I remember watching ”The Story of Maths” back in 2012 when I was 15 which got me into mathematics and then theoretical physics. Marcus du Sautoy presented that documentary and it had a profound impact on me
@zeynand40392 жыл бұрын
I'm going to watch that, thanks for mentioning it.
@brothermine22922 жыл бұрын
On the other hand, many people say the journey is more important than arriving at the destination. Rote learning doesn't lead to robust understanding. Deriving the shortcuts, for example by playing with examples to see a pattern, is a valuable exercise.
@thstroyur2 жыл бұрын
The real shortcuts are the friends we made along the way
@Psnym2 жыл бұрын
Talk to a mathematician about how they fell in love with mathematics and the answer sounds like this lecture. Talk to a math teacher who is just grinding through the slog and teaching a curriculum created by a committee of “experts”, and you get having to memorize times tables.
@brothermine22922 жыл бұрын
@@Psnym : I'm skeptical about your claim about why mathematicians became mathematicians. I didn't choose to become a mathematician, but I enjoyed math because I was very good at it, in particular I could visualize many relations and had a logical talent for proving theorems. Can you cite any interviews or polls of mathematicians to support your claim? What's the factual basis for your belief? I'm glad I learned the times tables (and similar arithmetic) at a young age. It was more than just rote learning. It's an example of practice with simple examples... a valuable exercise that endows a person with a better fundamental understanding than using a calculator does.
@bokchoiman2 жыл бұрын
I love that we're back to the institute. Zoom just doesn't do it for me.
@lostreverb98062 жыл бұрын
Agreed
@Psnym2 жыл бұрын
This. I am so glad science has largely conquered the pandemic so we can return to more in-person science!
@tonym25132 жыл бұрын
@@Psnym yeah? Largely conquered? I guess they’ll let anyone post here…
@Psnym2 жыл бұрын
@@tonym2513 For those of us fortunate and informed enough to be fully vaccinated, yes, the pandemic is largely over.
@wbaumschlager2 жыл бұрын
@@Psnym "We owe a great debt of gratitude to science. Science has in many ways helped ease the suffering of this pandemic - which was more than likely caused by science." - Jon Stewart
@hillrp12 жыл бұрын
My math teacher always described it as maths being "All about finding easy ways to do hard things" and that really resonated with me as a kid and fueled my interest in the subject for a long time
@Oscar16180332 жыл бұрын
But it takes a lot of work to find the easy way. I find it similar to when I automated some things at work: I had daily tasks that were long boring, difficult and prone to errors. Then I took (a lot) more time to automate it so that I had to do a harder but more interesting work just once instead of something boring every time.
@anthonytaylor7538 Жыл бұрын
I ❤ Marcus du Sautoy. Never having followed a career path in mathematics myself, I find myself thinking profoundly differently having listened to him speak. Marcus is such a good and enthusiastic communicator, light bulbs switch on inside my head with every word he speaks. I see the beauty and the wonder of seemingly disconnected areas of everyday life being united logically and with utter elegance. Thank you Marcus. Not sure if it is the beauty of maths solutions, Marcus' enthusiasm or both; either way, I'm a big fan.
@3nertia2 жыл бұрын
About the honeybees - they don't actually make hexagonal honeycomb - they make circles and the heat of their movements and physics turns them into hexagons *because* it's the most efficient shape :D
@suttie18912 жыл бұрын
So it's not actually as efficient as if they made hexagons in the first place?
@3nertia2 жыл бұрын
@@suttie1891 It's more efficient for them to make circles ... Hexagons require pretty precise corners of 60° :)
@Vlow522 жыл бұрын
@@3nertia yes, and from other side, natural selection had to stabilize the way of putting circlular shape to a closely arranged pattern in order for hexagons to work. Tho, I think it’s much more interesting to look on the various “solids” that universe creates with different crystals
@christopherellis26632 жыл бұрын
Why " honey" bee?
@tortinwall2 жыл бұрын
@@christopherellis2663 because they make large nests from which we can get large amounts of honey.
@JimGobetz2 жыл бұрын
Such a great speaker, so much wonderful stuff from the RI this year so far.
@-danR2 жыл бұрын
meh. For a man with shortcuts, he seems only too willing to take the longest routes to get to them.
@jelmargerritsen2 жыл бұрын
Absolutely in love with his sweater. Great talk too!!
@GCKteamKrispy2 жыл бұрын
Finally, live lectures. I've waited them sooo long
@jeffkeylock4412 жыл бұрын
Thank you. I enjoyed that. Even if I did click the thumbnail because I thought it was a Matt Parker video....sorry about that!
@harremsis2 жыл бұрын
Amazing. Just absolutely lovely, this lecture. Thank you Mr. duSatoy!!
@JoyoSnooze2 жыл бұрын
Nothing comparable to live lectures. Overjoyed to have them back - this is already shaping up to be a great year of learning, RI.
@josephhall27482 жыл бұрын
What a nice room to do something like this in.
@Dr10Jeeps2 жыл бұрын
I really look forward to watching new RI talks and I am never disappointed. Thank you.
@HugoHabicht122 жыл бұрын
It's a world of laughter and a world of tears it's a world of hopes and a world of fears there's so much that we share that is time we're aware it's a SMALL WORLD after all
@PuhuTube2 жыл бұрын
Gorgeous presentation, thx.
@flyingfig122 жыл бұрын
Thanks you so much for knowing/understanding and _mentioning_ that there are ways to rewire in a very short period of time @48:00 as we have come very far from the past years of talk therapy and nothing to show for it.
@JoeyIndolos2 жыл бұрын
LOL at the “8 out of 10 cats” thing. I’ve seen videos here on KZfaq of the British comedy shows “8 out of 10 Cats” and its derivative, “8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown.” But since I live in a country where neither of those shows, nor the ad that inspired them, are actually aired, this is my first time to see the inspiration for their titles.
@darriansea2 жыл бұрын
Good presentation, I like how he shows all the ways maths can have practical applications even without doing math directly
@humester2 жыл бұрын
Great talk! I would rather do mathematics than sudoku anytime! It is not only much more interesting but it also increases your brain power.
My math teachers were actually very opposed to shortcuts! The kept reiterating the importance of showing all the steps
@mathdemigod81622 жыл бұрын
As a math teacher, I often butt heads with other math teachers over this. So long as they can explain WHY the shortcut works, I encourage it.
@toby99992 жыл бұрын
Probably makes more sense in a school setting.
@Psnym2 жыл бұрын
“Never let schooling interfere with your education” -Twain
@LK905122 жыл бұрын
Shortcuts in mathematics are not about skipping steps though, they are about finding paths that are shorter, but still rigorous, connecting your question to the answer. You still need to show all the steps, they just happen to be fewer. Also, in a school setting the goal of a tedious exercise, like reducing an arithmetic expression, is not really the numerical answer: you could easily obtain that by typing the expression in a calculator, but you would hardly learn anything by doing so. It's all about understanding the mechanics behind the exercise and train your "arithmetic muscles". Showing the steps (within reason) simply allows your teacher to correctly assess your level of understanding.
@AdrianF-aB2 жыл бұрын
To make the perfect shortcut you must know all the possibles ways.
@the-arkk2 жыл бұрын
No words, just brilliant teaching
@tkar662 жыл бұрын
Wonderful, very enthusiastic. thanks for sharing.
@gidi18992 жыл бұрын
24:50 - diagram/movie/story to expose more easily important aspects of complex multi-systems. Speaks to the range of the human ability to form a specific understanding from a range of sequenced notions. The process is in our heads is sequential, but each step can hold understanding from only several notions. If a human is exposed to a story (a diagram may contain very few and sometime only one story/narrative), the story form is much more compliant to be formed to a single consideration step/s. I commend you for pointing out this notion with respect to passing information (as a shortcut ?! :)).
@timelsen2236 Жыл бұрын
PLEASE make a post on the relation between DIV GRAD at finite density charge sources and the relation of this to gravitational curvature for finite density mass distributions. For zero charge density DIV GRAD X=0, while for mass the mass on a rubber sheet model suggests negative (Gaussian) curvature in the surrounding vacuum, suggesting DIV g
@eddycolon19862 жыл бұрын
This is true. I was studying Logic just the definition and thinking about it; Negation, Conjunction, Disjunction, Biconditional and I just start to listen better what people says you can discover many lies. Mistakes people made trying to defend their arguments truly fascinating.
@db96312 жыл бұрын
You studied logic? Can you tell if I own a doghouse or not?
@eddycolon19862 жыл бұрын
@@db9631 I mean reading, currently I was reading some theories of reasoning, types of logic and you suddenly start to listen better of what people says because they're mostly making wrong arguments or lying basing on the rules of those. That I mean.
@eddycolon19862 жыл бұрын
@@db9631no, how could I guess that? Do you live alone? Have some friends? Algorithms can guess that
@flickingbollocks55422 жыл бұрын
@@db9631 You do own a doghouse, unless you don’t.
@flickingbollocks55422 жыл бұрын
@@eddycolon1986 His dog is his best friend as people often mistake his way of reasoning as sarcasm. That's why he let's his dog indoors at night. He may have bought a doghouse at one time, but doesn't use it.
@patriciajob78292 жыл бұрын
Thanks very much for your program and for sharing it. Maths are fun with you ! 😊
@jaymiller83872 жыл бұрын
I just saw Contagion for the first time the other day lol. Not only that but I studied behavioral science 🤣 thank you.
@anthonytaylor7538 Жыл бұрын
Thanks
@gidi18992 жыл бұрын
16:50 - how many unknown boxes you need to open to tell you something meaningful about the boxes should not be compared to: "a human taking the plunge into an unknown situation". You CANNOT assume people enter any situation with any intent. In fact it seems we are only allowed to observe life with relevance to our intent. Meaning: 1. A person might not notice certain boxes 2. Any box that contain relevance to a more important intention of the person than the one of curiosity to open the box, Will change the other boxes preference rules. For "buying a product" process, and within each step of a single product review, I agree that the question "is this the right choice with regard to better unseen options?" - is important to deal with. And promotes investigation to the notion of "sufficiency categories and dynamics". For involving "e": You must frame the same question for a "learning algorithm" trained for one intention. So, if you hold only one intent "to find a specific X in a box", and the option boxes were set either with or without X, and without a single consideration that connects a certain box with X, then "e" can be used.
@ArtII2Long9 ай бұрын
Inverse networking. Given that we use networking all the time, sometimes we need to escape that for a solution.
@mrnobody28732 жыл бұрын
I just ordered the book! I made one critical observation, however. The part of the presentation about the Cello is perhaps, a bad example. I choose to believe this was meant to be more of an analogy, and like all analogies they fail if you carry them too far. The issue I take with it is that it seems to mis-identify the actual problem, or rather, it is does identify it but doesn't follow through. The actual problem identified is the time it takes to program muscle memory into the nervous system. That problem does seem to have shortcuts. One such shortcut is to temporarily increase the neuroplasticity of the brain. A US based neuroscientist, Dr. Andrew Huberman has done research along these lines and has found intriguing possibilities from altering the schedule of when to learn something in relation to when one goes to sleep, to certain pharmaceuticals/chemicals that can aid in skill acquisition. Oddly, despite the negative health consequences, nicotine appears to be one such substance. What I find extremely interesting here is that "Identifying the problem to solve." is generally what prevents people from being able to apply shortcuts. Because if this identification issue, shortcuts often fail to achieve the desired effect and often have the opposite effect of making the problems seemingly unsolvable. The result is, in western culture, we teach people to avoid shortcuts as a moral principle, when really, we have failed to teach how to identify problems properly. If it were my lecture, I would leave the Cello Example in, but elaborate upon it as an example of an "Identification" problem.
@CapnAhabChannel2 жыл бұрын
4:11 - isn't it "Poiesis" i.e. without the "r"?
@thekennethofoz35942 жыл бұрын
All right. Somebody please help me here. The shortcut described from about 18:00 on. Consider about 37% of possibilities, then select the next one that beats all the numbers seen so far. If the top one is already in the first 37%, you will never get to pick an option that beats everything in the first 37%, so you will never make a selection according to this rule.
@andrewharrison84362 жыл бұрын
Yes - true, it is of the nature of the problem. Obviously when you have just 1 box left it is always worth taking - but you will then know how many better choices you could have made. There are 2 risks: that you select a box before the largest and that you reject the largest box when you look in it. What is amazing about the sampling method is that you get the largest as often as you do. 37% of the time, as your comment says, you look in the largest box and reject it. 63% of the time it is still to be found - if you have already opened the second largest box then you are guaranteed to get the largest. If you haven't opened either the largest or the second largest in the first 37% but have opened the third largest then it depends on if you look in the largest before the second largest (50% chance) and then there are other more complicated calculations of your chances.
@frankshaw47492 жыл бұрын
Of course, that's an average of averages, always dangerous. The pool of suitable partners diminishes as time goes on and the age range varies. I can't see a 16 year old dating many 21 year olds nor 11 year olds. Usually anyway.
@darbyl38722 жыл бұрын
I've read that 10% is better, for avoiding this problem, and still get a high quality, usually.
@boringboring2 жыл бұрын
His sweater made me click in. Made me think the once-I-thought-dull math might be interesting and cheering and let me listen to him.
@divirgente51772 жыл бұрын
muy wena la expocision de lo exagonal y su uso mas matematico en la preservacion por la temperatura 😊exelente la tesis
@paulgush2 жыл бұрын
Ri, you have good content, but I have one important word for you: DE-ESS. A low pass filter that curs down on sibilance, the overbearing loudness of the letters S, T, F, SH. With those mic's you use, it sometimes drives me nuts...
@frogandspanner2 жыл бұрын
8:15 Gaudi did something similar for his design of Sagrada Familia using upside down catenaries.
@BarackObamaJedi2 жыл бұрын
6:00 watch Matt Parker's video about beehives and hexagons, in 3D it's not actually the most optimal shape in costs of wax relative to volume, but it's still close
@kencory24762 жыл бұрын
The kicker is that Gauss claimed he actually performed the addition taking the long way, so they say, by adding up all 100 numbers.
@rodman22772 жыл бұрын
shortcut for myself is less talk and get to the answer, most probable this is how all professors work. I got bored and anxious waiting for solution's. my problem to deal with, I understand this.
@anacampos544 Жыл бұрын
genious!! again
Ай бұрын
3:33 Luckily he found a shortcut and could finish the talk in one hour instead of a few years.
@piros1002 жыл бұрын
I remember my math teacher in high school said "Mathematicians are the laziest people on Earth. They'd rather spend 30 minutes thinking just to reduce the time spent on calculations by 5 minutes."
@PTGaonkar2 жыл бұрын
That's amazing
@AntoniosLelis Жыл бұрын
It's "Praxis and poiesis". (Poiesis without an 'r') :)
@viktorpavlovych2 жыл бұрын
Awesome information, thank you so much!
@orion98mc922 жыл бұрын
Just my 2 cents here but the correct spelling is "poiesis" (Poïésis)... and It's from Aristotle... Hello from France! ... back to the video.
@UMosNyu2 жыл бұрын
On the topic of limits for the y-axis (30:08) is there a rule of thumb about the limits? Like: Should they alwas start at 0? Or at 50% of the smallest value? etc
@charlesbrowne95902 жыл бұрын
There are no rules of thumb for such graphs. None of these charts or diagrams are tools used by professional statisticians to understand data. They are more art than science. They may be used for executive summaries, teaching statistical facts to students or colleagues or the public. If you are a medical researcher presenting results of a new therapy, it is important to convey the evidential advantages and disadvantages of the new therapy. Very small changes in, say, hormone levels or pH levels may be significant and bars may not be sized relative to zero to emphasize what is important.
@BboyKeny2 жыл бұрын
In this case it started at the point that is most convenient for your argument. With the example of tax, that 5% increase can be deadly to poor people. But a wealthy person doesn't notice it at all. So in this case, if Fox viewers are mainly poor then that "deceptive" graph is more representative to their reality then if it started at 0%.
@gidi18992 жыл бұрын
I think you meant to talk about Nature's harmonious properties rather than "Lazy". Or "Nature seems lazy" when the handling of a change in one system propagates to other systems faster than it propagates within the system space. And when the propagation to other system is slower, it seems nature is a hard worker. BTW I hate the word "lazy", because if a person is lazy about one thing - it naturally means he is a hard worker about another thing. All "lazy" examples show a person handling irrelevant intentions to the a task deemed important by social aspects, those aspects disregard the existence of more than one influencing intention on a person.
@ProfRobin8292 жыл бұрын
After from the introductory story about Gauss, there is very little maths here.
@spotter1132 жыл бұрын
Very interesting, even for a layman like me. Thanks
@kooros1002 жыл бұрын
we don't need mathematicians to find the shortcuts , computer algorithms can do the job .
@gregalexander81892 жыл бұрын
Hooked on Phonics? Have some Allen Turing! The perfect compliment for the phonically cultured mind.
@CV_CA2 жыл бұрын
The pullover is like Freddy Krueger would have :-)
@Tokinjester2 жыл бұрын
does anyone remember the documentary Marcus did about consciousness, where he did the "select a picture" test inside an MRA scanner?? trying to find a copy
@artstsym2 жыл бұрын
I'll be honest: your cat wasn't asked because they're just not influencer material. That's harsh, I know, but true.
@SnagglieFang2 жыл бұрын
Fantastic!
@masennyeolang10542 жыл бұрын
Number are everything to be add to the lost civilization.
@hermannpallasch21532 жыл бұрын
This Aristotle thing IMHO isn't 'proeisis' but 'poiesis' (the origin of our word 'poetry'...
@simone2222 жыл бұрын
Indeed.
@-danR2 жыл бұрын
"proeisis" is such an exceptionally rare word--even in theological discourse--that I can only conclude that he is either confused, or is making an entire Hellenic neologism up from scratch. But his derivation from the Greek has to be so obscure it was hardly worth the effort. Is this an example of taking a "shortcut"?
@BritishBeachcomber2 жыл бұрын
If only my math teacher had taught us the shortcuts, If have enjoyed the subject. Instead, I struggled. It was only as an adult that, when I discovered shortcuts, that I finally learned to love math.
@JohnSmith-nz2yq2 жыл бұрын
Was it their responsibility to teach you shortcuts?
@shakebraza1962 жыл бұрын
Your lecture proves scientists are most unscientific with analogies.
@clickaccept2 жыл бұрын
I mean, the fact that Gauss's brain is missing... this is not a minor mishap: its the start of a science fiction movie!
@wtfisthishandlebs2 жыл бұрын
Fantastic 👌
@parinyachintanakarn262111 ай бұрын
Sofar the best way to used A.I.
@carpiaasta95262 жыл бұрын
Wow!
@ArtII2Long9 ай бұрын
Traveling salesman, try a nearly straight line, forming a spiral... of course proving it is the challenge ... skipping the nearest city is the hard part.
@bigcountry55202 жыл бұрын
Conservation of energy is why hexagonal structures are found in nature. The Electromagnetic field governs the entropy of all matter. Technically it's not a hexagon, but it looks that way due to higher dimensional boundaries.
@-danR2 жыл бұрын
lol
@NomadUniverse2 жыл бұрын
The Gaus anecdote at the start, I was already starting to think about working backwards and Marcus proposed the million hypothetical I thought well no counting needed, that answer is just going to have X more zeros, 50, 005, 000?
@englebig2 жыл бұрын
n/2 x (n+1) or 500000500000
@thewanderingweasel2 жыл бұрын
Here I am, a random person actually watching from Sacramento.
@snagar369 Жыл бұрын
22:00
@Henkvanpeer2 жыл бұрын
Lazy plus highIQ =>Th8nkOf Shortcut which is just another word for algorithm. SC=ALGORITHM!
@walterstafford93542 жыл бұрын
I thought it was called a brachistochrone curve?
@trailer200012 жыл бұрын
So what value is there in knowing the answer is 5050
@JDB25522 жыл бұрын
Am I missing something or does Koengsberg (sp?) only have six bridges now, as the presenter spoke of the seven modern day bridges?
@darbyl38722 жыл бұрын
And, there are still 4 odd nodes - not solvable, it appears.
@Meta-trope2 жыл бұрын
Wait, you could actually win $1kk if you know math well enough?? Take that people that said you can't get rich through math. I'm starting to learn math for sure!
@walterstafford93542 жыл бұрын
brachistochrone curveat 12:16
@marksd56502 жыл бұрын
This “Short Cut” topic on balance is a stretch. I’d find him engaging as a professor, but I’m not inclined to read the book.
@Psnym2 жыл бұрын
As a programmer and sometimes hacker, I find the idea of “shortcuts” very appealing. “The three virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Arrogance, and Hubris” -Larry Wall, creator of the Perl language
@atikahrostam57782 жыл бұрын
@@Psnym a very good quote
@ksmyth9992 жыл бұрын
I think the Gauss story sells Gauss a bit short. He was both a maths genius and a mental prodigy. There is a much more obvious solution to the problem and I think both would have occurred to Gauss. I think he described to his teacher the most eloquent solution. I think any mathematician will find the other solution with a little thought. But there is no incentive to do so. I found it purely by accident, in fact in my sleep.
@theblackspider81552 жыл бұрын
??
@ksmyth9992 жыл бұрын
@@theblackspider8155 Is that a question?
2 жыл бұрын
The slide at 8:57 gets a whole new meaning in Spring 2022. The talk was filmed in November 2021, so this cannot be an easter egg.
@VK-sp4gv2 жыл бұрын
4:16, poiesis, not proeisis.
@graememudie79212 жыл бұрын
Being a lazy individual I have always looked for the most efficient way of doing anything. Comes second nature to me. 🤣
@MyDavidPutnam2 жыл бұрын
I would love to learn how to prove math theorems, but math is so hard for me🤷🏻♂️
@simonmasters32952 жыл бұрын
A lot of criticism here regarding style, but I don't think you can describe this as boring. As for the book I haven't read it but I suspect those critical of his popularising a subject that needs it desperately haven't either.
@cloudrouju5262 жыл бұрын
I’m glad my math teacher wasn’t like him.
@johnk95472 жыл бұрын
Not sure that causing an avalanche is the most laudable way of getting down a mountain. .
@morpheus67492 жыл бұрын
He has miscalculated the cat population sample size for the given specifications. For a cat population size of 7,000,000, in order to achieve results within a 5% margin of error with 95% confidence (19 out of 20 times), you need 385 cats in your sample, not 246.
@colindant34102 жыл бұрын
You have assumed that the population proportion is 0.5, whilst MDS has assumed that the population proportion is 0.8.
@morpheus67492 жыл бұрын
@@colindant3410 Based on what?
@eriktempelman20972 жыл бұрын
Shortcuts are fun! Take Wimbledon... how many matches does it have in the regular male singles tournament? It has 128 participants, right? Well, each game produces 1 winner and 1 loser. At the end, after the final, we have 1 winner and 127 losers... so there must be 127 matches. Nice and easy!
@anandrangachari32192 жыл бұрын
🤣🤣🤣🤣
@letsgoBrandon2042 жыл бұрын
What is it about mathematicians and stripy jumpers?
@rafirobin2 жыл бұрын
❤️
@michaelpenklis7580 Жыл бұрын
1/e=36.7879%
@Longtack552 жыл бұрын
Mike Ermentraut from Breaking Bad?
@tkar662 жыл бұрын
How many child are there waiting for that lightbulb to be shifted ON?
@rickharold78842 жыл бұрын
Cool
@michaelpenklis7580 Жыл бұрын
100*(100+1)/2
@beverlyk62182 жыл бұрын
I came up with 5000 in less than a minute. Let me think about the extra 50 using 50 x 100. I am going to ask someone to tell me where the extra 50 comes from. Just in case . I will check back in a day or two. Never mind I got it.
@flemmingaaberg44572 жыл бұрын
Is "Proiesis" meant to be poiesis?
@briankelly58282 жыл бұрын
Yes, I don't think that word exists.
@Nobody-ow9mw2 жыл бұрын
.
@jnhrtmn2 жыл бұрын
Intoxicating short cuts are, and math is awesome to a fault. The understanding of cause should be described mathematically, but modern physics has this backward. They will hastily describe something with math and derive cause from that math. An analogous math description is not understanding, but it becomes a permanent feature in a crowd, and we are stuck with it forever. The scientific method does not care about that, because it prefers constant over causality.