra you need it at a muchdeeper level.
Algebra you need that at adeeper level.
Analytical geometry at a deeperlevel.
Complex numbers All thatHistorically, when I taught it
(10:37):
at an engineering school.
It would take a long time toget through that properly
Because there's a lot of manualtools.
Here's the thing about math.
There's two things there'sconcepts and there's tools.
The concepts can be easy tolearn, but you have to apply
them with the tools.
(10:57):
And the manual tools aredifficult.
They're difficult to learn,they're difficult to do.
Well, for example, if I gaveyou a number today 397 times 296
, I said tell me what it is.
Would you do it manually?
Jackie Pelegrin (11:09):
No.
Craig Hane (11:10):
No, you take your calculator, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
There's the answer.
Right, okay Now, and I teachthe calculator back in the
practical math.
That's the first thing I teach.
But now you need other tools,manual tools that you need to
learn to use, that are difficult, and they've now been replaced,
(11:30):
because what happened was inthe year 2009, a new I'll call
it AI tool augmentedintelligence tool was introduced
to the world.
It's free on the internet.
It's free on the internet.
It's incredible and it does allof the math you need now for
(11:52):
science and engineering for you.
It does the tools for you.
You need to learn the conceptsand you need to know how to
learn to use it, but it does it.
The name of that tool isWolfram Alpha Wow that's great
it came out in 2009.
Now I could spend the next 10minutes telling you how it all
came about.
I won't because you probablydon't have time for that.
(12:14):
Steve Wolfram is the guy thatdid it, and he developed a
programming language calledMathematica in 1988.
He and Steve Jobs workedtogether.
By the way, mathematica wasbundled on Steve Jobs' next
computer and that was what wasused to create the World Wide
Web by the guy in Churn, johnBerners-Lee.
(12:37):
I don't want to get too muchhistory here.
Anyway, 30 years later, he wasable to write a program in
mathematics.
It's so powerful that you canask it a question about some
math problem.
If you understand the concept,know how to ask the question and
bingo, it gives you the answer.
Jackie Pelegrin (12:57):
Wow.
Craig Hane (12:59):
Unbelievable.
Now.
A scientist or an engineertoday can learn all that
pre-calculus I just talked aboutvery easily in a year and
that's what I teach in Tier 4.
It would normally take two orthree years to learn it manually
.
Right?
I teach a lot of things thatthey don't even teach manually.
(13:22):
It's just too difficult.
Now, once you've learned thatpre-calc, you need to learn
calculus.
There's differential calculusand there's integral calculus.
Calculus 1, differentialcalculus is a relatively easy
manual tool because it's justtaking derivatives and using
them to find maximum minimum offunctions.
It's not easy, but it can bedone.
Integral calculus applies thefundamental theorem of calculus.
(13:45):
What that means is if you havea function it's not easy but it
can be done Integral calculusapplies the fundamental theorem
of calculus.
What that means is if you havea function, you want to know the
area under its curve.
You've got to find anotherfunction whose derivative is the
given one you've got.
They call that anantiderivative, very difficult
to find manually.
That flunked more students outof engineering school than any
(14:05):
other thing, that particularproblem.
you probably never took.
Jackie Pelegrin (14:10):
that too, you probably never went that far,
very few people have.
Craig Hane (14:14):
If you're an engineer or scientist, you go
back and think about calculus tointegral calculus and you'll
remember how hard it was and howyou almost and it was hard for
me when I took it.
I mean I took it way beforethese tools.
I had to learn it manually andit was very difficult at Oberlin
College I had to really, reallywork hard to learn it and a lot
(14:36):
of students just give up.
It's just too darn hard.
Well, wolfram Alva does it foryou and it goes beyond that now.
So I now teach them calculuswith my tutorial videos and I
have a notebook, of course,using Wolfram Alpha.
Both calculus differently Onesemester, 30 lessons Done.
Jackie Pelegrin (15:01):
Can you believe that?
Wow, that's amazing.
Craig Hane (15:03):
Now the workhorse of science and engineering.
If you know science andengineering, some of your
customers might are calleddifferential equations.
You set up a model of somethingwith a differential equation
the solutions of function.
Solving a differential equationis not easy at all.
It's very difficult.
It's even harder than integralcalculus and so that's usually
(15:24):
taught by sophomore year incollege.
Very difficult, most studentshate it.
They just get through it.
Wolfram alpha makes it easypeasy wow that's an amazing tool
, yeah oh so if you're, if youare teaching scientists and
engineers at any level, butlet's say college, and you're
(15:47):
not using Wolfram, Alpha or someother equivalent tool and there
are others but they're not easyto find you're doing your
students a disservice If you're.
All calculus books today areobsolete, all calculus books
because they use the old manualtools.
All differential equation booksare obsolete.
(16:09):
The two best differentialequations, the best differential
equation book ever written wasby George Simmons, Dr George
Simmons, Great book, but it'sobsolete because it's all manual
tools.
Calculus same thing.
He wrote the greatest calculusbook, Dr George Simmons.
There's lots of calculus booksout there.
There's tons of them.
They're all the same prettymuch.
Jackie Pelegrin (16:29):
Right, not much difference yeah.
Craig Hane (16:32):
And so today I'm trying to reform math education
with my sixth year program andI'm trying to go into the high
school level.
I have students now at age 16and 17 that have been through
differential equations and theyknow it better than any ordinary
high school graduate.
Wow, that's amazing If you go toMIT and you've been through a
(16:55):
public school, a good publicschool program, say through
calculus, and you're sittingnext to one of my students who's
been through my program.
You're at a big disadvantage.
My student knows a lot of mathyou don't know and can do a lot
of things you can't do with thattool.
You got to catch up.
That's the world we live in Now.
Your private school doesn'thave to follow the norm.
(17:21):
It can be a good school.
Your math teachers won't likeit because what they're teaching
is obsolete.
Jackie Pelegrin (17:32):
Wow, that's amazing.
And I think it would even helpwith the kind of work I do as an
instructional designer, beingable to know those tools so that
way we can create the bestcurriculum possible right for
the students and for the facultyto teach.
Because if you don't have thetools you need as an instructor
to give to the students, thenhow are we creating the best
(17:53):
education and the bestcurriculum?
Craig Hane (17:55):
possible.
But on top of that, you can'tteach in a classroom One-on-one,
one-on-one.
There's two things about matheducation to make it successful.
First of all, the mostimportant thing is the
psychology of the student.
The student has to not beafraid of math.
They don't have to love it, butthey've got to not be afraid of
(18:17):
it and they've got to want tolearn it and they see the value
of it.
Right, that's an extrinsicmotivation is to see the value.
An intrinsic motivation is tounderstand that they just love
it.
Now what's it take to do that?
Pedagogy and content.
I've been telling you aboutcontent, but pedagogy is equally
important.
I call it spike pedagogy.
(18:37):
I made up the acronym S-P-I-K-A.
It's got to be self-paced andevery lesson the student has to
be ready for.
You can't be skipping lessonsand you can't assume the student
knows something they don't know.
So you've got to go through andI start them at the beginning,
even an advanced student.
I make them go through myprogram at the beginning and if
(18:58):
they know the math it's a reviewthey go through it real fast.
If they don't know it, they'vegot to learn it Because view,
they go through it real fast Ifthey don't know it, they've got
to learn it because they'regoing to need it later on, right
, and I mean, if you don't knowthe law of cosines, you're stuck
.
I mean you can't, there's allsorts of things you can't do.
So if you somehow didn't learnthe law of cosines, well, you
(19:22):
can't learn advanced math.
Then You've got to.
It's kind of like learning todrive a car but you don't know
how to use a brake.
Jackie Pelegrin (19:32):
Yeah, see what.
I'm saying you can't move on,yeah, you can't move forward
without, so I move all the waythrough it.
Craig Hane (19:38):
Now Tier 3 I didn't tell you about.
I told you about Tiers 1 and 2and 4, 5.
Tier 3 is the closest thing Icome to teaching ordinary, the
way it's done in school.
It's called getting peopleready for the SAT and ACT.
Tier three and I teach them abunch more math.
If they're not going intoscience and engineering, they'll
never use it, but they need itfor the test, For example, a
(20:01):
quadratic equation.
Yeah, you've got to teach them.
You got to take a test and Itell them up front half of the
things, two-thirds of the thingsI'm teaching now, you'll never
use if you're not going intoscience, engineering, if you're
not STEM, a STEM student.
But you got to learn from theSAT.
The SAT is a horrible test, sois the ACT?
It'll prove a damn thing.
(20:22):
But in fact some schools arequit using them.
They realize that.
Jackie Pelegrin (20:26):
Yeah, gcu doesn't require the SAT or ACT
to enter, so I think they'rerealizing yeah, that it's
obsolete, they're horrible testsyeah, absolutely.
Craig Hane (20:37):
They don't prove anything but Tier 3, I teach you
how to do pretty good on them,just in case you've got to take
them, that's true.
And then I tell you a lot ofstuff I'm teaching to her
through.
I'm teaching the manual way ofdoing things now, once you get
into her, for you can go backand review that and do it with
wolfram alpha, go and say, well,why didn't you do that back in
tier three?
Well, you can't use wolframalpha on the sat right, I won't
(21:01):
let you do that.
Why?
Well, the sat would be ameaningless test if you could
rule from alpha.
It's a meaningless test withwhat?
If you know how to use wolframalpha and you take the sat or
the act.
Jackie Pelegrin (21:15):
It's a joke you score 100 on it, right?
Craig Hane (21:20):
wow, that's the world we live in today yeah
people don't.
People don't like it.
Well, you need to learn theseold manual, these old manual
tools, because that's how youlearn math bullcrap yeah,
bullcrap, especially today withthe technology that's available,
you know we need to harnessthat and use it.
Yeah, that's absolutely, andthat's what I did.
(21:42):
Now I have, I've gone beyondmath.
Now I've created somethingcalled the triad math army, and
what I've done is over the manydecades of my life.
I'm like everybody.
I've had a lot of problems,I've had a lot of challenges,
I've had bad habits, I've hadbad addictions, but I've had
opportunities.
And so what I've done is, overthe course of my life, I've
(22:03):
acquired what I call wisdomtools.
And here's what a wisdom toolis Any action you take will have
consequences, short-term andlong-term, good and bad,
depending on how you define themRight.
The problem is, too often youtake an action and you don't
know what the consequences aregoing to be.
Then you've got to live withthem.
So a wisdom tool isunderstanding what will be the
(22:27):
consequences of a specificaction.
Once you understand that, youcan decide.
Well, now what action do I wantto take?
This action may have ashort-term consequence.
That's good, but a long-termconsequence is bad.
So maybe you don't want to doit.
Smoking cigarettes, goodexample.
I smoked.
You ever smoke?
Jackie Pelegrin (22:45):
No, thankfully Good for you.
Craig Hane (22:46):
I did.
I'm an old guy.
Back when I was a young man,everybody smoked Not I'm an old
guy.
Back when I was a young man,everybody smoked, Not everybody.
A lot of people smoked.
When I was 21 years old, Idated a girl that smoked.
Loved her she's a great girlbut she smoked and I couldn't
stand to be around her if Ididn't smoke.
She stunk so I smoked hercigarettes so I could be around
her.
We broke up and guess what?
I was hooked.
(23:08):
I didn't know, I was hooked.
Nicotine is a very addictivesubstance.
So it took me 10 years.
And, by the way, I cough a lotwhen I smoke.
I didn't like smoking, but yetI do it because I wanted this.
The nicotine hit.
I would like Mark Twain.
I quit a thousand times.
(23:28):
It's easy to quit smoking 10years before I quit.
And, by the way, if I hadn'tquit after ten years, you'd
never heard of me today.
I wouldn't be around, and onand on.
There was a time in my lifewhen I drank a quart of whiskey
every day.
Well, I learned that thatwasn't wise and I quit, and I
(23:48):
could go through lots and lotsof examples of that.
I've had a lot of healthproblems over the years, but I
learned what it took to overcomethem, Both mental and panic
attacks.
Learned how to overcome them.
Do on the lawsuit learned howto overcome it.
On and on and on.
So these wisdom tools are nowavailable to the Triad Math Army
(24:10):
members.
So not only do they get all themath, they get all the wisdom
tools.
It took me decades to learn andevery one of the wisdom tools
helped me improve my life.
Would it help you?
I don't know who knows Right.
Different tools, differentpeople.
It was decades and decades Ilearned.
I learned from other people andthen I put them in.
(24:32):
I explain them in videos, whatthey are.
Tell you the book if you needto go read it.
A lot of times you don't.
So that's in a nutshell.
That's what I've got.
So today, if your listenerswant to know, you can go to my
website and I've got lots offree stuff on my web
craighanecom,C-R-A-I-G-H-A-N-Ecom All kinds
(24:55):
of free stuff on it that youmight enjoy A bunch of books
like this book.
you can get a free PDF copy ofit.
There's a free PDF.
You can buy it on Amazon forless than $5, but you get a free
PDF copy.
Okay, and I got a bunch ofother books Now on my website.
(25:17):
I take you to.
I say, if you want to improveyour life, I take you to the
TriMath Army webpage.
It explains the TriMath Army.
Of course, $30 a month to join.
$30 a month, but the firstmonth you join it and if you
don't love it we don't chargeyou.
It didn't cost you anything tohave.
Yes, that's everything for 30days for free.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:37):
Wow, that's great, I love it.
Yeah, so you can meet peoplewhere they are and help them
improve their lives.
So it goes beyond math.
Craig Hane (25:44):
I love that, absolutely, absolutely, and
there's a forum on it for thetri-math army and you can ask
questions and you can talk toeach other and so on and so
forth.
But no, if you have a lot ofSTEM students at your school,
you'll definitely want to put mein touch, probably with the
head of your engineeringdepartments, because I want to
(26:08):
tell you what in most schoolsmaybe not your school, but I
know some engineering schoolsand the engineering departments
and the science departmentsdon't like the math department.
They don't like each other, butthey're both tenured and they
do what they want to do, and theengineering departments know
(26:30):
that their students aren'tlearning what they need to know
and the math department won'tteach them.
Jackie Pelegrin (26:38):
Right.
So then the engineeringstudents struggle right with
that.
That's the point?
Craig Hane (26:43):
exactly, yeah, and so what you need to do is you
need to have the leader of youruniversity put together a team
to analyze it, and it needs tobe probably the chairman of, or
the some leader at, each of theengineering schools and the math
department.
They need to be able to maketheir arguments, and then you
(27:05):
get me involved with them, andthey don't.
They can't stand a chanceagainst me.
I'll ask them what calculusbook are you using?
And they'll show me.
I'll say okay, now tell me this.
Are you teaching this in thisbook?
Well, yeah, well, why it'sobsolete?
Why are you teaching this?
And on and on.
I get into a lot of detail.
(27:26):
I'm not going to deal with youon this podcast Right, but you
do a deep analysis of findingout what
they're doing right and whatthey're not doing right.
I just tell them I go throughany calculus book today and
point out things in it that areobsolete, difficult to learn,
difficult to do, and that'sparticularly true when we get
(27:52):
into integral calculus and thendifferential equations are even
worse.
Wow, my goodness See, in 1972,I was teaching engineering
school, and the first scientificcalculator in the world came
out.
Then it was called the HP35.
If you look, packard, 35 keys,hp35.
In today's dollars this is 2025.
In today's dollars it was about$2,500.
(28:13):
No professors bought it, butsome of the rich students had it
at the engineering school.
They had a lot of money.
The students did some of themand so they had this thing.
I didn't know what it was.
We used to use slide rules, trigtables, logarithm tables, trig
tables.
They were put on slide rules,trick tables, logarithm tables,
(28:34):
trick tables.
They were put on slide rulesand that's what we taught
everybody.
I didn't.
I was teaching advanced theory,but that's what the other
professors were teaching.
So I asked this student.
I said show me this thing.
He showed me it In 15 minutes.
I knew that slide rules wereobsolete, trick tables were
obsolete.
Trick tables were obsolete.
Log tables were obsolete.
(28:54):
Why?
What takes you 10 minutes to dowith that you could do in one
minute with this calculator.
So I go to the math departmentmeeting.
We had a meeting once in a whileand I said what are you guys
going to do now that your sliderules and log tables and trick
tables are obsolete?
What are you talking about,hayne?
Have you seen this new tool?
(29:15):
Yeah, but it's expensive.
Students can't afford that.
We can't afford it.
I said industry could afford it, and do you think any industry
is going to let an engineerwaste time on a slide rule when
they can do it in a tenth of thetime with a calculator?
Right?
of course a year, hewlettpackard thought they would sell
(29:36):
out 10 000 of these to engineers.
They sold a hundred thousand oh, wow they lowered the price
half price down to 195.
It was 395 and 72 to 195.
But then texas service camealong.
They built a better one, easierto use.
Jackie Pelegrin (29:53):
Under $100.
Craig Hane (29:55):
And today they dominate that market and today
they just kept getting better,better and cheaper and cheaper.
Now the TI-30XA is way betterthan those original scientific
calculators and much.
It's great.
It's very easy to use.
If you're taught which that'sthe first thing I teach young
(30:15):
students Seventh, eighth, ninthgrade first thing I teach is a
calculator.
I only teach the things we'regoing to use.
A lot of stuff you'll never useand I don't teach that.
I teach the stuff we're goingto use.
It's wonderful.
It's the world we live in.
Now, as we go forward in thisworld, there's going to be more
and more AI tools.
You know about ChatGDP and Grokand all that.
(30:37):
Well, if you know the basicmath that I teach, that makes it
easier then to learn these AItools.
After all, an AI tool is onlyas good as what you ask it.
Wolfram Alpha is an AI tool.
It's not worth a damn thing ifyou don't know how to ask it the
right question.
Jackie Pelegrin (30:54):
That's true.
Yeah, you have to learn tolearn.
Craig Hane (30:58):
Our students today that are going to be successful
in this world are going to learnto use these tools, so they've
got to start with basic math.
By the way, they only need mypractical math.
They don't need to go throughcalculus.
They only need my practicalmath.
They don't need to go throughcalculus.
If they're not in science andengineering, they don't need
calculus.
You need it in science andengineering, you don't need it
(31:19):
anywhere else, but you need toknow how to learn.
Learn to learn, and that's oneof the wisdom tools I talk about
.
How do you learn to learn?
Because you're going to belearning to learn the rest of
your life, I don't care whattool you're using today, it'll
be obsolete in five years It'llbe a better tool, right
Absolutely.
And that's going to go on and onand on.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:37):
It doesn't matter what industry you're in,
right?
No?
Craig Hane (31:40):
no, no, there's no escaping it.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:44):
Right.
Craig Hane (31:44):
That's true.
There's no escaping it.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:46):
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up the AI
technology, because even today,some of the students that I
teach for the instructionaldesign program they're educators
, they're in K-12 education orthey're in higher education and
some of them are math teachers.
So it's kind of neat to havethis conversation and they don't
bring up the AI technology andI'm like, but it's in every
(32:08):
facet, every industry, so weneed to embrace it.
Craig Hane (32:11):
The reason they don't.
There's a reason they don'twhat I'm talking about in my
program.
There are no textbooks thatteach it, none.
You cannot buy what I teach.
The closest thing you can get.
In tier three I start using thegreatest high school math
textbook in my opinion.
(32:32):
I start using the greatest highschool math textbook in my
opinion ever, written by GeorgeSimmons.
Dr George Simmons calledPrecalculus, mathematics in a
Nutshell Algebra, geometry andTrigonometry.
And guess how much that book is?
It's 119 pages.
It costs $20.
No school has ever adopted it.
(32:52):
It's still in print.
I do use that textbook as aminor part of what I do because
it's really good, but I don'tuse it until tier three.
It's of no value.
In the first two tiers I use alittle bit in tier three and I
use a little bit more than inthe upper tiers.
But I have to go way deeperthan that textbook because
(33:13):
there's all sorts of things thatI go that are not in that book.
But no, the math curriculumtoday that your college is
teaching.
I could be wrong.
Obviously they could show mewhat they're doing.
And, by the way, if you go tomy website, craighaincom, I got
my syllabus all six tiers ofsyllabus is all there, you can
(33:33):
go down and look and seeeverything I teach.
Wow, that's great, because ifyou're going to tell me about
your math program, I'm going tosay send me your syllabus.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:38):
Right.
Craig Hane (33:39):
And if you don't have a syllabus, well, what the
hell?
How are you going to tell mewhat you're teaching?
Jackie Pelegrin (33:42):
Exactly, you need to see it yeah.
Craig Hane (33:47):
Well, then give me your textbook.
That's just as bad as thesyllabus.
So then I go and the problem iswhat the teachers have been
taught and what they're teaching.
Most of it's obsolete.
Jackie Pelegrin (34:03):
One of the tools that's commonly used in
the math courses is SPSS.
Do you think that that's avaluable tool for statistics?
Because there's a lot of mathand statistics, so do you think
that's a valuable tool?
Craig Hane (34:19):
I don't teach statistics specifically and I'm
not familiar with that tool, soI don't know, okay, okay, that's
good to know.
Yeah, what I do is statisticsin a very generic way, is that I
teach that when you have a setof data spread across some sort
of a scale, it'll have some kindof a distribution.
Jackie Pelegrin (34:41):
Right.
Craig Hane (34:43):
Now here's the problem that a lot of
statisticians have.
One of the distributions that'svery common is called a
Gaussian distribution, thenormal distribution, the bell
curve, right, okay, and thenthey got versions that weren't
slightly limited.
But it's the bell curve.
You got an average and you gotwhat's called a standard
(35:03):
deviation Goes out.
Now a lot of distributionsdon't aren't a bell curve, but
if you start taking samples andtaking average of samples and
creating new distributions,eventually you'll get a bell
curve.
That's called the central limittheorem, and so a lot of
(35:26):
statisticians always want tomake everything into a bell
curve.
The problem is there arecertain distributions that that
should never be done for.
For example, you might have abimodal distribution where
you've got a bell curve here, abell curve here and not much in
between.
Well, don't make one big bellcurve out of it.
You've got two, but the big oneis this it's called the power
(35:47):
law distribution and that's likethis oh right.
The power law distribution,which a lot of distributions
today, very important ones.
Standard deviation doesn't meana damn thing in a bell curve.
A standard deviation meanssomething, and if you have, you
wouldn't have eight sigma, forexample, in a bell, in a bell
(36:07):
curve, but a power distributionyou do.
And so they try to do astandard statistical analysis to
this and you can't do it.
The power law, now that's justa theoretical thing I'm telling
you about.
So, whatever statistics youtake, you make damn sure that
you study the power law quitedifferently.
(36:29):
And, by the way, there arecompanies today that didn't do
that, that have lost billionsand billions and billions of
dollars.
It's a real problem todaybecause a lot of things are
parallel and you can have aneight sigma or a 10 sigma.
Well, a good example would beincomes of American people.
That's not a normaldistribution.
Don't try to make a normaldistribution out of that.
(36:52):
That is a parallel distributionand if you try to make a normal
distribution out of it, youranalysis is no good.
Now, I'm not a statistician interms of I don't get into the
nitty-gritty of it and I don'tteach that.
Jackie Pelegrin (37:08):
Right.
Craig Hane (37:08):
But I know that and so that's what I do Tell people
about statistics.
I'm not familiar with that toolyou had.
I don't know the tool.
What was the tool called?
Jackie Pelegrin (37:17):
SPSS is what they normally use.
I don't know how far up theyuse it, but it's similar to
Excel, but it's used forstatistics.
Craig Hane (37:28):
Well, Excel's a good tool if you know what you're
doing.
You know what the formula isbeing and all that.
But I don't know that tool, soI can't comment on it.
Jackie Pelegrin (37:37):
Right, that's okay.
Yeah, and they, of course, asyou know, statistics is taken in
a PhD level and things likethat, so I don't know.
Craig Hane (37:47):
First, question I ask a statistician tell me the
difference between a Gaussiandistribution and a parallel
distribution.
Explain the difference, yeah,in general terms.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:00):
General terms.
Yeah, that's important.
Wow, I love that you've createdthe Triad Math Foundation.
So the Math Foundation that'spart of the army right?
Is that the umbrella?
Craig Hane (38:14):
No, there's not a foundation.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:15):
Oh, there's not a foundation.
Okay, so there's just the.
Craig Hane (38:19):
Triad Math Army.
Well, not yet.
There's not.
One day there probably will be,but there's not yet.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:24):
Okay, good to know.
Craig Hane (38:25):
But what I've done is I've created the Triad Math
Army.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:28):
Okay.
Craig Hane (38:29):
And when you join it you have access to all the math
, all six tiers, and you andyour family do Not just you, but
your family.
So if you've got an advancedmath student, they can go in and
get into some of the uppertiers pretty quick.
But if you've got beginners,they just start at tier one.
But it's also got all thewisdom tools.
There's a bunch of those andthose will take you years to use
(38:53):
.
I mean, it took me many decadesreally to learn them and use
them.
So different ones, you needdifferent ones at different
times and uh, but there's a lotof.
You know, how can you be a goodsalesman?
How do you deal with practical,difficult people?
So I have to do that thingslike that how do you not lose an
argument?
(39:14):
I?
Jackie Pelegrin (39:14):
never lose an argument.
Craig Hane (39:15):
I don't always win an argument, but I never lose
one.
I love that, but there's a wayto never lose an argument.
Jackie Pelegrin (39:22):
Yeah, I love that, and by the way.
Craig Hane (39:25):
The reason is, if you have an idea about something
and you believe in some factthat you believe, to prove it
you got to go all the way backto your basic assumptions, your
basic fundamental beliefs.
Jackie Pelegrin (39:38):
Right.
Craig Hane (39:39):
And if you've got certain fundamental beliefs,
you're right.
But if you have differentfundamental beliefs, you're
wrong.
And different people can havedifferent fundamental beliefs.
So one's right and one's wrong.
So I want to find out what areyour fundamental beliefs.
So if you and I have anargument about something, I
(40:00):
start asking you questions,trying to get back to what's
your fundamental belief.
It's kind of like proving atheorem.
You've heard of the Pythagoreantheorem, right, yes, You've
heard of the Pythagorean theoremright.
Yes, it's a theorem about ifyou've got a plane, a
two-dimensional planePythagorean theorem.
The question is is thePythagorean theorem always true?
Jackie Pelegrin (40:25):
Hmm, that's a good question.
I would say probably no.
Why that's a good question?
I haven't used the Pythagoreantheorem in a while, so I'm
trying to remember.
Yeah, that's probably why,because I probably didn't fully
understand it when I first gotit.
Craig Hane (40:48):
If you have a plane that has zero curvature, the
Pythagorean theorem is alwaystrue, and that was the implicit
assumption of the Euclideans.
So when you talk aboutEuclidean geometry, it's a plane
with no curvature.
Now, if you have a plane withany curvature in it, the
(41:10):
Pythagorean theorem is not true.
So, for example, we live on atwo-dimensional plane
surrounding a sphere Right.
The Pythagorean theorem isn'ttrue, and that's true of any.
So any plane that had anycurvature to it, the Pythagorean
theorem is not true.
Now, I didn't understand thatfor a long time, but I finally
(41:35):
came up with a proof one day.
The first proof of thePythagorean theorem that people
are aware of is in Euclid'sElements, proposition 47 of Book
1.
And it's the damned mostdifficult proof I've ever seen
of the Pythagorean Theorem.
I don't know anybody that couldreproduce it without going back
and studying it based on what'scalled the windmill diagram.
(41:55):
It's very difficult, so peoplecame up with simpler proofs.
There are many, many proofs nowof the Pythagorean Theorem for a
flat plane.
I came up with one that's onlythree lines long, and it also
(42:16):
demonstrated why the Pythagoreantheorem was only true on a flat
surface.
I was so proud of that.
This was about a few years agoand I thought man, I've never
seen it anywhere.
I've never seen a proofanywhere.
Surely somebody else has doneit.
I can't believe I'm the firstone to do it, but I've never
seen it before.
And I said well, it turned outthere was another guy that did
it.
This proved it this way.
His name was Albert Einstein.
Jackie Pelegrin (42:37):
Oh, wow.
Craig Hane (42:39):
And he understood curvature Right and a lot more
than that.
And, by the way, albert Einsteinwas not a great mathematician,
he was a great physicist.
He learned his mathematics fromsome other great mathematicians
and he applied it to create amodel that he believed would be
true, based on basic assumptions.
(42:59):
So now, in special relativity,time depends on the speed of
something.
If something starts goingfaster and faster, the clock
slows down.
Right, in fact, if you get upnear the speed of light, the
clock will stop.
A photon traveling at a speedof light.
(43:21):
If it had a clock in it, theclock is zero.
A photon that started a billionyears ago by our time still the
same time today.
That's special relativity.
Then he discovered specialrelativity.
The math's not too hard.
Then he got general relativity10 years later.
That takes into account gravityand that really blew away.
(43:46):
Physics, newtonian physics.
And did you know that if yougot two watches here and that
really blew away?
Physics, newtonian physics?
And did you know that if yougot two watches here and if you
take one watch up, 10?
Jackie Pelegrin (44:00):
feet in the air .
It slows down.
I'm sorry it speeds up.
It speeds up.
Oh, okay, wow.
Craig Hane (44:03):
And that's all in his theory, his math theory.
And if you didn't have thespeed, it slows down.
If it goes faster, it slowsdown.
If it goes less gravity, itspeeds up.
If you didn't have those twocorrection factors, we would not
have GPS today.
You used GPS, right.
Jackie Pelegrin (44:21):
Right, yeah.
Craig Hane (44:25):
You couldn't make GPS with Newtonian physics.
Most things you could do inNewtonian physics.
That's an approximation ofEinstein's physics.
In ordinary situations it'svery close.
Life's interesting, isn't it?
Jackie Pelegrin (44:40):
Wow, it is.
It's fascinating and.
Craig Hane (44:42):
I'm just beginning to tell you stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (44:44):
Wow, that's great.
I know that my listeners willlove all of this, especially the
ones that teach math and teachscience the STEM, like you
mentioned, those on it anddesigning curriculum and being
able to impact those that doteach and also the students as
(45:13):
well.
So it's a labor of love, right,as they say, when you're a
teacher and when you designcurriculum, it's a labor of love
.
Craig Hane (45:21):
Well, if they read this, yes, it is labor of love,
that's right.
I call that intrinsicmotivation.
Jackie Pelegrin (45:26):
Yes.
Craig Hane (45:27):
And you should do in your life things you're
intrinsically motivated to do,and hopefully some of them will
make you some money.
Right, and by the way, I talkabout in my wisdom tool money.
The good, the bad and the ugly.
Financial freedom and all that.
I achieved financial freedomwhen I was 17 years old.
Jackie Pelegrin (45:49):
I'll tell you how it is.
That's amazing.
Craig Hane (45:50):
Now, this book I explain a lot of that my history
.
The first three parts are a lotof my history.
Part four is what's Wrong withPublic School Math.
Part five is my New Program.
So you get this book and thenat the end there's a special
offer a link they can go to toget a special offer, a link they
can go to to get a specialoffer and the special offer will
(46:10):
enroll them in the Army for $30a month, but the first 30 days
are free if they don't love it,that's great and once they're in
the Army, if they recruit otherArmy members, I pay them to do
it.
You can actually join the Armyif you're a good communicator,
(46:33):
you can get other people to jointhe Army and get paid to do
that and you can make.
Jackie Pelegrin (46:35):
There's no limit on how much you can make,
depending on how many people youcould recruit, wow, so there's
a benefit to bringing others into the program that's right, wow
, that's great.
I'll make sure to link all ofyour um your website and also at
the army as well, and and linkeverybody to that so that they
can make sure to check that out,because I think that's
wonderful.
I've been on your website and,yeah, it's amazing.
Craig Hane (46:55):
I love it.
What's the website?
I've got lots of them.
Which one?
Jackie Pelegrin (46:59):
Your Craig Hayne website yeah.
Craig Hane (47:02):
Go to the video library.
If you're interested in math atall, just go there.
There's all kinds of videosabout math.
It's not training, it's justinteresting things about math.
By the way, there's threevideos that are the concepts of
calculus about an hour.
Jackie Pelegrin (47:16):
You learn the concept of calculus about an
hour wow, oh my goodness, thatwould be amazing, because I
think now I have uh, I'm notafraid of math anymore after
talking to you, so it's great.
Craig Hane (47:29):
No, you won't be as a matter of fact.
And then what I do with people,I have what I call the
million-dollar gift.
If somebody really believes inthe TriMath Army, I have them
deal with me directly and theygo through, at least through
(47:50):
tier two of the math and thensome of the wisdom tool, and
then if they want to go out andreally promote it as an
affiliate to make money I hopeI'm do that.
In fact I'm I'm looking to havesomeday somebody become
financially independent as atriad math army member just by
recruiting other members wow,that's amazing.
Jackie Pelegrin (48:11):
I love that maybe that'll be you.
Yeah, you never know, you neverknow so yeah and I think that
we can stay in in touch witheach other and and definitely
and I'd love to have you back onagain and we can talk about
some other things too when, whenit comes to the army, the math
army and things like that,because I think it's really
(48:32):
amazing.
Craig Hane (48:33):
Yeah, I love it.
Well, we can talk about that.
And then I can tell you somethings about you might want to
do a special program ontheoretical math.
I can just tell you a lot ofthings that intuitively will
blow your mind, I'm sure, abouttheoretical math, and to me it's
just mind-blowing.
And then we can talk about alot of other things.
There's all sorts of things wecan talk about.
(48:54):
Tribalism is a big thing today.
I love talking about tribalismand, by the way, I have
published a book by an authorwhose pen name is T Ruth Galore,
on an inconvenient lie.
You know Al Gore's book AnInconvenient Truth.
Jackie Pelegrin (49:13):
Yes.
Craig Hane (49:14):
Well, it wasn't.
It was a lie, an inconvenientlie, and I explained why.
The book explains why I don'tdo it.
It's not me, I'm not the author, but I've read this book and
published it on Amazon and Ithink it's true.
So we can talk about thatsometime if you want to.
Jackie Pelegrin (49:33):
That would be great.
I'd love that.
Well, thank you so much foryour time.
Thank you.
And I love that.
You're making a difference allaround.
It seems like you're making adifference in the world too,
because you're helping studentsand individuals to not be afraid
of math anymore and to alsohave those wisdom skills that
they need in life.
(49:54):
So that's great.
Craig Hane (49:55):
I love it.
That's my mission.
That's why I live today.
I've traveled the world.
I've had an exciting life.
You can tell how old I amlooking at me right.
How old do you think I am?
Just take a quick guess 70,maybe.
That's a good guess.
By the way, I have no aches, nopains.
I don't take any medicine.
I'm very active.
Jackie Pelegrin (50:13):
I love it.
Craig Hane (50:14):
I was born, my third birthday was one week before
Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor happened one weekafter my third birthday, so you
can figure it out.
Jackie Pelegrin (50:28):
Yeah, we can do the math.
I love it All right.
Craig Hane (50:31):
Thank you, dr Payne, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Jackie Pelegrin (50:35):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to
this podcast episode today.
Your support means the world tome.
If you'd like to help keep thepodcast going, you can share it
with a friend or colleague,leave a heartfelt review or
offer a monetary contribution.
Every act of support, big orsmall, makes a difference and
I'm truly thankful for you.
Hello and welcome to the Designing with
Love podcast.
I am your host, Jackie Pelegrin, where my goal is to bring you
information, tips, and tricks asan instructional designer.
Hello, GCU students, alumni,and educators.
Welcome to episode 36 of theDesigning with Love podcast.
(00:21):
Today I have the pleasure ofinterviewing Dr.
Craig Hane, also known as Dr.
Dell by his students, and anexpert in the education field
and mathematics.
Welcome, Dr.
Hane.
Craig Hane (00:33):
Thank you, Janet.
Jackie Pelegrin (00:34):
Thank you.
So can you tell us a little bitabout yourself?
Craig Hane (00:38):
Well, I've been around a long time, and when I
was a young man a boy I had ahomeschool teacher, my uncle,
jack Davis, who was a barber anda builder, and he taught me
practical math, and I was alwaysahead of my students and my
teachers because of him, and soI started.
I actually had my firstteaching experience when I was
five years old.
He had taught me how to countand none of the other students
(01:01):
had been taught how to count,and so my first grade teacher
enlisted my aid in helping themto learn to count.
My first teacher experience hetaught me all sorts of practical
math.
He was not a math teacher, bythe way, he was a builder and a
barber and I learned things thatmost people don't know, like if
you want a third of a squareangle, how do you do it with
(01:22):
string, and it's called theone-two rule.
Most people don't know that,and things like that.
I excelled at math through theeighth grade, when I was a
freshman in high school inGreencastle Indiana.
I took algebra and I did not dowell in it.
I got a pretty bad grade.
(01:42):
I didn't flunk it, but I got abad grade.
I didn't like it and myprincipal and my counselor told
me Craig, you're not collegematerial, you're not going to go
to college, because if youdon't do well in algebra in high
school you can't go to college.
They recommended I take shopindustrial arts, which I did.
No one in my family had evergone to college.
(02:05):
Then I got saved by twowonderful teachers.
I had a geometry teacher mysophomore year and she taught
great geometry and I did reallywell and I loved it, just like
Uncle Jack.
Then I had the algebra teacheragain in my junior year.
Didn't do good again, but now Iwas a troublemaker.
I argued with him a lot.
Why is this true?
Why is this true?
Where did this come from?
Don't ask that, just do itDidn't get a very good grade.
(02:28):
My senior year Ms O'Hararecommended I go to DePaul
University in Greencastle andtake college algebra as a
special student and I did mysenior year.
By the way, I was the youngestkid in my class.
I was 16 years old when I didit.
When I entered Dr Clint Gass,who was the chairman of the
department was my teacher and Itook college algebra and he was
(02:49):
a good teacher and I got an A.
Jackie Pelegrin (02:51):
Wow, that's amazing, whoa how could that
happen?
Craig Hane (02:55):
Right, he became my mentor.
He got me enrolled in thenumber one liberal arts college
in the United States at thattime Oberlin College.
I could get there on aPennsylvania railroad up near
Cleveland.
I'm from Greencastle, indiana,went to Oberlin, majored in math
and English.
Then I taught and, by the way,I tutored students all through
(03:15):
this time.
Now I made a good livingtutoring students and as a tutor
I never had a failure.
The year after I graduated fromOberlin I taught high school for
a year in Western Reserve HighSchool, wakeman, ohio.
All four grades of math.
And now I had students failingbecause they couldn't keep up
and I couldn't slow down.
I had to be on a schedule andfor the first time ever I had
(03:37):
students fail.
I felt terrible.
I couldn't do anything about it.
I had other students who werebored because I was going too
slow, couldn't do anything aboutit.
That's when I realized there'sa real problem with classroom
teaching and math on a schedule.
Right, I wanted to do somethingabout it.
(03:58):
Well, anyway, that was one year.
I went back that next year backto Greencastle and Dr Gass had
me teach math at DePaul while hewent on sabbatical.
He wanted me to teach theirmost advanced theory that I
learned at Oberlin.
They didn't know so at age 22,from having been told I was not
college material when I was afreshman at age 22, I'm teaching
the most advanced math atDePaul.
(04:19):
He then said why don't you goto graduate school?
Because I didn't know what Iwanted to do.
I'm an adventurer.
So I went to Bloomington,indiana, down about 40 miles
down the road to IndianaUniversity, enrolled as a grad
student.
Well, it was fun.
I loved it.
So I hate tests.
By the way, I didn't take themaster's degree exam.
(04:39):
I don't have a master's degree,but it turns out what's
important is doing research anda dissertation.
And after four years they saidokay, craig, here's a PhD, now
go be a professor, you're out ofhere.
Jackie Pelegrin (04:55):
Wow, that's awesome Now at age 27,.
Craig Hane (04:58):
I'm a professor.
For seven years I was aprofessor.
I went to Terre Haute, indianaState University three years,
rose-hulman Institute ofTechnology, four years.
I also then began to apply math, practical math.
I'm really an adventurer.
I've never done any one thingmore than a few years of my life
(05:20):
.
And one of the things I did Ibuilt the world's first, the
best eighth-mile drag stripaction dragway in Terre Haute,
and it was practical math that.
Let me do it.
Then I invented.
I did some other things too,lots of other things, but the
big thing I did.
I invented what I call thedynabrain to monitor racing
(05:43):
engines as they were beingtested on water break
dynamometers for racers, forracing, oh wow.
And NASCAR became my number onecustomer.
The NASCAR teams Hustle andRacing was my number one
customer, and they had the bestracing engines because they
could test them using mydynabrain.
And, by the way, all I neededto develop all that was
(06:03):
practical math.
I didn't need advanced topologyand Hilbert spaces and all that
which I've been teaching at theadvanced level.
I just need a practical math.
And guess who my first racingcustomer was in?
I was also racing and they hada racer named Daylor I forget
his name, marcus.
(06:23):
They fired him.
They hired had a racer namedDale.
I forget his name, marcus.
They fired him.
They hired a new racer One day.
Ronald Locke, the generalmanager, was standing out back
and he said we've hired this newracer.
He said he's a crazy guy.
No one else would hire him, butwe think he could be a pretty
good racer and we don't know.
We're going to try him andwe've told him.
And to try them, and we've toldhim and he called him up,
introduced me to him.
(06:44):
He says this is Craig Hayne.
He's the guy that got theDynaBrain.
That's why we got the bestracing engines in NASCAR.
You know, you got to go out andwin races.
Craig, meet Dale Earnhardt.
Jackie Pelegrin (06:55):
That's awesome, that's great.
Craig Hane (06:56):
I met Dale Earnhardt before he ran his first race,
and on and on and on.
Well then, I thought I wasgoing to get rich.
On the Dynabrain.
They quit making the processorthat I needed to build and Intel
couldn't make it.
So I ended up forming atraining company called Hain
Training, and we trained skilledtradesmen for the military and
(07:19):
utilities and the big threeautomakers and Caterpillar, and
on and on, all across the UnitedStates, and I hired people to
help me do it.
I had lots of instructors andall that, and we ended up with
about 50 different workshops andevery one of the workshops
technical workshop depended onpractical math.
We teach them just enough mathand they go.
Why didn't somebody teach methis 20 years ago?
(07:41):
Sorry, and here's the reason.
When I teach practical algebratoday and I do it online now I
have an online program how manylessons do you think you need
for practical algebra?
Maybe 16 weeks, Maybe 16?
weeks About 16 weeks, maybe 10lessons, and you're going to go
(08:01):
through them in about two weeks.
Jackie Pelegrin (08:03):
That's it.
That's all you need.
Craig Hane (08:06):
Now, how much math have you had in your life.
Jackie Pelegrin (08:10):
Let's see, I got through algebra.
Craig Hane (08:12):
Okay, do you remember the quadratic equation?
Jackie Pelegrin (08:16):
Barely because I haven't used it much yeah.
Craig Hane (08:20):
You've never used it .
Jackie Pelegrin (08:22):
Yeah, no, no.
Craig Hane (08:24):
You've never used it except for your test.
Now that's an example, and I cantake a typical freshman Algebra
1 book and 90% of it shouldn'tbe in it.
It's either obsolete stuffyou'll never use or it's theory
you'll never use.
For example, the square root of2.
(08:44):
What kind of a number is it?
You were taught that in algebramaybe probably it's in the
books, and the answer is it's anirrational number, meaning you
can't express it as a fraction.
Now the question is who cares?
No scientist cares, no engineercares.
There's no irrational numbersin the real world.
It's a theoretical concept thatonly theoretical mathematicians
(09:07):
care about, and so it's full ofthat.
So I teach 10 lessons in algebra, then I apply it to geometry
and I have 19 lessons forgeometry.
How long is something, what isthe area, what's the volume?
Now that doesn't deal withangles.
You now need trigonometry, butfor practical trigonometry it's
only seven lessons.
Now all that's explained inthis book how and why public
(09:31):
school math is destroying theUSA.
There are no textbooks that dowhat I'm telling you.
I have a program online thatdoes it, with tutorial videos
which is me coming from AmazonWeb Services 24-7, notes and
exercises that you can buy.
You can either print them outyourself from a PDF or you can
buy them very inexpensively fromAmazon Amazon is my cheap
(09:53):
printer Right and you can learnpractical math now in about one
semester to a year, and that'sthe basis.
Now there's a six-tier systemand that's the first two tiers.
Now let's talk about scienceand engineering.
You mentioned that your schoolhas a lot of science and
(10:14):
engineers.
Jackie Pelegrin (10:15):
Correct, yes.
Craig Hane (10:16):
Now you need math at a much deeper level.
You need trigonometry.
Trigonometry is a huge subjectand you need it at a much deeper
level.
Algebra you need it at a muchdeeper level.
Algebra you need that at adeeper level.
Analytical geometry at a deeperlevel.
Complex numbers All thatHistorically, when I taught it
(10:37):
at an engineering school.
It would take a long time toget through that properly
Because there's a lot of manualtools.
Here's the thing about math.
There's two things there'sconcepts and there's tools.
The concepts can be easy tolearn, but you have to apply
them with the tools.
(10:57):
And the manual tools aredifficult.
They're difficult to learn,they're difficult to do.
Well, for example, if I gaveyou a number today 397 times 296
, I said tell me what it is.
Would you do it manually?
Jackie Pelegrin (11:09):
No.
Craig Hane (11:10):
No, you take your calculator, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah.
There's the answer.
Right, okay Now, and I teachthe calculator back in the
practical math.
That's the first thing I teach.
But now you need other tools,manual tools that you need to
learn to use, that are difficult, and they've now been replaced,
(11:30):
because what happened was inthe year 2009, a new I'll call
it AI tool augmentedintelligence tool was introduced
to the world.
It's free on the internet.
It's free on the internet.
It's incredible and it does allof the math you need now for
(11:52):
science and engineering for you.
It does the tools for you.
You need to learn the conceptsand you need to know how to
learn to use it, but it does it.
The name of that tool isWolfram Alpha Wow that's great
it came out in 2009.
Now I could spend the next 10minutes telling you how it all
came about.
I won't because you probablydon't have time for that.
(12:14):
Steve Wolfram is the guy thatdid it, and he developed a
programming language calledMathematica in 1988.
He and Steve Jobs workedtogether.
By the way, mathematica wasbundled on Steve Jobs' next
computer and that was what wasused to create the World Wide
Web by the guy in Churn, johnBerners-Lee.
(12:37):
I don't want to get too muchhistory here.
Anyway, 30 years later, he wasable to write a program in
mathematics.
It's so powerful that you canask it a question about some
math problem.
If you understand the concept,know how to ask the question and
bingo, it gives you the answer.
Jackie Pelegrin (12:57):
Wow.
Craig Hane (12:59):
Unbelievable.
Now.
A scientist or an engineertoday can learn all that
pre-calculus I just talked aboutvery easily in a year and
that's what I teach in Tier 4.
It would normally take two orthree years to learn it manually
.
Right?
I teach a lot of things thatthey don't even teach manually.
(13:22):
It's just too difficult.
Now, once you've learned thatpre-calc, you need to learn
calculus.
There's differential calculusand there's integral calculus.
Calculus 1, differentialcalculus is a relatively easy
manual tool because it's justtaking derivatives and using
them to find maximum minimum offunctions.
It's not easy, but it can bedone.
Integral calculus applies thefundamental theorem of calculus.
(13:45):
What that means is if you havea function it's not easy but it
can be done Integral calculusapplies the fundamental theorem
of calculus.
What that means is if you havea function, you want to know the
area under its curve.
You've got to find anotherfunction whose derivative is the
given one you've got.
They call that anantiderivative, very difficult
to find manually.
That flunked more students outof engineering school than any
(14:05):
other thing, that particularproblem.
you probably never took.
Jackie Pelegrin (14:10):
that too, you probably never went that far,
very few people have.
Craig Hane (14:14):
If you're an engineer or scientist, you go
back and think about calculus tointegral calculus and you'll
remember how hard it was and howyou almost and it was hard for
me when I took it.
I mean I took it way beforethese tools.
I had to learn it manually andit was very difficult at Oberlin
College I had to really, reallywork hard to learn it and a lot
(14:36):
of students just give up.
It's just too darn hard.
Well, wolfram Alva does it foryou and it goes beyond that now.
So I now teach them calculuswith my tutorial videos and I
have a notebook, of course,using Wolfram Alpha.
Both calculus differently Onesemester, 30 lessons Done.
Jackie Pelegrin (15:01):
Can you believe that?
Wow, that's amazing.
Craig Hane (15:03):
Now the workhorse of science and engineering.
If you know science andengineering, some of your
customers might are calleddifferential equations.
You set up a model of somethingwith a differential equation
the solutions of function.
Solving a differential equationis not easy at all.
It's very difficult.
It's even harder than integralcalculus and so that's usually
(15:24):
taught by sophomore year incollege.
Very difficult, most studentshate it.
They just get through it.
Wolfram alpha makes it easypeasy wow that's an amazing tool
, yeah oh so if you're, if youare teaching scientists and
engineers at any level, butlet's say college, and you're
(15:47):
not using Wolfram, Alpha or someother equivalent tool and there
are others but they're not easyto find you're doing your
students a disservice If you're.
All calculus books today areobsolete, all calculus books
because they use the old manualtools.
All differential equation booksare obsolete.
(16:09):
The two best differentialequations, the best differential
equation book ever written wasby George Simmons, Dr George
Simmons, Great book, but it'sobsolete because it's all manual
tools.
Calculus same thing.
He wrote the greatest calculusbook, Dr George Simmons.
There's lots of calculus booksout there.
There's tons of them.
They're all the same prettymuch.
Jackie Pelegrin (16:29):
Right, not much difference yeah.
Craig Hane (16:32):
And so today I'm trying to reform math education
with my sixth year program andI'm trying to go into the high
school level.
I have students now at age 16and 17 that have been through
differential equations and theyknow it better than any ordinary
high school graduate.
Wow, that's amazing If you go toMIT and you've been through a
(16:55):
public school, a good publicschool program, say through
calculus, and you're sittingnext to one of my students who's
been through my program.
You're at a big disadvantage.
My student knows a lot of mathyou don't know and can do a lot
of things you can't do with thattool.
You got to catch up.
That's the world we live in Now.
Your private school doesn'thave to follow the norm.
(17:21):
It can be a good school.
Your math teachers won't likeit because what they're teaching
is obsolete.
Jackie Pelegrin (17:32):
Wow, that's amazing.
And I think it would even helpwith the kind of work I do as an
instructional designer, beingable to know those tools so that
way we can create the bestcurriculum possible right for
the students and for the facultyto teach.
Because if you don't have thetools you need as an instructor
to give to the students, thenhow are we creating the best
(17:53):
education and the bestcurriculum?
Craig Hane (17:55):
possible.
But on top of that, you can'tteach in a classroom One-on-one,
one-on-one.
There's two things about matheducation to make it successful.
First of all, the mostimportant thing is the
psychology of the student.
The student has to not beafraid of math.
They don't have to love it, butthey've got to not be afraid of
(18:17):
it and they've got to want tolearn it and they see the value
of it.
Right, that's an extrinsicmotivation is to see the value.
An intrinsic motivation is tounderstand that they just love
it.
Now what's it take to do that?
Pedagogy and content.
I've been telling you aboutcontent, but pedagogy is equally
important.
I call it spike pedagogy.
(18:37):
I made up the acronym S-P-I-K-A.
It's got to be self-paced andevery lesson the student has to
be ready for.
You can't be skipping lessonsand you can't assume the student
knows something they don't know.
So you've got to go through andI start them at the beginning,
even an advanced student.
I make them go through myprogram at the beginning and if
(18:58):
they know the math it's a reviewthey go through it real fast.
If they don't know it, they'vegot to learn it Because view,
they go through it real fast Ifthey don't know it, they've got
to learn it because they'regoing to need it later on, right
, and I mean, if you don't knowthe law of cosines, you're stuck
.
I mean you can't, there's allsorts of things you can't do.
So if you somehow didn't learnthe law of cosines, well, you
(19:22):
can't learn advanced math.
Then You've got to.
It's kind of like learning todrive a car but you don't know
how to use a brake.
Jackie Pelegrin (19:32):
Yeah, see what.
I'm saying you can't move on,yeah, you can't move forward
without, so I move all the waythrough it.
Craig Hane (19:38):
Now Tier 3 I didn't tell you about.
I told you about Tiers 1 and 2and 4, 5.
Tier 3 is the closest thing Icome to teaching ordinary, the
way it's done in school.
It's called getting peopleready for the SAT and ACT.
Tier three and I teach them abunch more math.
If they're not going intoscience and engineering, they'll
never use it, but they need itfor the test, For example, a
(20:01):
quadratic equation.
Yeah, you've got to teach them.
You got to take a test and Itell them up front half of the
things, two-thirds of the thingsI'm teaching now, you'll never
use if you're not going intoscience, engineering, if you're
not STEM, a STEM student.
But you got to learn from theSAT.
The SAT is a horrible test, sois the ACT?
It'll prove a damn thing.
(20:22):
But in fact some schools arequit using them.
They realize that.
Jackie Pelegrin (20:26):
Yeah, gcu doesn't require the SAT or ACT
to enter, so I think they'rerealizing yeah, that it's
obsolete, they're horrible testsyeah, absolutely.
Craig Hane (20:37):
They don't prove anything but Tier 3, I teach you
how to do pretty good on them,just in case you've got to take
them, that's true.
And then I tell you a lot ofstuff I'm teaching to her
through.
I'm teaching the manual way ofdoing things now, once you get
into her, for you can go backand review that and do it with
wolfram alpha, go and say, well,why didn't you do that back in
tier three?
Well, you can't use wolframalpha on the sat right, I won't
(21:01):
let you do that.
Why?
Well, the sat would be ameaningless test if you could
rule from alpha.
It's a meaningless test withwhat?
If you know how to use wolframalpha and you take the sat or
the act.
Jackie Pelegrin (21:15):
It's a joke you score 100 on it, right?
Craig Hane (21:20):
wow, that's the world we live in today yeah
people don't.
People don't like it.
Well, you need to learn theseold manual, these old manual
tools, because that's how youlearn math bullcrap yeah,
bullcrap, especially today withthe technology that's available,
you know we need to harnessthat and use it.
Yeah, that's absolutely, andthat's what I did.
(21:42):
Now I have, I've gone beyondmath.
Now I've created somethingcalled the triad math army, and
what I've done is over the manydecades of my life.
I'm like everybody.
I've had a lot of problems,I've had a lot of challenges,
I've had bad habits, I've hadbad addictions, but I've had
opportunities.
And so what I've done is, overthe course of my life, I've
(22:03):
acquired what I call wisdomtools.
And here's what a wisdom toolis Any action you take will have
consequences, short-term andlong-term, good and bad,
depending on how you define themRight.
The problem is, too often youtake an action and you don't
know what the consequences aregoing to be.
Then you've got to live withthem.
So a wisdom tool isunderstanding what will be the
(22:27):
consequences of a specificaction.
Once you understand that, youcan decide.
Well, now what action do I wantto take?
This action may have ashort-term consequence.
That's good, but a long-termconsequence is bad.
So maybe you don't want to doit.
Smoking cigarettes, goodexample.
I smoked.
You ever smoke?
Jackie Pelegrin (22:45):
No, thankfully Good for you.
Craig Hane (22:46):
I did.
I'm an old guy.
Back when I was a young man,everybody smoked Not I'm an old
guy.
Back when I was a young man,everybody smoked, Not everybody.
A lot of people smoked.
When I was 21 years old, Idated a girl that smoked.
Loved her she's a great girlbut she smoked and I couldn't
stand to be around her if Ididn't smoke.
She stunk so I smoked hercigarettes so I could be around
her.
We broke up and guess what?
I was hooked.
(23:08):
I didn't know, I was hooked.
Nicotine is a very addictivesubstance.
So it took me 10 years.
And, by the way, I cough a lotwhen I smoke.
I didn't like smoking, but yetI do it because I wanted this.
The nicotine hit.
I would like Mark Twain.
I quit a thousand times.
(23:28):
It's easy to quit smoking 10years before I quit.
And, by the way, if I hadn'tquit after ten years, you'd
never heard of me today.
I wouldn't be around, and onand on.
There was a time in my lifewhen I drank a quart of whiskey
every day.
Well, I learned that thatwasn't wise and I quit, and I
(23:48):
could go through lots and lotsof examples of that.
I've had a lot of healthproblems over the years, but I
learned what it took to overcomethem, Both mental and panic
attacks.
Learned how to overcome them.
Do on the lawsuit learned howto overcome it.
On and on and on.
So these wisdom tools are nowavailable to the Triad Math Army
(24:10):
members.
So not only do they get all themath, they get all the wisdom
tools.
It took me decades to learn andevery one of the wisdom tools
helped me improve my life.
Would it help you?
I don't know who knows Right.
Different tools, differentpeople.
It was decades and decades Ilearned.
I learned from other people andthen I put them in.
(24:32):
I explain them in videos, whatthey are.
Tell you the book if you needto go read it.
A lot of times you don't.
So that's in a nutshell.
That's what I've got.
So today, if your listenerswant to know, you can go to my
website and I've got lots offree stuff on my web
craighanecom,C-R-A-I-G-H-A-N-Ecom All kinds
(24:55):
of free stuff on it that youmight enjoy A bunch of books
like this book.
you can get a free PDF copy ofit.
There's a free PDF.
You can buy it on Amazon forless than $5, but you get a free
PDF copy.
Okay, and I got a bunch ofother books Now on my website.
(25:17):
I take you to.
I say, if you want to improveyour life, I take you to the
TriMath Army webpage.
It explains the TriMath Army.
Of course, $30 a month to join.
$30 a month, but the firstmonth you join it and if you
don't love it we don't chargeyou.
It didn't cost you anything tohave.
Yes, that's everything for 30days for free.
Jackie Pelegrin (25:37):
Wow, that's great, I love it.
Yeah, so you can meet peoplewhere they are and help them
improve their lives.
So it goes beyond math.
Craig Hane (25:44):
I love that, absolutely, absolutely, and
there's a forum on it for thetri-math army and you can ask
questions and you can talk toeach other and so on and so
forth.
But no, if you have a lot ofSTEM students at your school,
you'll definitely want to put mein touch, probably with the
head of your engineeringdepartments, because I want to
(26:08):
tell you what in most schoolsmaybe not your school, but I
know some engineering schoolsand the engineering departments
and the science departmentsdon't like the math department.
They don't like each other, butthey're both tenured and they
do what they want to do, and theengineering departments know
(26:30):
that their students aren'tlearning what they need to know
and the math department won'tteach them.
Jackie Pelegrin (26:38):
Right.
So then the engineeringstudents struggle right with
that.
That's the point?
Craig Hane (26:43):
exactly, yeah, and so what you need to do is you
need to have the leader of youruniversity put together a team
to analyze it, and it needs tobe probably the chairman of, or
the some leader at, each of theengineering schools and the math
department.
They need to be able to maketheir arguments, and then you
(27:05):
get me involved with them, andthey don't.
They can't stand a chanceagainst me.
I'll ask them what calculusbook are you using?
And they'll show me.
I'll say okay, now tell me this.
Are you teaching this in thisbook?
Well, yeah, well, why it'sobsolete?
Why are you teaching this?
And on and on.
I get into a lot of detail.
(27:26):
I'm not going to deal with youon this podcast Right, but you
do a deep analysis of findingout what
they're doing right and whatthey're not doing right.
I just tell them I go throughany calculus book today and
point out things in it that areobsolete, difficult to learn,
difficult to do, and that'sparticularly true when we get
(27:52):
into integral calculus and thendifferential equations are even
worse.
Wow, my goodness See, in 1972,I was teaching engineering
school, and the first scientificcalculator in the world came
out.
Then it was called the HP35.
If you look, packard, 35 keys,hp35.
In today's dollars this is 2025.
In today's dollars it was about$2,500.
(28:13):
No professors bought it, butsome of the rich students had it
at the engineering school.
They had a lot of money.
The students did some of themand so they had this thing.
I didn't know what it was.
We used to use slide rules, trigtables, logarithm tables, trig
tables.
They were put on slide rules,trick tables, logarithm tables,
(28:34):
trick tables.
They were put on slide rulesand that's what we taught
everybody.
I didn't.
I was teaching advanced theory,but that's what the other
professors were teaching.
So I asked this student.
I said show me this thing.
He showed me it In 15 minutes.
I knew that slide rules wereobsolete, trick tables were
obsolete.
Trick tables were obsolete.
Log tables were obsolete.
(28:54):
Why?
What takes you 10 minutes to dowith that you could do in one
minute with this calculator.
So I go to the math departmentmeeting.
We had a meeting once in a whileand I said what are you guys
going to do now that your sliderules and log tables and trick
tables are obsolete?
What are you talking about,hayne?
Have you seen this new tool?
(29:15):
Yeah, but it's expensive.
Students can't afford that.
We can't afford it.
I said industry could afford it, and do you think any industry
is going to let an engineerwaste time on a slide rule when
they can do it in a tenth of thetime with a calculator?
Right?
of course a year, hewlettpackard thought they would sell
(29:36):
out 10 000 of these to engineers.
They sold a hundred thousand oh, wow they lowered the price
half price down to 195.
It was 395 and 72 to 195.
But then texas service camealong.
They built a better one, easierto use.
Jackie Pelegrin (29:53):
Under $100.
Craig Hane (29:55):
And today they dominate that market and today
they just kept getting better,better and cheaper and cheaper.
Now the TI-30XA is way betterthan those original scientific
calculators and much.
It's great.
It's very easy to use.
If you're taught which that'sthe first thing I teach young
(30:15):
students Seventh, eighth, ninthgrade first thing I teach is a
calculator.
I only teach the things we'regoing to use.
A lot of stuff you'll never useand I don't teach that.
I teach the stuff we're goingto use.
It's wonderful.
It's the world we live in.
Now, as we go forward in thisworld, there's going to be more
and more AI tools.
You know about ChatGDP and Grokand all that.
(30:37):
Well, if you know the basicmath that I teach, that makes it
easier then to learn these AItools.
After all, an AI tool is onlyas good as what you ask it.
Wolfram Alpha is an AI tool.
It's not worth a damn thing ifyou don't know how to ask it the
right question.
Jackie Pelegrin (30:54):
That's true.
Yeah, you have to learn tolearn.
Craig Hane (30:58):
Our students today that are going to be successful
in this world are going to learnto use these tools, so they've
got to start with basic math.
By the way, they only need mypractical math.
They don't need to go throughcalculus.
They only need my practicalmath.
They don't need to go throughcalculus.
If they're not in science andengineering, they don't need
calculus.
You need it in science andengineering, you don't need it
(31:19):
anywhere else, but you need toknow how to learn.
Learn to learn, and that's oneof the wisdom tools I talk about
.
How do you learn to learn?
Because you're going to belearning to learn the rest of
your life, I don't care whattool you're using today, it'll
be obsolete in five years It'llbe a better tool, right
Absolutely.
And that's going to go on and onand on.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:37):
It doesn't matter what industry you're in,
right?
No?
Craig Hane (31:40):
no, no, there's no escaping it.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:44):
Right.
Craig Hane (31:44):
That's true.
There's no escaping it.
Jackie Pelegrin (31:46):
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up the AI
technology, because even today,some of the students that I
teach for the instructionaldesign program they're educators
, they're in K-12 education orthey're in higher education and
some of them are math teachers.
So it's kind of neat to havethis conversation and they don't
bring up the AI technology andI'm like, but it's in every
(32:08):
facet, every industry, so weneed to embrace it.
Craig Hane (32:11):
The reason they don't.
There's a reason they don'twhat I'm talking about in my
program.
There are no textbooks thatteach it, none.
You cannot buy what I teach.
The closest thing you can get.
In tier three I start using thegreatest high school math
textbook in my opinion.
(32:32):
I start using the greatest highschool math textbook in my
opinion ever, written by GeorgeSimmons.
Dr George Simmons calledPrecalculus, mathematics in a
Nutshell Algebra, geometry andTrigonometry.
And guess how much that book is?
It's 119 pages.
It costs $20.
No school has ever adopted it.
(32:52):
It's still in print.
I do use that textbook as aminor part of what I do because
it's really good, but I don'tuse it until tier three.
It's of no value.
In the first two tiers I use alittle bit in tier three and I
use a little bit more than inthe upper tiers.
But I have to go way deeperthan that textbook because
(33:13):
there's all sorts of things thatI go that are not in that book.
But no, the math curriculumtoday that your college is
teaching.
I could be wrong.
Obviously they could show mewhat they're doing.
And, by the way, if you go tomy website, craighaincom, I got
my syllabus all six tiers ofsyllabus is all there, you can
(33:33):
go down and look and seeeverything I teach.
Wow, that's great, because ifyou're going to tell me about
your math program, I'm going tosay send me your syllabus.
Jackie Pelegrin (33:38):
Right.
Craig Hane (33:39):
And if you don't have a syllabus, well, what the
hell?
How are you going to tell mewhat you're teaching?
Jackie Pelegrin (33:42):
Exactly, you need to see it yeah.
Craig Hane (33:47):
Well, then give me your textbook.
That's just as bad as thesyllabus.
So then I go and the problem iswhat the teachers have been
taught and what they're teaching.
Most of it's obsolete.
Jackie Pelegrin (34:03):
One of the tools that's commonly used in
the math courses is SPSS.
Do you think that that's avaluable tool for statistics?
Because there's a lot of mathand statistics, so do you think
that's a valuable tool?
Craig Hane (34:19):
I don't teach statistics specifically and I'm
not familiar with that tool, soI don't know, okay, okay, that's
good to know.
Yeah, what I do is statisticsin a very generic way, is that I
teach that when you have a setof data spread across some sort
of a scale, it'll have some kindof a distribution.
Jackie Pelegrin (34:41):
Right.
Craig Hane (34:43):
Now here's the problem that a lot of
statisticians have.
One of the distributions that'svery common is called a
Gaussian distribution, thenormal distribution, the bell
curve, right, okay, and thenthey got versions that weren't
slightly limited.
But it's the bell curve.
You got an average and you gotwhat's called a standard
(35:03):
deviation Goes out.
Now a lot of distributionsdon't aren't a bell curve, but
if you start taking samples andtaking average of samples and
creating new distributions,eventually you'll get a bell
curve.
That's called the central limittheorem, and so a lot of
(35:26):
statisticians always want tomake everything into a bell
curve.
The problem is there arecertain distributions that that
should never be done for.
For example, you might have abimodal distribution where
you've got a bell curve here, abell curve here and not much in
between.
Well, don't make one big bellcurve out of it.
You've got two, but the big oneis this it's called the power
(35:47):
law distribution and that's likethis oh right.
The power law distribution,which a lot of distributions
today, very important ones.
Standard deviation doesn't meana damn thing in a bell curve.
A standard deviation meanssomething, and if you have, you
wouldn't have eight sigma, forexample, in a bell, in a bell
(36:07):
curve, but a power distributionyou do.
And so they try to do astandard statistical analysis to
this and you can't do it.
The power law, now that's justa theoretical thing I'm telling
you about.
So, whatever statistics youtake, you make damn sure that
you study the power law quitedifferently.
(36:29):
And, by the way, there arecompanies today that didn't do
that, that have lost billionsand billions and billions of
dollars.
It's a real problem todaybecause a lot of things are
parallel and you can have aneight sigma or a 10 sigma.
Well, a good example would beincomes of American people.
That's not a normaldistribution.
Don't try to make a normaldistribution out of that.
(36:52):
That is a parallel distributionand if you try to make a normal
distribution out of it, youranalysis is no good.
Now, I'm not a statistician interms of I don't get into the
nitty-gritty of it and I don'tteach that.
Jackie Pelegrin (37:08):
Right.
Craig Hane (37:08):
But I know that and so that's what I do Tell people
about statistics.
I'm not familiar with that toolyou had.
I don't know the tool.
What was the tool called?
Jackie Pelegrin (37:17):
SPSS is what they normally use.
I don't know how far up theyuse it, but it's similar to
Excel, but it's used forstatistics.
Craig Hane (37:28):
Well, Excel's a good tool if you know what you're
doing.
You know what the formula isbeing and all that.
But I don't know that tool, soI can't comment on it.
Jackie Pelegrin (37:37):
Right, that's okay.
Yeah, and they, of course, asyou know, statistics is taken in
a PhD level and things likethat, so I don't know.
Craig Hane (37:47):
First, question I ask a statistician tell me the
difference between a Gaussiandistribution and a parallel
distribution.
Explain the difference, yeah,in general terms.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:00):
General terms.
Yeah, that's important.
Wow, I love that you've createdthe Triad Math Foundation.
So the Math Foundation that'spart of the army right?
Is that the umbrella?
Craig Hane (38:14):
No, there's not a foundation.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:15):
Oh, there's not a foundation.
Okay, so there's just the.
Craig Hane (38:19):
Triad Math Army.
Well, not yet.
There's not.
One day there probably will be,but there's not yet.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:24):
Okay, good to know.
Craig Hane (38:25):
But what I've done is I've created the Triad Math
Army.
Jackie Pelegrin (38:28):
Okay.
Craig Hane (38:29):
And when you join it you have access to all the math
, all six tiers, and you andyour family do Not just you, but
your family.
So if you've got an advancedmath student, they can go in and
get into some of the uppertiers pretty quick.
But if you've got beginners,they just start at tier one.
But it's also got all thewisdom tools.
There's a bunch of those andthose will take you years to use
(38:53):
.
I mean, it took me many decadesreally to learn them and use
them.
So different ones, you needdifferent ones at different
times and uh, but there's a lotof.
You know, how can you be a goodsalesman?
How do you deal with practical,difficult people?
So I have to do that thingslike that how do you not lose an
argument?
(39:14):
I?
Jackie Pelegrin (39:14):
never lose an argument.
Craig Hane (39:15):
I don't always win an argument, but I never lose
one.
I love that, but there's a wayto never lose an argument.
Jackie Pelegrin (39:22):
Yeah, I love that, and by the way.
Craig Hane (39:25):
The reason is, if you have an idea about something
and you believe in some factthat you believe, to prove it
you got to go all the way backto your basic assumptions, your
basic fundamental beliefs.
Jackie Pelegrin (39:38):
Right.
Craig Hane (39:39):
And if you've got certain fundamental beliefs,
you're right.
But if you have differentfundamental beliefs, you're
wrong.
And different people can havedifferent fundamental beliefs.
So one's right and one's wrong.
So I want to find out what areyour fundamental beliefs.
So if you and I have anargument about something, I
(40:00):
start asking you questions,trying to get back to what's
your fundamental belief.
It's kind of like proving atheorem.
You've heard of the Pythagoreantheorem, right, yes, You've
heard of the Pythagorean theoremright.
Yes, it's a theorem about ifyou've got a plane, a
two-dimensional planePythagorean theorem.
The question is is thePythagorean theorem always true?
Jackie Pelegrin (40:25):
Hmm, that's a good question.
I would say probably no.
Why that's a good question?
I haven't used the Pythagoreantheorem in a while, so I'm
trying to remember.
Yeah, that's probably why,because I probably didn't fully
understand it when I first gotit.
Craig Hane (40:48):
If you have a plane that has zero curvature, the
Pythagorean theorem is alwaystrue, and that was the implicit
assumption of the Euclideans.
So when you talk aboutEuclidean geometry, it's a plane
with no curvature.
Now, if you have a plane withany curvature in it, the
(41:10):
Pythagorean theorem is not true.
So, for example, we live on atwo-dimensional plane
surrounding a sphere Right.
The Pythagorean theorem isn'ttrue, and that's true of any.
So any plane that had anycurvature to it, the Pythagorean
theorem is not true.
Now, I didn't understand thatfor a long time, but I finally
(41:35):
came up with a proof one day.
The first proof of thePythagorean theorem that people
are aware of is in Euclid'sElements, proposition 47 of Book
1.
And it's the damned mostdifficult proof I've ever seen
of the Pythagorean Theorem.
I don't know anybody that couldreproduce it without going back
and studying it based on what'scalled the windmill diagram.
(41:55):
It's very difficult, so peoplecame up with simpler proofs.
There are many, many proofs nowof the Pythagorean Theorem for a
flat plane.
I came up with one that's onlythree lines long, and it also
(42:16):
demonstrated why the Pythagoreantheorem was only true on a flat
surface.
I was so proud of that.
This was about a few years agoand I thought man, I've never
seen it anywhere.
I've never seen a proofanywhere.
Surely somebody else has doneit.
I can't believe I'm the firstone to do it, but I've never
seen it before.
And I said well, it turned outthere was another guy that did
it.
This proved it this way.
His name was Albert Einstein.
Jackie Pelegrin (42:37):
Oh, wow.
Craig Hane (42:39):
And he understood curvature Right and a lot more
than that.
And, by the way, albert Einsteinwas not a great mathematician,
he was a great physicist.
He learned his mathematics fromsome other great mathematicians
and he applied it to create amodel that he believed would be
true, based on basic assumptions.
(42:59):
So now, in special relativity,time depends on the speed of
something.
If something starts goingfaster and faster, the clock
slows down.
Right, in fact, if you get upnear the speed of light, the
clock will stop.
A photon traveling at a speedof light.
(43:21):
If it had a clock in it, theclock is zero.
A photon that started a billionyears ago by our time still the
same time today.
That's special relativity.
Then he discovered specialrelativity.
The math's not too hard.
Then he got general relativity10 years later.
That takes into account gravityand that really blew away.
(43:46):
Physics, newtonian physics.
And did you know that if yougot two watches here and that
really blew away?
Physics, newtonian physics?
And did you know that if yougot two watches here and if you
take one watch up, 10?
Jackie Pelegrin (44:00):
feet in the air .
It slows down.
I'm sorry it speeds up.
It speeds up.
Oh, okay, wow.
Craig Hane (44:03):
And that's all in his theory, his math theory.
And if you didn't have thespeed, it slows down.
If it goes faster, it slowsdown.
If it goes less gravity, itspeeds up.
If you didn't have those twocorrection factors, we would not
have GPS today.
You used GPS, right.
Jackie Pelegrin (44:21):
Right, yeah.
Craig Hane (44:25):
You couldn't make GPS with Newtonian physics.
Most things you could do inNewtonian physics.
That's an approximation ofEinstein's physics.
In ordinary situations it'svery close.
Life's interesting, isn't it?
Jackie Pelegrin (44:40):
Wow, it is.
It's fascinating and.
Craig Hane (44:42):
I'm just beginning to tell you stuff.
Jackie Pelegrin (44:44):
Wow, that's great.
I know that my listeners willlove all of this, especially the
ones that teach math and teachscience the STEM, like you
mentioned, those on it anddesigning curriculum and being
able to impact those that doteach and also the students as
(45:13):
well.
So it's a labor of love, right,as they say, when you're a
teacher and when you designcurriculum, it's a labor of love
.
Craig Hane (45:21):
Well, if they read this, yes, it is labor of love,
that's right.
I call that intrinsicmotivation.
Jackie Pelegrin (45:26):
Yes.
Craig Hane (45:27):
And you should do in your life things you're
intrinsically motivated to do,and hopefully some of them will
make you some money.
Right, and by the way, I talkabout in my wisdom tool money.
The good, the bad and the ugly.
Financial freedom and all that.
I achieved financial freedomwhen I was 17 years old.
Jackie Pelegrin (45:49):
I'll tell you how it is.
That's amazing.
Craig Hane (45:50):
Now, this book I explain a lot of that my history
.
The first three parts are a lotof my history.
Part four is what's Wrong withPublic School Math.
Part five is my New Program.
So you get this book and thenat the end there's a special
offer a link they can go to toget a special offer, a link they
can go to to get a specialoffer and the special offer will
(46:10):
enroll them in the Army for $30a month, but the first 30 days
are free if they don't love it,that's great and once they're in
the Army, if they recruit otherArmy members, I pay them to do
it.
You can actually join the Armyif you're a good communicator,
(46:33):
you can get other people to jointhe Army and get paid to do
that and you can make.
Jackie Pelegrin (46:35):
There's no limit on how much you can make,
depending on how many people youcould recruit, wow, so there's
a benefit to bringing others into the program that's right, wow
, that's great.
I'll make sure to link all ofyour um your website and also at
the army as well, and and linkeverybody to that so that they
can make sure to check that out,because I think that's
wonderful.
I've been on your website and,yeah, it's amazing.
Craig Hane (46:55):
I love it.
What's the website?
I've got lots of them.
Which one?
Jackie Pelegrin (46:59):
Your Craig Hayne website yeah.
Craig Hane (47:02):
Go to the video library.
If you're interested in math atall, just go there.
There's all kinds of videosabout math.
It's not training, it's justinteresting things about math.
By the way, there's threevideos that are the concepts of
calculus about an hour.
Jackie Pelegrin (47:16):
You learn the concept of calculus about an
hour wow, oh my goodness, thatwould be amazing, because I
think now I have uh, I'm notafraid of math anymore after
talking to you, so it's great.
Craig Hane (47:29):
No, you won't be as a matter of fact.
And then what I do with people,I have what I call the
million-dollar gift.
If somebody really believes inthe TriMath Army, I have them
deal with me directly and theygo through, at least through
(47:50):
tier two of the math and thensome of the wisdom tool, and
then if they want to go out andreally promote it as an
affiliate to make money I hopeI'm do that.
In fact I'm I'm looking to havesomeday somebody become
financially independent as atriad math army member just by
recruiting other members wow,that's amazing.
Jackie Pelegrin (48:11):
I love that maybe that'll be you.
Yeah, you never know, you neverknow so yeah and I think that
we can stay in in touch witheach other and and definitely
and I'd love to have you back onagain and we can talk about
some other things too when, whenit comes to the army, the math
army and things like that,because I think it's really
(48:32):
amazing.
Craig Hane (48:33):
Yeah, I love it.
Well, we can talk about that.
And then I can tell you somethings about you might want to
do a special program ontheoretical math.
I can just tell you a lot ofthings that intuitively will
blow your mind, I'm sure, abouttheoretical math, and to me it's
just mind-blowing.
And then we can talk about alot of other things.
There's all sorts of things wecan talk about.
(48:54):
Tribalism is a big thing today.
I love talking about tribalismand, by the way, I have
published a book by an authorwhose pen name is T Ruth Galore,
on an inconvenient lie.
You know Al Gore's book AnInconvenient Truth.
Jackie Pelegrin (49:13):
Yes.
Craig Hane (49:14):
Well, it wasn't.
It was a lie, an inconvenientlie, and I explained why.
The book explains why I don'tdo it.
It's not me, I'm not the author, but I've read this book and
published it on Amazon and Ithink it's true.
So we can talk about thatsometime if you want to.
Jackie Pelegrin (49:33):
That would be great.
I'd love that.
Well, thank you so much foryour time.
Thank you.
And I love that.
You're making a difference allaround.
It seems like you're making adifference in the world too,
because you're helping studentsand individuals to not be afraid
of math anymore and to alsohave those wisdom skills that
they need in life.
(49:54):
So that's great.
Craig Hane (49:55):
I love it.
That's my mission.
That's why I live today.
I've traveled the world.
I've had an exciting life.
You can tell how old I amlooking at me right.
How old do you think I am?
Just take a quick guess 70,maybe.
That's a good guess.
By the way, I have no aches, nopains.
I don't take any medicine.
I'm very active.
Jackie Pelegrin (50:13):
I love it.
Craig Hane (50:14):
I was born, my third birthday was one week before
Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor happened one weekafter my third birthday, so you
can figure it out.
Jackie Pelegrin (50:28):
Yeah, we can do the math.
I love it All right.
Craig Hane (50:31):
Thank you, dr Payne, appreciate it.
Thank you.
Jackie Pelegrin (50:35):
Thank you for taking some time to listen to
this podcast episode today.
Your support means the world tome.
If you'd like to help keep thepodcast going, you can share it
with a friend or colleague,leave a heartfelt review or
offer a monetary contribution.
Every act of support, big orsmall, makes a difference and
I'm truly thankful for you.
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