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How Palo Alto Students Can Explore the Origins of AI and Algebra
Palo Alto students and teachers can explore the origins of AI and algebra with new docuseries
Is it possible that one 9th-century scholar helped shape the AI and algebra that Palo Alto students learn today? According to a new docudrama available for free on YouTube, the answer is a resounding “yes.” Since mid-July, Spencer Striker Digital Learning has been releasing episodes of Al-Khwarizmi: Father of Algebra and the Algorithm, an AI-animated series presented in the vertical video format made popular by TikTok.
It tells the story of Al-Khwarizmi, a scholar who lived in ninth-century Baghdad, which the series depicts as the Silicon Valley of its time, where intellectuals competed with each other to secure funding for their passion projects.
The young and hungry Al-Khwarizmi's contribution to the whirlwind of wisdom was an arithmetic system based on Indian numerals. Today this method of calculation is known as an algorithm, a word that evolved from the Latinized form of his name, Algoritmi. The series shows how modern computer science and AI depend on the algorithm that Al-Khwarizmi helped systematize more than 1,200 years ago.
The scholar also laid the foundation for today’s advanced mathematics used by students in Palo Alto. Between 813 and 833, Al-Khwarizmi compiled Al-Jabr (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing), which included Al-Khwarizmi’s system for solving linear and quadratic equations. The term, “al-jabr” was later Latinized and eventually Anglicized, and the system became known in English as Algebra, which is still taught to middle-school aged students around the world.
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Al-Khwarizmi: Father of Algebra & the Algorithm was created by Spencer Striker, PhD.
As students in Palo Alto head back to school this month, Striker suggested that teachers could use Al-Khwarizmi as a way to teach their students math, social studies, or world history. He has also offered to share his production notes so local high school teachers and college professors with classes in AI animation and filmmaking can use them as a teaching tool.
