CMU Professor Po-Shen Loh is using the power of algorithms to make math more accessible and understandable to people around the globe.
For mathematics Professor Po-Shen Loh, math is the art of creative thinking. And teaching math wasn’t enough for this self-described math evangelist. He launched Expii, a free math education platform that gathers difficult math problems and shares techniques for solving them.
“The way to get better at anything is to continuously work on challenges that are difficult, but not impossible,” he says. “It’s similar to athletic training: Do more today than you did yesterday.”
That’s not just a method Loh employs as an entrepreneur. It’s a mantra that he lives daily. When he became coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad team, he took it a step further, asking himself, “How can I use my time to raise the level of mathematics across the country? How can I use my mathematical skills to make the world a better place?”
He built his platform to truly personalize education to each individual student. By using algorithms to determine the difficulty of any given math problem and pairing them with coaching and solving techniques, users can learn at their own pace, in a way that’s efficient and effective.
Efficiency is important to Loh. Many days you can find him biking between his CMU classroom and his Expii office to optimize his time with students and building this start-up.
Loh set out to change the way the world perceives math. And with Expii, he’s achieving that vision one problem at a time.
