Gilbert Strang: Why People Like Math
00:00:00.000 | - On YouTube, just consuming a bunch of videos
00:00:05.000 | and just watching what people connect with
00:00:08.160 | and what they really enjoy and are inspired by,
00:00:11.480 | math seems to come up again and again.
00:00:13.740 | I'm trying to understand why that is.
00:00:18.160 | Perhaps you can help give me clues.
00:00:20.680 | So it's not just the kinds of lectures that you give,
00:00:24.960 | but it's also just other folks,
00:00:27.320 | like with Numberphile, there's a channel,
00:00:29.440 | where they just chat about things
00:00:31.160 | that are extremely complicated, actually.
00:00:34.080 | People nevertheless connect with them.
00:00:36.120 | What do you think that is?
00:00:38.760 | - It's wonderful, isn't it?
00:00:40.000 | I mean, I wasn't really aware of it.
00:00:42.680 | We're conditioned to think math is hard,
00:00:46.200 | math is abstract, math is just for a few people,
00:00:49.480 | but it isn't that way.
00:00:50.800 | A lot of people quite like math,
00:00:54.720 | and I get messages from people saying,
00:00:57.920 | "You know, now I'm retired, I'm gonna learn some more math."
00:01:01.000 | I get a lot of those, it's really encouraging.
00:01:04.160 | And I think what people like is that there's some order,
00:01:07.680 | a lot of order, and things are not obvious, but they're true.
00:01:12.680 | So it's really cheering to think
00:01:17.200 | that so many people really wanna learn more about math, yeah.
00:01:22.200 | - And in terms of truth, again,
00:01:26.040 | sorry to slide into philosophy at times,
00:01:29.680 | but math does reveal pretty strongly what things are true.
00:01:34.680 | I mean, that's the whole point of proving things.
00:01:38.120 | - It is, yeah.
00:01:39.680 | - And yet, sort of our real world is messy and complicated.
00:01:44.000 | What do you think about the nature of truth
00:01:47.400 | that math reveals?
00:01:48.840 | - Oh, wow.
00:01:49.720 | - Because it is a source of comfort, like you've mentioned.
00:01:52.160 | - Yeah, that's right.
00:01:53.800 | Well, I have to say, I'm not much of a philosopher.
00:01:57.280 | I just like numbers, you know, as a kid.
00:02:00.080 | This was before you had to go in
00:02:06.360 | when you had a filly in your teeth,
00:02:08.280 | you had to kind of just take it.
00:02:10.280 | So what I did was think about math,
00:02:13.280 | you know, like take powers of two, two, four, eight, 16,
00:02:17.360 | up until the time the tooth stopped hurting
00:02:20.160 | and the dentist said you were through.
00:02:22.920 | Or counting, yeah.
00:02:25.040 | So it--
00:02:25.880 | - So that was a source of just, source of peace almost.
00:02:28.960 | - Yeah.
00:02:29.800 | - What is it about math do you think that brings that?
00:02:33.960 | - Yeah.
00:02:34.800 | - What is that?
00:02:35.640 | - Well, you know where you are.
00:02:36.680 | Yeah, it's symmetry, it's certainty.
00:02:40.100 | The fact that, you know, if you multiply two by itself
00:02:44.080 | 10 times, you get 1,024, period.
00:02:47.480 | Everybody's gonna get that.
00:02:49.160 | - Do you see math as a powerful tool or as an art form?
00:02:53.320 | - So it's both.
00:02:55.000 | That's really one of the neat things.
00:02:56.680 | You can be an artist and like math.
00:03:00.640 | You can be a engineer and use math.
00:03:05.200 | - Which are you?
00:03:06.200 | Which--
00:03:07.020 | - Which am I?
00:03:07.860 | - What did you connect with most?
00:03:09.080 | - Yeah, I'm somewhere between.
00:03:11.600 | I'm certainly not a artist type, philosopher type person.
00:03:15.800 | Might sound that way this morning, but I'm not.
00:03:18.600 | (laughing)
00:03:20.680 | Yeah, I really enjoy teaching engineers
00:03:23.880 | because they go for an answer.
00:03:27.480 | And yeah, so probably within the MIT math department,
00:03:32.480 | most people enjoy teaching students
00:03:38.720 | who get the abstract idea.
00:03:41.160 | I'm okay with, I'm good with engineers
00:03:46.440 | who are looking for a way to find answers, yeah.
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