3 HN users recommended this lecture3 months2022–2026score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters recommend it to see how a top mathematician approaches an unfamiliar problem through experiments and curiosity.
Timothy Gowers thinks aloud, in real time, as he tries to understand why Pascal's determinant equals 1. He does not fully solve it in this episode, but shows his exploratory process.
“Gowers has one of my favourite video series about how he approaches a problem he is unfamiliar with” (HN, 2026)
I’ll add to this to give an example of someone who I feel is doing a great job of satisfying this very request in the field of mathematics: Timothy Gowers. His yt channel is an excellent resource of theoretical understanding through numerical methods. Here’s my favorite series where he confirms/elucidates a “strange” theoretical fact with an explorative numerical style: [this video] Simply superb content.
Gowers explores a strange determinant fact with numerical experiments.
But I do appreciate the comedy! Well while I have you, the message I feel I failed to adhere to in my comment was my interest in letting you, or others who follow their passion in math and programming, know that what you are doing is in fact “real” math! Keep it up! Your post made me click through a bunch of links in it. Thank you, but give me back that hour! ;P Better yet, I’ll trade you a different rabbit hole. Based on your post I think you’d really enjoy this “strange determinant” series from Timothy Gowers: [this video] [link]
Series exploring a strange determinant, suggested as a fun rabbit hole.
Unfortunately Gowers has taken Tao's lead on this one. Gowers has one of my favourite video series about how he approaches a problem he is unfamiliar with: [this video] It is disheartening to see him jump into this GenAI puffery. I hope these GenAI labs are paying Tao handsomely for legitimizing their slop, but more likely he's feeling pressure from his University to promote and work with these labs. My guess is Gowers wants in on that action, or his University does. Either way, it makes me sad. If its self motivated... even sadder.
Gowers shows how he approaches an unfamiliar problem.
> How would you solve a problem that no one has ever touched before, and that no one knows the answer to? Where are you going to be provided the answer? This is very near and dear to my heart. We are talking about “teaching” and I doubt anyone who supports the current education status quo is advocating to teach using unsolved problems. That said, I do feel, personally, and have long advocated for, teaching using unsolved problems as a better technique, because you learn strategies for approaching a problem much better than: here’s theorem 13.4 heres an exercise problem that uses the theorem, what’s the answer? It reads like you see my opinions are black and white and yours as spectra. Using your own reading on your own comment the logical conclusion is “a system that teaches to an answer will be unable to answer unanswered questions because the students were only taught to answer questions that already have answers.” A great example of the answer being the most useless part of one’s own personal knowledge is Timothy Gowers YouTube content: [this video] But who’s cares what some YouTuber is up to? He’s just out here promoting an inherently incorrect education method wrought from a dysfunctional mind.
Example of exploring problems instead of memorizing answers.
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