From Algebra to Architecture

From Algebra to Architecture, with Jim Ellis

In this episode of Data Talks, we sit down with Jim Ellis, math teacher at the American International School of Vienna and author of "Educators as Designers," to explore how his background in architecture reshaped his approach to teaching math. Jim walks us through the parallels between architectural design and effective data-informed instruction, and how that lens has shaped a career built around curiosity and critical thinking.

We dig into the World Insights Challenge, the global math competition Jim co-leads with Kat Petra from the International School of Amsterdam, where students from around the world use real data to explore questions tied to the SDGs, building original visualizations that matter to their own communities.

Jim also opens up about AI's growing role in education: its potential to identify learning needs like dyslexia and dyscalculia far faster than humans can, and the coming shift away from homework toward classrooms as spaces for live, creative learning. He paints a picture of what math class could look like for the next generation, one where students lead their own discovery rather than simply absorb instruction.

We close things out, as always, with Jim's favorite number: 360, and the surprisingly rich history behind it.

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Data Talks is produced by World Data Lab, bringing global data to life through insights, conversations, and stories that matter.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome everybody to another edition of Data Talks. This is a Data Talk show live at the headquarters of Wall Data Lab together with Jim Alice, who is a distinguished teacher, educator, and global data geek, I would call him. Welcome to the show. Jim.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Thank you very much for having me and hosting me in your office.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Jim has been a partner of Wall Data Lab for some time. Jim has been a family friend for a long time because he actually also educated my children. And I hope you see that the result is good. Jim has a long track record at the American International School of Vienna here. And so with that, I wanted also to start with Jim. Share a bit about what made you join the teaching profession and what are the big moments that shaped uh that long journey that you have been at.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I think it's a pretty good question to get started. I started in Phoenix, Arizona, um, in a Mexican-American community, and my parents were teachers, my aunts and uncles were teachers. And uh that family business of education was something that really excited me, but I didn't find my way directly there. They were all musicians, so I decided architecture, and they were all working in one part of town, so I worked in another. So even though it was kind of the family business, I was certainly uh trying to carve my own path. But listening to my elders talk about teaching uh even as a young child really interested me. And uh so I kind of found my way there.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, congrats for the long journey, Jim. And I've uh there's actually something I'm gonna show the viewers. This is a recent book, and Jim just mentioned architecture, and the book is called Educators as Designers. And then you talk a little about how the analogy between architecture and teaching. Um also one question I have, Jim Gaona Ellis. Tell us about your name, also.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah. Um I think Gaona is a Basque name. Uh it is the Mexican-American uh name that I have, and in German it has kind of a funny meaning. So living here in Vienna, it's not something that I use on the street very often. Um but yeah, it's it's a it's kind of a unique Mexican family name, and I'm really proud to use it as a way of representing our uh our family, what we do as educators.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

And Jim, tell us about this a long journey, it's also a reflection of your education journey, but tell us about a bit about the book, also what made you decide to write it and and what are the main takeaways.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Um, all right, so there's uh an intersection in my industry between uh the hard work that we're doing, the information that we use and gather as educators to inform what we're doing, and then how we design forward to make positive changes in education. And education, it's a mess, messy business, for sure. And as a result, what our inputs are for our data, how we analyze that data, and how we choose to move it forward itself can be complicated and messy. Educators have a very short amount of time to be effective with the information that we're given. And as a result, I wanted to be able to lay out a plan and show the development arc that can happen when you're using data effectively in the classroom. And I do that through my training as an architect and thinking about how the design process develops that and using design language to further that development of that critical information we use.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Fascinating. Um, and as you can see now, Jim is not just an architect, but he's a math teacher. Um, Jim also has PHET what we call the World Insights Challenge. So tell us about why you're leading this uh this global challenge that's now expanding a lot, and how how what type of insights and from of learning you want to transport into the classroom through that exercise.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to have um the World Data Lab as the host for this. Um the what's so important about the World Data Lab and the work that's happening within the World Data Lab is that it it as a profession really is modeling the future of where math education can go. Uh, you and I both know this, and we've uh had a good chance of uh connecting our uh professions and our passions together. But if we imagine the the um the more symbolic math that you and I both learned when we were children, it was equations and abstractions and numbers, and as beautiful as math is and can be, and I do believe that as a math teacher, um I also understand that the world is using our math more and more and more in our real life. It's not simply to enrich our minds, but it is a piece of what we use in our real world. And as a result, the World Data Lab, the World Insights Competition, and students that blend has created this pretty dynamic and highly accessible math competition. Generally, when we think of math competitions, I'm sure both from you and I when we were younger, it was those that had the greatest amount of knowledge and could use it the quickest. And again, it was in that abstract sense. Here we're inviting students to choose the math that they want to use, to ask an interesting question about the world around them, and then to apply themselves through data analysis to create visualizations that matter to them and to their community and to their world. This is, to me, one of the most interesting and um uh and relevant ways that we can ask students to be their own guides in their learning, to partner with them in co-creation, which is a big buzzword in education right now, and to get students engaged in something that we feel is really important. So as a result, I feel that this free competition that any student can do from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet connection, is one of the most exciting ways we can invite students into the world of maths and professions that are uh currently engaged in some of the more edgy development in our society. You know, it could be programming, it could be data visualizations. There's so many angles how this could work.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Well, congratulations to Jim. Um I think you led it with a colleague from Amsterdam, um Kat, I think Kat Fry from the International School of Amsterdam. And give us a sense before I go deeper a bit into the philosophy around math, give us a sense of who participated and what what the tasks were at the World Insights Challenge.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, um I'll I'll say in general that we have a theme every year. Um we've been tracking those themes with uh SDGs, which has been an important thing to the World Data Lab and to educators, schools everywhere. I just to get here, I walked by a local public school that had the SDG goals up in their window. Um, and it was clear that it was a vibrant part of what they're doing. So if we pick one of those goals and we ask students to ask a very specific question about themselves, their community, or something they're interested in, and then we give them the tools to uh look through data and develop visualizations, and then to create those visualizations and interpret them, that is creating a sort of poster project. And so we have some resources, we work directly with the teachers to do all of this, and we've had uh schools on many continents doing this, local schools in some cases, international schools in other cases, um, French-speaking schools, um, local, Turkish schools participating in this, and uh this year we were just under 100 total students participating, uh, dozens of projects. And then, even more interesting than that, besides all of these students participating, we had different rounds of judging. So Pat and I judged the first round for completion. The second round were professionals in Europe who are economists, uh, World Bank employees, all sorts of folks who are involved in data in the real world. And then the final round of judging came from the World Data Lab Data Labs scientists here, uh data scientists here, and also from you on occasion. So that means we're talking about a true community project across multiple different places that give us a chance to honor students for their thinking, creativity, and their math.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

That's brilliant, Jim, because I think one aspect that we want to emphasize is that that which I think many kids have, and sometimes parents have the fear for math. And if I simplify, I guess there's those who love math and then those who hate math, and and probably the world shouldn't be as simple as that, and it should be made simpler and easier for people to understand and access math. So tell us a bit about your own strategies and your own approach to how to bring everyone on that math journey. That's a that's a big one.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Um, but I I really do love teaching math. I I thoroughly enjoy it. Uh, the data sciences uh side is outstanding to me. Statistics is is one of my favorite topics. But um I think my enthusiasm and my desire to get my students to participate with me is the first job. I really want to make students feel like they are enjoying the subject. The second thing I want to do is to enrich them in particular skills. Um, most importantly, I think when you're talking about 12-year-olds that I teach, I want math to feel funny. So I want to demystify and add the humor. Uh, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, there they have a kind of a dark, morbid humor side to them, but they also have a curiosity about the world. So when I present the things we're doing with a sense of curiosity and wonderment, um, I tend to bring students on board with me as well. But I have to say that something that I really appreciate about you is that your curiosity and wonderment about the world is something that enriches your organization, uh, your partners, uh corporate or otherwise. Um, and I think that's something that you and I share is this curiosity of the world. But living that every day in the classroom is is a challenge sometimes, but you gotta go in every day and give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Well, it's very kind of how you outlined it, Jim, but I still remember uh the first time we met where you also said that your biggest joy is to work with uh students that are not yet successful and to bring them over the herd because I too often in my own life I saw that yeah, the teachers love the good students, and then yeah, some just struggle and and have almost this trauma. And in the end, as you say, right, math in the end you have to be confronted because if you want to have a good salary, understand your salary and your finances, you have to have some basic math, and some things should get more easier. And I think that's how you are now and how we have been approaching our joint projects. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, and to add to that a little bit, I suppose it's it's the applied stuff that I like the most, whether status visualizations and understanding of a world, sure. But I do think that my career is most meaningful when I'm bringing new understandings and new confidence to people who didn't have it before. Um you see that in the professional world everywhere when organizations are trying to enrich themselves and better themselves, or they're trying to spread that message outside of their organization. I too share those same goals of trying to bring students on board who were never there before. It's a challenge, um, of course, but um it's it's what makes education special.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Is there a certain data point or mathematical puzzle that you love to teach most or to inquire most?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Um there's a few. The first one in my career was when I began as a science teacher, actually. I have different degrees and trainings, and and one of the things I was doing was teaching chemistry. And the the exercise that was the most exciting to me when teaching chemistry was talking about the difference between covalent and ionic bonding. I'm sure most of us have learned that, maybe in ninth grade, something like that. And when I was teaching it, uh I taught about the existence of um one type of bond, a double bond. And that double bond made sense. I think it had it was one that would have had uh carbon and oxygen in it, I think. And then in a very sort of uh subtle way, using an activity and different objects in that activity, I created a situation where uh there was a compound that was not explainable with a single or a double bond. It had to be a triple bond. But I didn't tell the students that it could exist or that it would exist, and so I sort of left it out there for students to discover it themselves. And when they discovered it themselves and came to me and said, it can't be this, it can't be that, it's gotta be this other thing. This thing has to exist. It was at that moment that I realized that um even something as technical as covalent bonding in chemistry class could be um exciting and it could be uh a big aha moment that a student could get themselves. And so as I teach elements of algebra and I show the discrete pieces of them, and then I allow students to find out ways to piece those things together, it can be quite exciting. Um same with the bridge of moving from uh linear algebra to nonlinear. The first time that they're given a curve, um a parabola, and they're asked to deal with that and understand its nature, it's fun to sort of let them tell me what they're experiencing rather than for me to explain everything to them straight away. And so when I can um turn those experiences around and give them a chance to explain back to me what must exist in the world rather than me doing it all the time, those can be really exciting moments for them and myself.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

Brilliant, Jim. I think I want to switch now to the future of math and the future of your sector, your education, your profession. Um AI is all around us. Many things are getting simpler, so maybe you can do things without really knowing what's behind them. How do you see, and a lot of it's been emphasized, is what's called critical thinking. Um, how do you see the life as a teacher in the classroom changing and what are the changes you'd like to see? I'm really glad you asked that question.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

My industry is struggling with AI right now, without a doubt. Um, generative AI that might be a large language model is producing sometimes pretty interesting work, and at other times the AI slop. And so that's the student-facing one. But before I get to that, and that is really going to change education, on the educator side, on my side, on the teacher side, there's something incredibly special that's about to happen. Um, the data that's available right now uh and the ways in which AI is able to access that, um it's there's an almost medical purpose that's about to emerge. We're hearing about um AI detecting uh cancers more quickly and these things. Well, it can AI right now can do the same thing with learning disabilities. Um dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia. The people that are interfacing with that data, the students, um, are uh are interacting with different software um interfaces. And those interfaces are able to determine these student needs quicker than humans. And those in education understand it's been a real human problem. How many years does it take for a teacher to identify a student with a need, to get the testing, to get the funding, to get it calibrated correctly, and to get materials in the hands of a student who need something different. However, computers can do it almost instantaneously for free without any um uh any uh barriers to that. And so as this starts to take place in our industry where students can be accommodated and given the right tools more quickly, we're going to see students being able to maximize their ability to think critically. And that was the beginning of your question. Where is critical thinking going to happen? I think we're going to be able to pull it out of more students more often with greater regularity because the tools that we will have are going to make that happen for students. So, first of all, I think we're going to get even more creative thinking, critical thinking from students and more immediately in the best way possible. That's the good news. The bad news is how do we reimagine education around the use of AI? Um, I think probably the biggest change that we're going to see is that your child or anyone's child out there is going to be doing less and less homework. And I think that teachers are going to be doing less and less direct instruction. Classrooms are going to be more of the creative space where learning is happening live in the classroom and kids are developing ideas and working hard. I imagine students going home more tired rather than full of energy and pent-up energy from sitting all day. They're going to be tired from actively moving and doing and creating. And the teacher will have a reserve of energy for the first time when they go home. Because the stuff that would have gone home, students are now using AI to do it. And so we can't trust what's happening at home. And so we need to do it in school. So there's no longer an excuse for the sage on the stage, the teacher, to just teach all day long and the student to listen and then to try it out at home as homework. The place learning is going to happen finally and forever shall be the school building. And students hopefully will have a chance to explore their interest and develop further outside of the classroom. It just won't be 30 questions of math homework at home.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Wow, the sage of the stage. I've never heard that already. But that also means that AIS, the American school you teach at, uh, is obviously already a school that has more or less the classic American 9 to 3 p.m. kind of setup. Um you can't have then a school anymore from 8 to 12, like I was growing up, right? It needs to be a longer. Or what happens with that what used to be the homework time?

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, what used to be the homework time, I think is school is going to need to be a little bit more creative in what they offer. Uh STEM clubs, programming, uh maybe uh collaborative gaming on the tech side, um, richer sports offerings and music, these kinds of things. So I'm not going to say necessarily the traditional models shouldn't be scrapped entirely. The way in which some cultures schedule students, their day, how they eat lunch, is there a canteen at school, or do the kids normally go home? A lot of these things can be preserved, but there's going to need to be a reimagining of the daytime of a student. Um I think there will need to be some reimagining at home in the evenings as well. How do you occupy your child, your your precocious 10-year-old, if there isn't an essay to write at home? Um perhaps families will grow closer together and find more activity together. That would be an amazing thing. But it is there are some questions out there still for sure.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Wow. So, Jim, to close the bridge on the future of math in the classroom and World Data Lab, what are the types of data interactive elements you're looking for? And how do you think if you think again, you mentioned the future kids, I think of my grandchildren, like in 10 years or so that would be uh going to your classes, what should they expect? What would be the ideal experience in 10 to 15 years?

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Um, okay, so let's let's imagine this like something's coming home. Uh, to you as maybe a grandfather one day, um, or a father, however, it might be a parent. Um, I would really imagine a kid coming home full of excitement about what they created at school. And that thing that they created at school could be a brilliant data visualization about sea level rise and islands in the Mediterranean, and maybe they thought of these elements because they visited an island with you in the Mediterranean, and they were kicking around seashells and looking at fish in the summer, and they wanted to know will that island still be there and for how long and what might happen, and and these sorts of things. And so perhaps your student asked this question with the teacher guide, sort of like what we do right now at the World Data Lab and the and the uh World Insights competition, but it's happening in the classroom now. And that teacher as a guide is telling pointing them to towards some data or a style of visualization to say, well, maybe you don't want a chronological one, maybe you want uh let's let's look at cartography for a while, since that's it's gonna be about an island. And and this partnership is taking place, and the student finds out where to find data, and some students maybe they make something as sophisticated as a bar graph from UNESCO data. Maybe uh a similar student gets their hands on their first R set of data, and they're exploring it and looking at raw data and finding a way to represent it in a uh visual, well, more visual way than just a bar graph. But they come home to you and they're excited and say, I asked this question, and um my teacher showed me where I can find this thing, and I met I emailed someone at the UN and they sent this other bit of information back, and then we had a symposium where we shared our ideas, and then we got a week to build this, and look at this, look at what I made. Can you see how you can click through all the different islands? I made that. This is the dream, and this is what we want right now as educators. We want time to do this stuff, and I think we're finally going to be given the license to allow kids to be leaders in their learning, and they will come home excited to share with you what they did.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Well, kids will build from early age. More and more and more, yes. Jim, thank you so much for all your thoughts. Uh, as the viewers know, the last question of all my uh podcast is on your favorite number, uh, my guest's favorite number, and the story behind the number. So tell us about your favorite number, Jim.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Absolutely. I have a very specific favorite number. It's 360. It's historic, it's cultural, it's uh in pure maths, it's it's it's meaningful. Um and it for me it's the circle, right? It's 360 degrees. And the ancient Babylonians either rounded that number or they um that's as close of an estimation as they could get, potentially. Uh and they chose 360 because of the Earth's orbit around the sun. Also, the ancient Babylonians had a base 60 counting system, so it was highly divisible for the ancient Babylonians, but it's incredibly composite, highly divisible in our system as well. Ancient Babylonians, base 60, us, base 10, you know, digits 0 through 9. Um, and so as a result, it's a super useful number. It's also perhaps one of the most interesting numbers uh when you think about how its relationship to time, the ancient Babylonians use of 60, or 60 seconds, 60 minutes. Um there's so much here to unpack that if I was to build an entire math course around a single number, it would be 360. Wow, that's fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

And what is great uh listeners? Everybody has different numbers and incredibly insightful stories around them. We had it from zero to infinity. Congratulations to all your great work. Thanks to the book here, guys. Buy the book, and see you next time.