What subject do high school students dislike the most? My bet is math — it’s confusing, abstract, and requires meticulous attention to detail. But at it’s heart, math is an exciting tool to grapple with otherwise unsolvable problems and ideas. The first time someone explained integrals to me, I couldn’t help but be amazed.

Bret Victor is a self-described Technology Hobo (seriously, that’s what he calls himself) who wants to change the way we interact with math. His project, Kill Math, seeks to change the way students see math by incorporating new technology to transform the abstract, like equations, into corporeal, intuitive and interactive visualizations.

Bret sees technology as the ultimate tool to break math out of pen and paper abstract visualization into real time, easily visualized playthings. As an example, check out an interactive exploration of a dynamical system that he’s created:

(Contributed by Max Cho, Eben Tisdale Fellow, CRA)