The problem itself is a lot like Lockhart’s triangle question - simple enough to entice the freshest beginner, sufficiently complicated to require some thought. Instead, it instantly provokes the reader into thinking about how to solve it, searching for patterns, thinking about writing a program, and wanting to learn the coding techniques the need to implement it. Notice this puzzle is accessible to anyone no need to watch a five minute video to understand how to “do” this problem.

The sum of these multiples is 23.įind the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. Project Euler is a series of mathematical puzzles, designed to be solved by writing short programs. This is definitely worth reading-finally an educational reporter who gets it-he’s even read Lockhart’s Lament (pdf). How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code. I think I’ve found a few hints in Project Euler, which was recently profiled in the Atlantic Monthly in the excellent article by James Somers: My feelings about his work can best be summed up by Frank Noschese’s wonderful posts on the topic, so rather than rehash all the problems I have with Khan’s vision of education, I’ll just link to Frank’s not so final remarks about Khan Academy, which are a must read.īut as much as I find flipped classrooms and Khan’s error ridden videos problematic, I keep coming back to the idea that there must be some ways to leverage the internet to fundamentally change learning, right? If Khan isn’t the revolution we were hoping for, what is? Khan academy has been all over the news these days.

Khan academy coding program