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I love when a new Tested video shows up and it turns out to be Adam hanging out with one of my more obscure favorite UA-camrs. I'm jealous too, of course: Why can't _I_ spend an afternoon in the shop with Laura Kampf? It's not fair! But mostly I just love it.
Honestly can't believe this is happening, Adam and Matt have both given me so much joy over the years, it's incredible to see them both in the same video! Also here are the actual rules of the Collatz conjecture: If x even -> x/2 If x odd -> 3x+1 (Someone had to do it)
@@qwvpv And while I only half-remembered that, I was immediately "wait, even can divide into two, not into three, and this thing never produces non-integers; so three must be used to make the number larger and even ... how do you ... oh really, there was a +1 ..." ... so, does it work with 3x+1 _and_ 3x-1? Let's see, 1->2->1, 3->8->4->2->1, 5->14->7->20->10->5 ... no, it does _not_ work with -1!
Wow. I'm an Australian and didn't notice it until i read your comment. I assume its because of the cross cultural exposure. I'm going to have to go back and see how the pronounced colour.
I started watching Matt (and Numberphile) a few years ago. A while later work I was leading a training session and the English person on the team started laughing randomly. It was then explained that I was saying “maths” without even realizing it.
The "I don't know" aspect can have humorous connotations: There is the story of a famous British physicist giving a lecture on some new theoretical concept. He got to a part on his scribbles on the chalkboard going from one set of equations to another and said, "It is intuitively obvious that this leads to that," and was just going to swap over when he looked at the two formulae and said to himself, out loud, "Is it intuitively obvious?" He shook his head and exited the room, leaving his audience wondering what was going on. Some time later, he triumphantly marches back into the room, displays a thick sheet of paper with his scribbles all over it, and says, "Yes, it IS intuitively obvious!" and continues the lecture...
Nice, but there are a few problems. A) The man was not a British physicist, but the mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy. B) There was no new theory, he was just giving a lecture. C) He did not say 'intuitively obvious' but rather just 'obvious'.
@Nathan Okun: Reminds me of a side story about physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, related by sci-fi writer Alfred Bester in his short story, _The Men Who Murdered Mohammed,_ which centered on a (more modern) absent-minded physics professor who invents a time machine. According to the side story about Prof. Boltzmann, when he gave his lectures, he would rapidly scribble the math on the board, going from one proposition to the next, each time skipping several steps he considered obvious. His students suffered this in silence for a few sessions; but then finally a group of them approached him after class, imploring him to include more of the steps in his derivations, which he consented to do. So the very next lecture, he began breezing through yet another rapid-fire series of equations, saying, "This follows as easily as 2+2=4." Then, remembering his promise, he stopped and wrote, "2+2=4" and continued scribbling in rapid-fire mode... Fred PS. Any relation to Milton Okun, of 60's folk recording production fame (incl. Peter Paul & Mary)?
@@ragnkja god, i wished him to host nobel minds that i lost hope He asks such an amazing and profound questions that sciencists have longed to be asked instead of those "how did you feel?" Or "what inspired you?" Bs.
The maths teacher point is really important I think. I always liked maths, but then I got maths classes in school, a teacher who didn't want to be there, a constant rush, not enough books for everyone, not enough time to always check your work before continuing to the next problems, and no attention paid to the process, only the results... I needed a long break from maths after that, because it just became stressful and I couldn't find joy in it anymore. I barely remember anything I learned there, because nothing made sense. The past few years I've been reigniting my interest with the help of things like UA-cam, it's fun again and I can retain the knowledge because the logic it revealed.
I am continually impressed at how well Adam's personality meshes with other creators and performers. Matt Parker, Kyle Hill and Michael Stevens all have quite distinct personalities, and yet they all make such brilliant conversation and craft partners with Adam. It might just be that Adam is ridiculously personable.
Hearing about Matt's first experiences and interests with math brings me some fond memories from my own childhood. If it weren't for my ma and my grandpa(Ma being a puzzle junkie, and grandpa a chess addict), I think I wouldn't have cultivated such interest in mathematics. Matt is a truly amazing human being for showing this brighter, goofier side of mathematics, as well as the depth and relationship it has with all manners of human life and entertainment. This sense of wonder and interest is absolutely contagious, and a huge service to society and to the science and art of mathematics. If only everyone had this enthusiasm, this giant off-the-rails puzzle game would be way more appreciated by youth and adults alike.
Imagine how much farther along we'd be if we'd share our mistakes. Teach your kids that mistakes are how we learn, and never berate them or shame them for making a mistake.
@Gareth Tucker it's more complicated than some half conceived admonishment. Schooling has to be done in a group setting, school systems buy a curriculum program and sometimes that's more scripted than you realize, public school funding is hit or miss at best, teachers do the best they can, which is much more than you realize, and they're not mathematicians themselves.
@Gareth Tucker no, I suppose we aren't from the same country. In the US, public school teachers get the short end of the stick and are the first to be criticized for supposed problems and held to account for outcomes that stem from family issues in students' homes that they have zero control over. They are forced to try and work miracles to make up for the failures of school boards, upper administration, and shoddy parenting. And politicians like to be critical and make speeches when it's convenient for them to try and score points with voters. My wife is an elementary school teacher. It's a touchy subject with me.
@@TheDesertRat31 Here in Finland the *minimum* education required to be a mathematics teacher is Master of Science in Mathematics from a Finnish university. So they are literally mathematicians themselves.
At university we had a running joke that when an experiment did not work ... like at all, that we will publish it in the "Journal of failed Experiments". And to be honest, that is something that should really be a thing. I can only imagine how many ressources were put into trying certain things because nobody knew that others have tried them and failed, and thus never published their findings. Of course it does not mean that some of these things are impossible to work, new insights or developments might bypass aspects that make them not work, maybe there were mistakes that nobody noticed etc, but just knowing what people have tried, even if it didn't work is still very important knowledge.
I've noticed over the years that both Matt and Adam are extremely smart, (not a novel observation). However, Adam is "Right Brained" (intutative, thoughtful, and subjective) while his chosen profession since Mythbusters is one normally associated with "Left" brained (logical, analytical, and objective). He doesn't struggle with this, he is just that brilliant. This is such an unusual combination, though, where historically many others with such combinations sometimes are "fakes" or inventors of cooky and acentric ideas which never take off and yet they never let go. Matt is the exact opposite and yet also still not fake. They both are in the same business. This is such an interesting interview given such similarities and yet such strong contrasts.
On the question of how to get people to not be afraid of maths, I'm not a school teacher but I've had a lot of success with making games that teach the practice of an equation. The question is "Why do I want to know this?" The answer should be either it's useful or it's fun. Having a game that is fun, not a boring memorization exercise with a game slapped over it, is a great way of getting people interested. I think that's the core of the idea of using magic tricks to teach maths. So maths teachers should be game designers.
I never ever wanted to learn to count in other bases until I played minecraft. Now I can count base 2, base 16 (x quarter stacks), base 64(x stacks), base 1927 (x shulker boxes/single chests), etc. I didn't even really realize thats what we were doing lol
The videos where Adam is doing a one-on-one interview with someone in his own home had always been fun to watch. Maybe there's going to be an audio podcast version...?
@@ilichiregius2884 the thing with video is... if you want to watch, you can watch, if just want to listen, you can just listen. Why would somebody make audio only when they have the camera at home already?
I didn’t know it until Adam said it but I remember having the same feeling when I asking a teacher a question in their response being I don’t know but we can figure it out. Difference between teachers who care and want to teach and teachers who don’t.
Unfortunately a lot of truly gifted and earnest teachers are having their hands tied by stupid teaching and testing requirements, at least in the U.S. Students only get enough of a subject to pass a test. There's no actual learning, only memorization.
I am a retired high school math teacher with Bachelor and Masters degrees. I subscribe to both Tested and Numberphile and really enjoy them. In regards to the perception of what kind of people go into math, my students always used to think that I must have been some sort of nerdy egghead when I was in school. But they were always very surprised when I told them that I went into math because of sex appeal - I met a pretty girl who was a math major. So I switched my major from biology to math so that I could spend more time with her! We've been married 43 years now and I've never regretted either decision!
I'm studying a maths degree and I'm finding the subject matter tough. It's so nice to hear someone say "Sometimes it's ok to get it wrong" or "Maths isn't about always getting it right."
the part about math as a recreational activity describes my childhood perfectly! i remember talking math at the dinner table growing up. i even did test runs on the math quizzes my mom made for her students. my dad has a masters of engineering degree and my mom has a masters of science degree and their attitude towards math played a huge role in how i came to like it too! and even if i am currently in the humanities field i still love puzzles and math to be a part of my recreational activities! i will definitely buy this book and read it, before handing it over to my parents. i think we will all enjoy it!
Best thing my mother did for me as a child was making a game out of calculating the total cost for groceries faster than the clerk scanning the items. By the time I was eight I could routinely do so including figuring the sales tax. There was one particular clerk at the corner store who once she learned what I was doing started trying to race me when scanning items so I had as little time as possible to see the prices before the next one popped up on the till. I loved when we had her at the check out because it made it an actual challenge.
When my wife and I were raising our son we had alternate schedules that enabled us to give full time with our son. My wife came home one day and caught me playing with a Thomas The Tank Engine train track. I told her I was trying to make a track using every piece of track. She was hooked in. We spent a week or so to the challenge. Then we added in to complete it in smaller area. It was great fun. By the way, my wife was raised on logic puzzles. Daddy would come home from a trip and give her a treat. I was raised on sugar and TV.
Adam and Matt make my favorite videos now and I cannot believe it took the UA-cam algorithm so long to put this in front of me. As someone who is passionate about math and currently going back to school for Mathematics Teaching this video hits home on so many levels. Especially when it comes to getting something wrong. Thank you both for creating such beautiful content and adding another voice to the problem with the way we look at teaching math.
The most frustrating math experience I've ever had was in a university statistics class. The professor was using π as a variable. I don't know if I missed it but as far as I know she never explained that she was using π as a variable so I kept getting problems wrong as I assumed π = 3.14...... .
Love this content so much. The meeting of 2 of my favorite guys! Small request: is it possible to hand-place where the ads fall? Most of them on this video were mid-word and it made it a little difficult to understand sometimes!
I'd love to see Matt talk with them on a way to improve their press or whatever extreme mechanical device they are messing with for their videos. The Hydraulic Press folks have great machining and practical knowledge, but I think Matt might offer them a different insight on ways to take things to an even more extreme level.
Collet's conjecture (spelling from subtitles) I think the rules are: If n is odd multiply by 3 and add on (n(n+1)=n*3+1) if it's even divide by two (n(n+1)=n/2) I think my notation is terrible.
oh shit, thank you for the hint that Brady and Adam spoke. for anyone else who didn't know this, Brady's on the Adam Savage Project podcast here: ua-cam.com/video/7Bia-dNcBm4/v-deo.html
This is one of my top 5 tested videos so far. Reading the book during my morning commute. We are doomed as a species unless we are more open about our mistakes.
Kind of related, in engineering school, my professors told me that I needed to make mistakes as fast as possible. Aiming to be perfect on the first try is a waste of everyone's time and effort. I agree that we need to approach making mistakes differently, and realize that they arent bad, they are opportunity.
I had a heart attack a couple of years ago, and was recuperating in a care facility. I got a friend to bring me a calculator so I could play with numbers, which I sometimes enjoy doing. Long story short, I decided to see if I could find a method of generating the sequences of numbers in the diagonals of Pascal's Triangle. Not being a mathematician, I didn't really expect to succeed, but I gave it a go - and I actually succeeded! Then a few weeks ago I found another, completely different method! I knew how to build the Triangle row by row using addition, but I wanted to see if I could find a way to build it diagonal by diagonal. It was a lot of fun! 🤓
Matt and Adam. I am a person with disabilities. In high school I comprehended Algebra. In college I failed and thus I had to drop out of my college program because there were three classes of Algebra were required. I understand the theory of Algebra, but I cannot process it correctly (brain injury?). Its not that i did not try, I just could not make it through the algebra. [I ruined a whole pile of pens being frustrated] What can one say the education system that believes that anyone can learn when you have persons like myself? Is there anyway to fight through this when 95% of the college classes require algebra for employment objectives? Adams circular puzzle was known as "the Brain". I got so good with that I could do it in 3 minutes!
24:30 - YES! My grandfather had that same radial lever puzzle. I was *SO* happy when I figured it out, and eventually got to the point that I could solve it insanely fast without even looking at it, purely by feel. I loved that little puzzle.
I have the video paused and jumped down to the comments because I can't concentrate on the rest of it until I know what this puzzle is. I'm not familiar and before I started Googling, I wanted to make sure I found the right thing. Any clues on what to search for?
@@nickf3242 I have zero idea what it's called. But form Adam's description, I knew instantly it was the puzzle I had. Just did some searching that included a keyword that reveals the solution, so I don't want to share the exact search term I used, but here's a picture of it: www.puzzlegrail.com/Brain_black.png Unfortunately, THAT page doesn't give it a name, just a link to where to buy it, and that link is dead.
@@nickf3242 AHA! Found it. It is simply "The Brain Puzzle", apparently released in 1979 by Mag-Nif (whose website was linked by the previous search result, but their website is broken.) Unfortunately, basically every search result for it is the solution, some of which give a massive "spoiler" as to the solution in the title. I did find a 3D print file to make your own, though: www.thingiverse.com/make:573412
@@AnonymousFreakYT Awesome thanks. I wasn't having any luck with the few keywords. I have not seen it before. I'll try and stay away from the spoilers. Thanks for the heads up. I just replied with the same relieved "found it" to another commenter about finding a vid where Matt talks about the differences between the UK ans US versions of the book lol Bullet-Proof Bicycle (feat. Matt Parker) - Objectivity #203 (ua-cam.com/video/rbJuD8Oi4bw/v-deo.html)
I loved that puzzle as a kid. Once I solved I tried to see how fast I could move the levers in and then back out again. In fact, I still have the puzzle in a box in the garage.
I had a ridiculously hard time with math until my junior year of highschool, where i actually had a math instructor who figured out that i needed to know WHY things worked, rather than just memorizing rules. Then, when i got to college, i had to take "Technical Math" which was the name of the course, and it started (at the college level, mind you), with a number line. But it made the rules of math make sense, instead of a bunch of rote rules. I think anybody could be good at math if they are taught math correctly. As in not learning a rule that doesn't make sense, and instead give you a set of rules that are consistent. And because they are consistent, you learn it once and use it forever after.
My “wow, maths can be interesting” was in A Level maths when I found out and did work out the mass of the moon by just knowing how far away it was and it’s orbit time.
Mine was far simpler, I was around 8 and trying to work out the hypotenuse of a rectangular prism by working out the hypotenuse of the one side and then repeating with the hypotenuse and the 3rd axis. Suddenly on my page after simplifying it a bit was x^2 + y^2 + x^2 = h^2. Now obviously, deriving a 3D Pythagorean theorem from the 2D version is hardly genius level work, but it was the first time that I has some kind of aha moment into "what math was really about". This was in the 80's and I was teaching myself to program rudimentary games in BASIC, and until that point all of my self taught trig and stuff were purely tools to work out cartesian stuff for the games.
I am a lapsed computer science teacher and I have always admitted when I don’t know something. It does shock students though as they expect me to know everything. Like Matt said there are different levels of not knowing. With coding there is often a ‘what the hell....’ level where it (some code or a computer) does something unusual, often caused by a limit placed on the network due to it being in a school. I created an ISS tracker in Python that worked absolutely perfectly at home but refused point blank to run in the school. In the end it took my boss, the school IT tech and a visiting IT professional four hours to fix. I apologized profusely but was told it was the most fun they had had in ages. They had to write code that tricked the school firewall to let it create a temporary cache, and then only query the cache and not try to go back to the online data service. It meant the location of the ISS was only really correct the very first time the code was run, but we didn’t tell the kids that and everyone was happy. Fun times.
I love Matt Parker, and a recent big fan of Adam Savage. Because of this video, I went out and purchased the audiobook of Humble Pi. So far, it is incredible!
One of the best teaching methods i was ever part of consisted of three parts. They were called large group, small group, and labs. Not all classes had labs. But anyway, large group was the entire student body for a particular class sitting in a lecture room, and you were lectured at and took notes. No questions allowed usually. So large group could be over 100 students at a shot. Then, in small group, you'd sit down around a table, and 10-12 students and 1 teacher would discuss and elaborate on the large group lecture. So you got the big info dump in large group, a chance to really dig into the info in small group. It was the best of both worlds. And labs were just that, if you were taking a class that had any kind of lab work, that's when you did your labs.
This thing about openness regarding mistakes .... I have an interesting account.. A little back ground ... My grandpa, my dad and my stepfather were all civil engineers and my mom was a delineator. This is no trivial thing in a child's life. Things like building a sugar cube mission, a log cabin, or an Indian wigwam (all of which were common projects for elementary students of my generation) became a major lesson in plum lines, angles, stress load, and a number of other things that were beyond most students in elementary school. Children in my family seldom had coloring books, we instead got rolls of old plains for houses and maps and such like that. That perhaps contributed to my 1st grade teacher's use of a the floor plan I drew when asked to draw a house as evidence that I was a bit "slow". Well, perhaps my floor plan was a bit "slow". After all she didn't have a a straight edge for me to use so it was all free hand. Then there was the bathroom which was the largest room in the house having 3 sinks, 2 toilets and 2 bathtubs. (I was 1 of 7 children and I though that was an excellent remedy to bathroom time congestion). I distinctively remember my dad's calm, patient, teaching tone as he explained to my teacher some very outstanding (for a 1st grade) features of my floor plan including the correct use of symbols for windows, doors and wall thinkness. This was the beginning of my concept that all people didn't know all things like my dad did (it wasn't until my teenage years that I momentarily though he was a blooming perfectist idiot). My dad when we got home from school using the same patient, calm, teaching voice to help me improve my floor plan. This may have been when I started to develop the idea that it was a very good idea that my dad and mom from time to time kept us out of school (more often than the school likee) so we could go see interesting projects their agency was working on.. So to the account about not revealing mistakes. One day the family was on a car trip and we children started asking about why same curves were banked more than others and why the straight road wasn't banked. We learned about cloverleaf and diamond acceleration / deceleration zones, the out ward force on an object making a turn, and my eldest sibling who was learning to drive knew that it felt more comfortable when making a curve at the correct speed. In the course of the conversation my dad told about an engineer who for thought that banking the curves the wrong way on a 2 lane country highway through the mountains would be a good way to keep people from speeding. My dad had told us believe it or not, not only was the plan conceived, and designed, it was approved and constructed. All of us children wanted to go see this road the next time we took a day trip. My dad told us he wouldn't tell us where it was because it was a secret but that most of us had been on the road. He told us that if we could individually identify the road giving good reasons for oir choice we could be in on the secret. We of course wanted to know why it was a secret. My dad explained that although the speed had been reduced in that area due to the curves and road conditions to make the road safe there would still be people that would try to sue the agency that designed and built the road if they had an accident on it. He explained that of course such people would have no case but it could still cost the agency millions of dollars to prove the persons attempting to sue had no case. I think this was the beginning of my thoughts about how dangerous it is to attempt to lay blame at all cost for things that happen without any malice or neglect.
I still remember my math epiphany as a teenager. I grew up programming so already used math for that frequently, but my mind was blown when I learned about matrix transformations. I ran to the computer lab in the next period and whipped out a 3d rotating wireframe cube animation.
20:11 My dad is 'famously' bad at math. He's proud of the story that he was sick and missed 2 weeks of school and so never understood algebra. Me, I went on to be the first person in my family to go to college and I got a PhD in math. My origin story: I hate arithmetic and thought math was horrible. (In hindsight, I wasn't challenged and my ADHD brain was bored out of my skull being forced to do 100 arithmetic problems per worksheet every day, when I had gotten how it worked when the teacher showed the algorithm on the board the first day.) It was in pre-algebra when they showed that you could set up an equation and solve it to find the answer to something practical and I saw how universally applicable and powerful that was when I saw how beautiful math is.
I had to get so close to my screen because I just couldn't believe it. It is really my favorite square theorist with Adam Savage. The world just got a little better.
Great video! What could you enjoy more than two enthusiastic people talking about what they like. I can totally see why in engineering you can't share the mistakes even if you wanted to. Usually it doesn't matter if you learned, people remember your company as the ones who messed up and try to hire somebody who doesn't have that title on their forehead. I guess it's the feedback loop all the way from the beginning saying you don't want to make mistakes, you want to be spotless. Even when they quote edison saying he found 999 ways to not succeed to come to the answer. I also remember those teachers, or substitute teachers, who stopped to figure out something after they were asked and it felt really engaging. We were suddenly part of the team, all of us, and it became so much easier to ask questions in the future too. You discovered they don't know everything and that they too figure things out through hard work. A lot of the uni teachers luckily go through that when they haven't prepared something and you get the feeling that you can figure it out yourself as well, through some logical steps.
I love both your channels, Adam's, and also Matt's. I still learn so much from the both of you. This video reminded me of a discussion I had with a couple of friends about the following: What is 6/2(1+2) ? The way I learned is that you first have to get rid of the brackets, making it 6/2(3). Still brackets there, so 2 times 3 equals 6, no more brackets, boom problem solved. 6/6 ((2 times 3 before dividing by 6)), which would equal 1. But the interwebs exploded on this equation stating it should be 9 ((6 divided by 2, which equals 3, times 3 which would equal 9)). ..so my question is: 9 or 1????? ..I was and still am so bad at maths, despite the fact I understand how a Rubik's cube works and how a Rhombic Dodecahedron relates to Hard Spheres. But I just can't wrap my mind around maths when one source says X, and and another source says Y.. ..please help me understand this conundrum..
I am so greatful to my dad who made me calculate minimum required number of moves in tower of hanoi (with 8 discs) when i was 6. He still says he was surprised hen i came up and said 255. I actually invented recursion for myself back then. So when i had to learn recursion in school later on it was natural for me.
I can relate to Adam's story about getting emotional watching Numberphile. I will sometimes tell people about some exciting fun new math thing I've learned only to be met with a blank stare. As if to say, "You've just used the words 'math' and 'exciting' in the same sentence. Surely I've misheard you somehow."
Absolutely ADORE this video. I came across this by accident, while taking a break from writing a very long and tedious document, and I actually feel inspired again.
I remember that puzzle Adam mentioned around minute 24. Probably around the same age. Fiddled with it just to see how the pegs moved. "Okay, there's a pattern here." Having recently discovered the joy of number systems, I thought "this feels a lot like counting in binary." At which point I recognized it as just a more complicated version of the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. So it didn't take long to solve, but the enjoyment I had working it out stays with me decades later.
I love it when the people I follow cross paths. I really hope Matt appears on the podcast or collaborations with math geeks starts to become a more regular thing.
HTTP error 404 has almost gotten like a Twilight Zone eerie kind of status today. But it really pales in comparison to the "Run Time Error 200" which would occur when a program written in the original Turbo Pascal for good old DOS was trying to calculate the speed of a fast computer for use in it's delay(); procedure. An issue very similar to the countdown to zero crashes.... search it up and check it out, if you are interested (obviously).
The most interesting book about math that I have ever read was called (I think) "The Rising Fastball" (that also may have been a chapter in the book). I got the book for Christmas about 40 years ago, and it described how we do math all the time without ever realizing it. My favorite 'tidbit of knowledge' in the book is this: A third baseman throwing to the first baseman is actually aiming at a point roughly 16' above his head. The whole book is filled with neat nuggets of information like that.
I was looking forward to this video. What a great way to start a new series. Two smart and funny guys who inspire learning with their infectious enthusiasm.
On the question of how to make maths more enjoyable. It turns out that I am completely rubbish at learning things by rote. I just don't memorise facts well and then retrieve them at will. What I am really good at, is learning something and then working out why it works like that, and then being able to reconstruct the rote learning from the underlying principles. This meant that early maths was terrible for me, because it as lots of memorisation and remembering what formula to use it what situation. At some point I needed to work out the hypotenuse\diagonal of a cube and after starting with the basic pythagoras, I quickly worked out that d^2=x^2+y^2+x^2. Now this may not seem like a great discovery but I was only 11 at the time, and this gave me the epiphany that maths wasn't something that I just needed to memorise, it was something that I could explore and remix for my own needs and that by understanding the principals I could creatively explore the world of numbers and what they represent. Maths needs more creativity and exploration over rote memorisation and regurgitation.
29:10 I loved doing these civil engineering calculations. Get a result round it up, look into a chart pick the next higher value, get to the end, add a security factor.
So in regard to getting young people enthusiastic about math, I think it's important to consider those things that kill enthusiasm for it. In general, I love math but growing up many times I would hear people complain about story problems. I myself would sometimes complain about them. But that doesn't mean I think they should just all go away. What is it about story problems that bothered people so much. While I can't speak for everyone, I think one of the things that bothered me so much about them was that many of them were just excuses to get you to do a certain type of equation you studied that week, while throwing in numbers that didn't actually reflect reality in any sort of way. It takes time to learn to do math well, but we learn much more quickly to instinctively know if something is right or wrong. So when we do one of these word problems that sets up a situation that just doesn't mesh with what is real we get the initial ping of "This is confusing". But then you struggle through the problem and reach an answer and you are looking at the answer and have no clue if that is right or wrong because your instincts keep trying to apply reality to this problem that had absolutely nothing to do with it in the first place. Then as you grow you better understand that the word problems you are given don't match up with reality so you start asking the question, "When am I ever going to use this in the real world? The real world doesn't act like those word problems." and teachers often just don't have the answer to that question. So my guess on how to enthuse people with math? Try to relate it to the real world as much as you can. If you want a word problem that uses some concept that you studied that week, make sure the word problem isn't just shoehorning in that equation even though it doesn't actually belong there.
DJ Syntic That’s a good point. If used right, word problems could be a great way to build intuition, but instead they’re pretty much exclusively used to teach how to translate from words to equations.
I have never signed a NDA so here goes. The company I work for, a fiberglass manufacturer, was contracted to make moulds and produce a 100 parts from each as the prototypes for a new single seat, three wheel, electric vehicle. I won't name it but it's a synonym of alone. We received solid wood models for a full suite of body panels; hood, fenders, body, etc. We manufactured the moulds and began making parts. The car company began to assemble prototypes, but when they started to attach body panels to the chassis none fit. We made all parts exactly to spec. The subsequent investigations finally revealed the "engineer"had based the dimensions for the models on surface only, with no calculations for volume. To compound the problem he hadn't allowed for this missing volume when dimensioning the chassis. So what we had was the fat man wearing the thin mans clothes. Long story short, math mistakes in industry can be VERY expensive.
"Oh I was never good at math..." I am told something very similar about computer programming on a regular basis, by parents, with their kids right there. I also often hear parents say, "oh, your brother will love this" about something STEM related with their daughters right there. Makes my blood boil. I then calmly explain the problem with that attitude to them. Sometimes, (usually?) works.
I think people have this idea that science and mathematics is naturally hard. And while some calculations and concepts might be difficult to grasp without previous knowledge, I dont think it is naturally hard. Ultimately it boils down to how much a person has practiced. Just like any other field of study. Mathematics isnt even as subjective as other fields like art.
I liked where he said that many in math like that it’s a challenge. I work in tech. I discussed with a coworker once that many of us in software don’t mind and often even enjoy being temporarily confused.
Did I miss something? Early in the interview there was an implication that they would discuss something about the UK vs. the US version of the book, but I don't recall them ever coming back around to it. Can someone drop a timestamp for it?
Fantastic interview. I love Matt's videos and Numberphile and my wife thinks I'm a bit odd for watching math vids on UA-cam. So an interview with my favourite maker just makes me feel like I'm in a room with friends! I've ordered teh book and am looking forward to a great read!
“I don’t recall”, “I’m not aware”, “I don’t know”, “no one knows”, “no one has ever known”, “no one can know”. I try to say the correct one. I think that it’s hilarious, when I get to use any of these.
Much deserved Brady Haran praise in this video. Brady is always the hidden person behind the camera that it’s easy to forget that the videos wouldn’t be anywhere near as good without him applying his mind to it with such sharpness.
24:20 I still have mine from the early 80's. I find it relaxing to do with my eyes closed. (not a brag. it's very easy once you know the progression) [edit: changed: mid 70's to early 80's]
HOLY CRAP! Im so excited about an Adam Savage Book Club! Did i miss something or is this completely new? will he announce the books before hand or am i just completely misunderstanding what's going on haha
Speaking specifically to "you need to give students that "ah ha" moment ... not only give them the tools, but show them where they're used ..." I remember vividly asking my grade 11 math teacher as we were starting to get into calculus where I would ever use this math. Her response? "You just have to learn it." I've got a good friend who's a mechanical engineer, we were roommates in university and I remember thinking if my math teachers ever once made the connection that math and engineering were the same damn thing except interesting I'd have been intrigued. That's the failure of the traditional education system. I find math and engineering fascinating, but the math is incomprehensible to me because a single teacher couldn't give a teenager an answer that would keep him interested in math. I passed that class with 56% and never looked at math again, something which I regret and think about picking up in my "spare" time.
Buy Humble Pi: amzn.to/367UmBV
StandUpMaths: ua-cam.com/users/standupmaths
Numberphile: ua-cam.com/users/numberphile
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When will the 64 bit version of the book be available?
Was there a link to the free PDF mentioned on how to teach math/magic?
@@mjswart73 I think this may be what he was referencing
www.mathematicalmagic.com/docs/mathsmagic_full.pdf
I love when a new Tested video shows up and it turns out to be Adam hanging out with one of my more obscure favorite UA-camrs. I'm jealous too, of course: Why can't _I_ spend an afternoon in the shop with Laura Kampf? It's not fair! But mostly I just love it.
Sy Bernot I’ll make sure it’s out before 2038.
I like how Adam keeps calling it "Maths" to be polite to Matt, and Matt keeps calling it "Math" to be polite to Adam.
As an American I agree with the pronunciation of 2 words from the UK Aluminium and Maths
I am an American, and thanks in some part to my binging of stand-up maths, I am using maths now.
@@BrowncoatInABox but they’re both wrong!
@@jamesmorseman3180 Mathematics is plural so maths makes sense, and I can't pronounce aluminum the American way
@@BrowncoatInABox mathematics is not plural! It’s a relic of an imprecise translation from Greek! It’s still, however, one thing.
Honestly can't believe this is happening, Adam and Matt have both given me so much joy over the years, it's incredible to see them both in the same video!
Also here are the actual rules of the Collatz conjecture:
If x even -> x/2
If x odd -> 3x+1
(Someone had to do it)
It's awesome isnt it!
Parker-Collatz conjecture:
If x even -> x/3
If x odd -> 2x
He still "gave it a go", bless him!
@@qwvpv And while I only half-remembered that, I was immediately "wait, even can divide into two, not into three, and this thing never produces non-integers; so three must be used to make the number larger and even ... how do you ... oh really, there was a +1 ..."
... so, does it work with 3x+1 _and_ 3x-1? Let's see, 1->2->1, 3->8->4->2->1, 5->14->7->20->10->5 ... no, it does _not_ work with -1!
Or in spreadsheet '=if(iseven(n), n/2, n*3+1)'
Well this was a collaboration I wasn't expecting...
Well you don't listen to Still Untitled then, on the Brady Haran podcast Adam said they were going to collab with Matt.
@@c.james1 Correct.
Wasn't expecting, but definitely wanted.
I'm very glad it happened
But it is one I welcome!
By the way, Adam does say "See you soon" to Matt at the very end, I'm just sayin' :p
Hearing Adam say “maths” and Matt say “math” the entire video was quite a head trip.
Wow. I'm an Australian and didn't notice it until i read your comment. I assume its because of the cross cultural exposure. I'm going to have to go back and see how the pronounced colour.
I started watching Matt (and Numberphile) a few years ago. A while later work I was leading a training session and the English person on the team started laughing randomly. It was then explained that I was saying “maths” without even realizing it.
Came to say the same thing! Matt is the one saying it correctly according to the etymology for the word (See Numberphile videos for the explanation).
I gave up after one minute. I can't handle "math".
The American saying it like in the UK and Australia, while the Australian living in UK says it like in the US.
The "I don't know" aspect can have humorous connotations: There is the story of a famous British physicist giving a lecture on some new theoretical concept. He got to a part on his scribbles on the chalkboard going from one set of equations to another and said, "It is intuitively obvious that this leads to that," and was just going to swap over when he looked at the two formulae and said to himself, out loud, "Is it intuitively obvious?" He shook his head and exited the room, leaving his audience wondering what was going on. Some time later, he triumphantly marches back into the room, displays a thick sheet of paper with his scribbles all over it, and says, "Yes, it IS intuitively obvious!" and continues the lecture...
Nice, but there are a few problems.
A) The man was not a British physicist, but the mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy.
B) There was no new theory, he was just giving a lecture.
C) He did not say 'intuitively obvious' but rather just 'obvious'.
@@nanigopalsaha2408 That last one is just nitpicky.
@@justsomeguy892 Ahaahahhahaahaahhaahaahhhhaaaaaahhh
@Nathan Okun: Reminds me of a side story about physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, related by sci-fi writer Alfred Bester in his short story, _The Men Who Murdered Mohammed,_ which centered on a (more modern) absent-minded physics professor who invents a time machine.
According to the side story about Prof. Boltzmann, when he gave his lectures, he would rapidly scribble the math on the board, going from one proposition to the next, each time skipping several steps he considered obvious. His students suffered this in silence for a few sessions; but then finally a group of them approached him after class, imploring him to include more of the steps in his derivations, which he consented to do.
So the very next lecture, he began breezing through yet another rapid-fire series of equations, saying, "This follows as easily as 2+2=4."
Then, remembering his promise, he stopped and wrote,
"2+2=4"
and continued scribbling in rapid-fire mode...
Fred
PS. Any relation to Milton Okun, of 60's folk recording production fame (incl. Peter Paul & Mary)?
@@ffggddss Not that I know of, though I do not know all of my relatives.
Best Quote:
"Everyone needs a Brady"
"A polyidiot!"
dirty_dna
Brady is a professional layperson, isn’t he?
+
@@ragnkja god, i wished him to host nobel minds that i lost hope
He asks such an amazing and profound questions that sciencists have longed to be asked instead of those "how did you feel?" Or "what inspired you?" Bs.
I bags Marsha :-)
Oh my, you two guys together on one screen? Incredible!
I'm impressed by Matt's math/maths switch.
Must have done a few shows in America to get used to that
Adam slipped and said Maths, did you catch they?
Highly impressive! I noticed too heh
I'm distracted by adam's beaver...
@@kingjames4886 LOL
The maths teacher point is really important I think.
I always liked maths, but then I got maths classes in school, a teacher who didn't want to be there, a constant rush, not enough books for everyone, not enough time to always check your work before continuing to the next problems, and no attention paid to the process, only the results... I needed a long break from maths after that, because it just became stressful and I couldn't find joy in it anymore.
I barely remember anything I learned there, because nothing made sense. The past few years I've been reigniting my interest with the help of things like UA-cam, it's fun again and I can retain the knowledge because the logic it revealed.
I am continually impressed at how well Adam's personality meshes with other creators and performers. Matt Parker, Kyle Hill and Michael Stevens all have quite distinct personalities, and yet they all make such brilliant conversation and craft partners with Adam. It might just be that Adam is ridiculously personable.
He might be the Adam of all time.
Hearing about Matt's first experiences and interests with math brings me some fond memories from my own childhood. If it weren't for my ma and my grandpa(Ma being a puzzle junkie, and grandpa a chess addict), I think I wouldn't have cultivated such interest in mathematics. Matt is a truly amazing human being for showing this brighter, goofier side of mathematics, as well as the depth and relationship it has with all manners of human life and entertainment. This sense of wonder and interest is absolutely contagious, and a huge service to society and to the science and art of mathematics. If only everyone had this enthusiasm, this giant off-the-rails puzzle game would be way more appreciated by youth and adults alike.
Imagine how much farther along we'd be if we'd share our mistakes. Teach your kids that mistakes are how we learn, and never berate them or shame them for making a mistake.
@Gareth Tucker it's more complicated than some half conceived admonishment. Schooling has to be done in a group setting, school systems buy a curriculum program and sometimes that's more scripted than you realize, public school funding is hit or miss at best, teachers do the best they can, which is much more than you realize, and they're not mathematicians themselves.
@Gareth Tucker no, I suppose we aren't from the same country. In the US, public school teachers get the short end of the stick and are the first to be criticized for supposed problems and held to account for outcomes that stem from family issues in students' homes that they have zero control over. They are forced to try and work miracles to make up for the failures of school boards, upper administration, and shoddy parenting. And politicians like to be critical and make speeches when it's convenient for them to try and score points with voters. My wife is an elementary school teacher. It's a touchy subject with me.
@@TheDesertRat31 Here in Finland the *minimum* education required to be a mathematics teacher is Master of Science in Mathematics from a Finnish university. So they are literally mathematicians themselves.
Imagine!
At university we had a running joke that when an experiment did not work ... like at all, that we will publish it in the "Journal of failed Experiments".
And to be honest, that is something that should really be a thing. I can only imagine how many ressources were put into trying certain things because nobody knew that others have tried them and failed, and thus never published their findings.
Of course it does not mean that some of these things are impossible to work, new insights or developments might bypass aspects that make them not work, maybe there were mistakes that nobody noticed etc, but just knowing what people have tried, even if it didn't work is still very important knowledge.
I've noticed over the years that both Matt and Adam are extremely smart, (not a novel observation). However, Adam is "Right Brained" (intutative, thoughtful, and subjective) while his chosen profession since Mythbusters is one normally associated with "Left" brained (logical, analytical, and objective). He doesn't struggle with this, he is just that brilliant. This is such an unusual combination, though, where historically many others with such combinations sometimes are "fakes" or inventors of cooky and acentric ideas which never take off and yet they never let go. Matt is the exact opposite and yet also still not fake. They both are in the same business. This is such an interesting interview given such similarities and yet such strong contrasts.
On the question of how to get people to not be afraid of maths, I'm not a school teacher but I've had a lot of success with making games that teach the practice of an equation. The question is "Why do I want to know this?" The answer should be either it's useful or it's fun. Having a game that is fun, not a boring memorization exercise with a game slapped over it, is a great way of getting people interested. I think that's the core of the idea of using magic tricks to teach maths.
So maths teachers should be game designers.
I never ever wanted to learn to count in other bases until I played minecraft. Now I can count base 2, base 16 (x quarter stacks), base 64(x stacks), base 1927 (x shulker boxes/single chests), etc. I didn't even really realize thats what we were doing lol
All this praise for Brady Haran, now I want Adam to travel to London and go on Objectivity and use the White Gloves of Destiny. Ten times.
Omg yes! Adam would freaking love that!
Hopefully this can happen once travel becomes viable again :D I'd love to see it
We've gotten it!
The videos where Adam is doing a one-on-one interview with someone in his own home had always been fun to watch. Maybe there's going to be an audio podcast version...?
We've talked about it! Stay tuned.
Sometimes it's easier to listen to a podcast than it might be watching a video so it's great that you're considering it @@tested
@@tested yes please!!
@@ilichiregius2884 the thing with video is... if you want to watch, you can watch, if just want to listen, you can just listen.
Why would somebody make audio only when they have the camera at home already?
I didn’t know it until Adam said it but I remember having the same feeling when I asking a teacher a question in their response being I don’t know but we can figure it out. Difference between teachers who care and want to teach and teachers who don’t.
Unfortunately a lot of truly gifted and earnest teachers are having their hands tied by stupid teaching and testing requirements, at least in the U.S. Students only get enough of a subject to pass a test. There's no actual learning, only memorization.
@@tncorgi92 agreed a lot of the problem is the school system itself. They won’t let good teachers be good teachers.
I am a retired high school math teacher with Bachelor and Masters degrees. I subscribe to both Tested and Numberphile and really enjoy them. In regards to the perception of what kind of people go into math, my students always used to think that I must have been some sort of nerdy egghead when I was in school. But they were always very surprised when I told them that I went into math because of sex appeal - I met a pretty girl who was a math major. So I switched my major from biology to math so that I could spend more time with her! We've been married 43 years now and I've never regretted either decision!
I'm studying a maths degree and I'm finding the subject matter tough. It's so nice to hear someone say "Sometimes it's ok to get it wrong" or "Maths isn't about always getting it right."
the part about math as a recreational activity describes my childhood perfectly! i remember talking math at the dinner table growing up. i even did test runs on the math quizzes my mom made for her students. my dad has a masters of engineering degree and my mom has a masters of science degree and their attitude towards math played a huge role in how i came to like it too! and even if i am currently in the humanities field i still love puzzles and math to be a part of my recreational activities! i will definitely buy this book and read it, before handing it over to my parents. i think we will all enjoy it!
35:18 Awesome exchange between two of my favorite people on Earth...
Best thing my mother did for me as a child was making a game out of calculating the total cost for groceries faster than the clerk scanning the items. By the time I was eight I could routinely do so including figuring the sales tax. There was one particular clerk at the corner store who once she learned what I was doing started trying to race me when scanning items so I had as little time as possible to see the prices before the next one popped up on the till. I loved when we had her at the check out because it made it an actual challenge.
When my wife and I were raising our son we had alternate schedules that enabled us to give full time with our son.
My wife came home one day and caught me playing with a Thomas The Tank Engine train track. I told her I was trying to make a track using every piece of track. She was hooked in. We spent a week or so to the challenge. Then we added in to complete it in smaller area. It was great fun.
By the way, my wife was raised on logic puzzles. Daddy would come home from a trip and give her a treat.
I was raised on sugar and TV.
Adam and Matt make my favorite videos now and I cannot believe it took the UA-cam algorithm so long to put this in front of me.
As someone who is passionate about math and currently going back to school for Mathematics Teaching this video hits home on so many levels. Especially when it comes to getting something wrong. Thank you both for creating such beautiful content and adding another voice to the problem with the way we look at teaching math.
The most frustrating math experience I've ever had was in a university statistics class. The professor was using π as a variable. I don't know if I missed it but as far as I know she never explained that she was using π as a variable so I kept getting problems wrong as I assumed π = 3.14...... .
Pi as a variable? That will teach you not to take math class from Aristotle!
@@Egilhelmson 🤣 that might have been fun assuming I could understand his language.
In this case it was an older asian lady.
I always love hearing people enthusiastically talking and sharing anecdotes about their passions, so this was fantastic...
now i want a meeting between tom scott and adam.
Love this content so much. The meeting of 2 of my favorite guys! Small request: is it possible to hand-place where the ads fall? Most of them on this video were mid-word and it made it a little difficult to understand sometimes!
OK! Sorry about that.
@@tested no prob! It was still a great video!! I bought the book 👍
I use the Brave browser, what ad's ?
@@adam_fakes I turn off my adblocker to support content that I like. Lol acting like everyone on earth doesn't know how to block ads.... come on bro
@@beefknuckles You'd be surprised. :(
36:20 Matt Parker and Hydraulic Press channel collab?
I'd love to see Matt talk with them on a way to improve their press or whatever extreme mechanical device they are messing with for their videos. The Hydraulic Press folks have great machining and practical knowledge, but I think Matt might offer them a different insight on ways to take things to an even more extreme level.
Hearing Matt say "math" feels so wrong
It makes me irrationally angry
sounds ok to me
I was just about to say that... it just feels off... but he's probably trying to not make the mostly american audience go like "maths"?
Yet Adam did say maths so the equilibrium is reset.
yea to create the US from the UK version was what a macro
//FIND "Maths" REPLACE WITH "Math". :)
Collet's conjecture (spelling from subtitles) I think the rules are:
If n is odd multiply by 3 and add on (n(n+1)=n*3+1) if it's even divide by two (n(n+1)=n/2) I think my notation is terrible.
Two of my fave people ever.
Reducing confusing shit to levels that we mere mortals can almost understand...
We got Brady and Matt, now we need Cliff Stoll
Oh my goodness... Cliff and Adam would just be....... wow. I don't actually even know, but I'd like to find out. :)
Cliff and Adam would be such a trip to watch.
@@DavidLindes It would be a maelstrom of energy. And we would love it.
oh shit, thank you for the hint that Brady and Adam spoke. for anyone else who didn't know this, Brady's on the Adam Savage Project podcast here: ua-cam.com/video/7Bia-dNcBm4/v-deo.html
This is one of my top 5 tested videos so far. Reading the book during my morning commute. We are doomed as a species unless we are more open about our mistakes.
Kind of related, in engineering school, my professors told me that I needed to make mistakes as fast as possible. Aiming to be perfect on the first try is a waste of everyone's time and effort.
I agree that we need to approach making mistakes differently, and realize that they arent bad, they are opportunity.
I enjoy how Matt's saying "math" and Adam's saying "maths".
"If you learn this skill now, you can annoy your friends and family" one of Matts best lines, which is saying a lot.
I had a heart attack a couple of years ago, and was recuperating in a care facility. I got a friend to bring me a calculator so I could play with numbers, which I sometimes enjoy doing.
Long story short, I decided to see if I could find a method of generating the sequences of numbers in the diagonals of Pascal's Triangle.
Not being a mathematician, I didn't really expect to succeed, but I gave it a go - and I actually succeeded!
Then a few weeks ago I found another, completely different method!
I knew how to build the Triangle row by row using addition, but I wanted to see if I could find a way to build it diagonal by diagonal.
It was a lot of fun! 🤓
Matt and Adam. I am a person with disabilities. In high school I comprehended Algebra. In college I failed and thus I had to drop out of my college program because there were three classes of Algebra were required. I understand the theory of Algebra, but I cannot process it correctly (brain injury?). Its not that i did not try, I just could not make it through the algebra. [I ruined a whole pile of pens being frustrated] What can one say the education system that believes that anyone can learn when you have persons like myself? Is there anyway to fight through this when 95% of the college classes require algebra for employment objectives?
Adams circular puzzle was known as "the Brain". I got so good with that I could do it in 3 minutes!
24:30 - YES! My grandfather had that same radial lever puzzle. I was *SO* happy when I figured it out, and eventually got to the point that I could solve it insanely fast without even looking at it, purely by feel.
I loved that little puzzle.
I have the video paused and jumped down to the comments because I can't concentrate on the rest of it until I know what this puzzle is. I'm not familiar and before I started Googling, I wanted to make sure I found the right thing. Any clues on what to search for?
@@nickf3242 I have zero idea what it's called. But form Adam's description, I knew instantly it was the puzzle I had.
Just did some searching that included a keyword that reveals the solution, so I don't want to share the exact search term I used, but here's a picture of it: www.puzzlegrail.com/Brain_black.png
Unfortunately, THAT page doesn't give it a name, just a link to where to buy it, and that link is dead.
@@nickf3242 AHA! Found it. It is simply "The Brain Puzzle", apparently released in 1979 by Mag-Nif (whose website was linked by the previous search result, but their website is broken.)
Unfortunately, basically every search result for it is the solution, some of which give a massive "spoiler" as to the solution in the title. I did find a 3D print file to make your own, though: www.thingiverse.com/make:573412
@@AnonymousFreakYT Awesome thanks. I wasn't having any luck with the few keywords. I have not seen it before. I'll try and stay away from the spoilers. Thanks for the heads up. I just replied with the same relieved "found it" to another commenter about finding a vid where Matt talks about the differences between the UK ans US versions of the book lol Bullet-Proof Bicycle (feat. Matt Parker) - Objectivity #203 (ua-cam.com/video/rbJuD8Oi4bw/v-deo.html)
I loved that puzzle as a kid. Once I solved I tried to see how fast I could move the levers in and then back out again. In fact, I still have the puzzle in a box in the garage.
I had a ridiculously hard time with math until my junior year of highschool, where i actually had a math instructor who figured out that i needed to know WHY things worked, rather than just memorizing rules.
Then, when i got to college, i had to take "Technical Math" which was the name of the course, and it started (at the college level, mind you), with a number line. But it made the rules of math make sense, instead of a bunch of rote rules. I think anybody could be good at math if they are taught math correctly. As in not learning a rule that doesn't make sense, and instead give you a set of rules that are consistent. And because they are consistent, you learn it once and use it forever after.
5:34 the famous Parker-Collatz conjecture
odd x ==> x*2
even x ==> x/3 or something
it started with such confidence :D
1) how often does Adam find the ruler tattoo useful
2) how often does he check it's accuracy
My “wow, maths can be interesting” was in A Level maths when I found out and did work out the mass of the moon by just knowing how far away it was and it’s orbit time.
You reached the point where it is an optional subject before that point? Interesting...
You couldn't have, orbital period is independent of mass.
Mine was far simpler, I was around 8 and trying to work out the hypotenuse of a rectangular prism by working out the hypotenuse of the one side and then repeating with the hypotenuse and the 3rd axis.
Suddenly on my page after simplifying it a bit was x^2 + y^2 + x^2 = h^2.
Now obviously, deriving a 3D Pythagorean theorem from the 2D version is hardly genius level work, but it was the first time that I has some kind of aha moment into "what math was really about".
This was in the 80's and I was teaching myself to program rudimentary games in BASIC, and until that point all of my self taught trig and stuff were purely tools to work out cartesian stuff for the games.
Kepler’s third law says otherwise.
M = 4 pi^2 r^3 / (G T^2)
I am a lapsed computer science teacher and I have always admitted when I don’t know something. It does shock students though as they expect me to know everything.
Like Matt said there are different levels of not knowing. With coding there is often a ‘what the hell....’ level where it (some code or a computer) does something unusual, often caused by a limit placed on the network due to it being in a school. I created an ISS tracker in Python that worked absolutely perfectly at home but refused point blank to run in the school. In the end it took my boss, the school IT tech and a visiting IT professional four hours to fix. I apologized profusely but was told it was the most fun they had had in ages. They had to write code that tricked the school firewall to let it create a temporary cache, and then only query the cache and not try to go back to the online data service. It meant the location of the ISS was only really correct the very first time the code was run, but we didn’t tell the kids that and everyone was happy. Fun times.
I love seeing two of my favorite "polynerds" in the same space. You guys rock.
Studying now to become a math teacher as a second career and this has been truly great. Thank you.
I love Matt Parker, and a recent big fan of Adam Savage. Because of this video, I went out and purchased the audiobook of Humble Pi. So far, it is incredible!
"Patron saint of mediocrity +1" I have always described myself as having an addiction to learning new skills
So happy to see us start at the parker square. Much love, Matt!
I love so so much getting to see two of my favorite UA-cam creators just sitting down for a chat. This was a real treat.
One of the best teaching methods i was ever part of consisted of three parts. They were called large group, small group, and labs. Not all classes had labs.
But anyway, large group was the entire student body for a particular class sitting in a lecture room, and you were lectured at and took notes. No questions allowed usually. So large group could be over 100 students at a shot.
Then, in small group, you'd sit down around a table, and 10-12 students and 1 teacher would discuss and elaborate on the large group lecture. So you got the big info dump in large group, a chance to really dig into the info in small group. It was the best of both worlds.
And labs were just that, if you were taking a class that had any kind of lab work, that's when you did your labs.
This is a great interview. Adam and Matt have great chemistry together and I would love to see more collaboration between them!
35:01 I'm bit disappointed with Matt for not making a factorial joke about the band Snap!
Brady's First Law - "Is there an infinite, or finite number of them?" is valid in any Numberphile video.
The Parker-Collatz conjecture: "If it's even, you divide by three"
5 ... 10 ... 3.33
Wait... is 3.33 even or odd?
The question is not whether it is even or odd, just whether it is even or not even.
This thing about openness regarding mistakes .... I have an interesting account..
A little back ground ... My grandpa, my dad and my stepfather were all civil engineers and my mom was a delineator. This is no trivial thing in a child's life. Things like building a sugar cube mission, a log cabin, or an Indian wigwam (all of which were common projects for elementary students of my generation) became a major lesson in plum lines, angles, stress load, and a number of other things that were beyond most students in elementary school. Children in my family seldom had coloring books, we instead got rolls of old plains for houses and maps and such like that. That perhaps contributed to my 1st grade teacher's use of a the floor plan I drew when asked to draw a house as evidence that I was a bit "slow". Well, perhaps my floor plan was a bit "slow". After all she didn't have a a straight edge for me to use so it was all free hand. Then there was the bathroom which was the largest room in the house having 3 sinks, 2 toilets and 2 bathtubs. (I was 1 of 7 children and I though that was an excellent remedy to bathroom time congestion). I distinctively remember my dad's calm, patient, teaching tone as he explained to my teacher some very outstanding (for a 1st grade) features of my floor plan including the correct use of symbols for windows, doors and wall thinkness. This was the beginning of my concept that all people didn't know all things like my dad did (it wasn't until my teenage years that I momentarily though he was a blooming perfectist idiot). My dad when we got home from school using the same patient, calm, teaching voice to help me improve my floor plan. This may have been when I started to develop the idea that it was a very good idea that my dad and mom from time to time kept us out of school (more often than the school likee) so we could go see interesting projects their agency was working on..
So to the account about not revealing mistakes.
One day the family was on a car trip and we children started asking about why same curves were banked more than others and why the straight road wasn't banked. We learned about cloverleaf and diamond acceleration / deceleration zones, the out ward force on an object making a turn, and my eldest sibling who was learning to drive knew that it felt more comfortable when making a curve at the correct speed. In the course of the conversation my dad told about an engineer who for thought that banking the curves the wrong way on a 2 lane country highway through the mountains would be a good way to keep people from speeding. My dad had told us believe it or not, not only was the plan conceived, and designed, it was approved and constructed. All of us children wanted to go see this road the next time we took a day trip. My dad told us he wouldn't tell us where it was because it was a secret but that most of us had been on the road. He told us that if we could individually identify the road giving good reasons for oir choice we could be in on the secret. We of course wanted to know why it was a secret. My dad explained that although the speed had been reduced in that area due to the curves and road conditions to make the road safe there would still be people that would try to sue the agency that designed and built the road if they had an accident on it. He explained that of course such people would have no case but it could still cost the agency millions of dollars to prove the persons attempting to sue had no case. I think this was the beginning of my thoughts about how dangerous it is to attempt to lay blame at all cost for things that happen without any malice or neglect.
Whooo thanks for answering that, I now want a "MathBusters" Calculate pi in the most esoteric ways collab XD
I second this!
I still remember my math epiphany as a teenager. I grew up programming so already used math for that frequently, but my mind was blown when I learned about matrix transformations. I ran to the computer lab in the next period and whipped out a 3d rotating wireframe cube animation.
It's a joy that Winston is still holding the list of attendees.
What a great interview! Adam Savage’s Tested is one of my new favorite channels!!!
20:11 My dad is 'famously' bad at math. He's proud of the story that he was sick and missed 2 weeks of school and so never understood algebra. Me, I went on to be the first person in my family to go to college and I got a PhD in math.
My origin story: I hate arithmetic and thought math was horrible. (In hindsight, I wasn't challenged and my ADHD brain was bored out of my skull being forced to do 100 arithmetic problems per worksheet every day, when I had gotten how it worked when the teacher showed the algorithm on the board the first day.) It was in pre-algebra when they showed that you could set up an equation and solve it to find the answer to something practical and I saw how universally applicable and powerful that was when I saw how beautiful math is.
I had to get so close to my screen because I just couldn't believe it. It is really my favorite square theorist with Adam Savage. The world just got a little better.
Great video! What could you enjoy more than two enthusiastic people talking about what they like. I can totally see why in engineering you can't share the mistakes even if you wanted to. Usually it doesn't matter if you learned, people remember your company as the ones who messed up and try to hire somebody who doesn't have that title on their forehead. I guess it's the feedback loop all the way from the beginning saying you don't want to make mistakes, you want to be spotless. Even when they quote edison saying he found 999 ways to not succeed to come to the answer. I also remember those teachers, or substitute teachers, who stopped to figure out something after they were asked and it felt really engaging. We were suddenly part of the team, all of us, and it became so much easier to ask questions in the future too. You discovered they don't know everything and that they too figure things out through hard work. A lot of the uni teachers luckily go through that when they haven't prepared something and you get the feeling that you can figure it out yourself as well, through some logical steps.
This was delightful. Thank you both.
I love both your channels, Adam's, and also Matt's. I still learn so much from the both of you.
This video reminded me of a discussion I had with a couple of friends about the following: What is 6/2(1+2) ?
The way I learned is that you first have to get rid of the brackets, making it 6/2(3). Still brackets there, so 2 times 3 equals 6, no more brackets, boom problem solved. 6/6 ((2 times 3 before dividing by 6)), which would equal 1.
But the interwebs exploded on this equation stating it should be 9 ((6 divided by 2, which equals 3, times 3 which would equal 9)).
..so my question is: 9 or 1?????
..I was and still am so bad at maths, despite the fact I understand how a Rubik's cube works and how a Rhombic Dodecahedron relates to Hard Spheres. But I just can't wrap my mind around maths when one source says X, and and another source says Y.. ..please help me understand this conundrum..
I am so greatful to my dad who made me calculate minimum required number of moves in tower of hanoi (with 8 discs) when i was 6. He still says he was surprised hen i came up and said 255. I actually invented recursion for myself back then. So when i had to learn recursion in school later on it was natural for me.
Matt introduced me to Tom Scott and the Technical Difficulties, for which I will be forever grateful. Also, his book's quite good!
I can relate to Adam's story about getting emotional watching Numberphile.
I will sometimes tell people about some exciting fun new math thing I've learned only to be met with a blank stare. As if to say, "You've just used the words 'math' and 'exciting' in the same sentence. Surely I've misheard you somehow."
Absolutely ADORE this video. I came across this by accident, while taking a break from writing a very long and tedious document, and I actually feel inspired again.
What an amazing crossover!
I remember that puzzle Adam mentioned around minute 24. Probably around the same age. Fiddled with it just to see how the pegs moved. "Okay, there's a pattern here." Having recently discovered the joy of number systems, I thought "this feels a lot like counting in binary." At which point I recognized it as just a more complicated version of the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. So it didn't take long to solve, but the enjoyment I had working it out stays with me decades later.
I love it when the people I follow cross paths. I really hope Matt appears on the podcast or collaborations with math geeks starts to become a more regular thing.
I love these two enthusiasm
HTTP error 404 has almost gotten like a Twilight Zone eerie kind of status today. But it really pales in comparison to the "Run Time Error 200" which would occur when a program written in the original Turbo Pascal for good old DOS was trying to calculate the speed of a fast computer for use in it's delay(); procedure. An issue very similar to the countdown to zero crashes.... search it up and check it out, if you are interested (obviously).
These guys need a regular show together these are some of the best pieces of content either has.
I remember spending a couple of weeks setting up formula in an excel spreadsheet to solve sudoku squares - that was fun :)
I took an entire sailing season, only working on weekends. It is amazing how difficult a “simple” problem can get.
The most interesting book about math that I have ever read was called (I think) "The Rising Fastball" (that also may have been a chapter in the book). I got the book for Christmas about 40 years ago, and it described how we do math all the time without ever realizing it. My favorite 'tidbit of knowledge' in the book is this: A third baseman throwing to the first baseman is actually aiming at a point roughly 16' above his head.
The whole book is filled with neat nuggets of information like that.
I was looking forward to this video. What a great way to start a new series.
Two smart and funny guys who inspire learning with their infectious enthusiasm.
On the question of how to make maths more enjoyable.
It turns out that I am completely rubbish at learning things by rote.
I just don't memorise facts well and then retrieve them at will.
What I am really good at, is learning something and then working out why it works like that, and then being able to reconstruct the rote learning from the underlying principles.
This meant that early maths was terrible for me, because it as lots of memorisation and remembering what formula to use it what situation.
At some point I needed to work out the hypotenuse\diagonal of a cube and after starting with the basic pythagoras, I quickly worked out that d^2=x^2+y^2+x^2.
Now this may not seem like a great discovery but I was only 11 at the time, and this gave me the epiphany that maths wasn't something that I just needed to memorise, it was something that I could explore and remix for my own needs and that by understanding the principals I could creatively explore the world of numbers and what they represent.
Maths needs more creativity and exploration over rote memorisation and regurgitation.
29:10 I loved doing these civil engineering calculations. Get a result round it up, look into a chart pick the next higher value, get to the end, add a security factor.
I have never been into maths and am terrible at it but I had a smile the whole video and now I want to learn more. Thank you for the wonderful chat.
I love Parker and Savage for completely different reasons. This is an AWESOME duo.
So in regard to getting young people enthusiastic about math, I think it's important to consider those things that kill enthusiasm for it. In general, I love math but growing up many times I would hear people complain about story problems. I myself would sometimes complain about them. But that doesn't mean I think they should just all go away. What is it about story problems that bothered people so much.
While I can't speak for everyone, I think one of the things that bothered me so much about them was that many of them were just excuses to get you to do a certain type of equation you studied that week, while throwing in numbers that didn't actually reflect reality in any sort of way. It takes time to learn to do math well, but we learn much more quickly to instinctively know if something is right or wrong. So when we do one of these word problems that sets up a situation that just doesn't mesh with what is real we get the initial ping of "This is confusing". But then you struggle through the problem and reach an answer and you are looking at the answer and have no clue if that is right or wrong because your instincts keep trying to apply reality to this problem that had absolutely nothing to do with it in the first place.
Then as you grow you better understand that the word problems you are given don't match up with reality so you start asking the question, "When am I ever going to use this in the real world? The real world doesn't act like those word problems." and teachers often just don't have the answer to that question.
So my guess on how to enthuse people with math? Try to relate it to the real world as much as you can. If you want a word problem that uses some concept that you studied that week, make sure the word problem isn't just shoehorning in that equation even though it doesn't actually belong there.
DJ Syntic
That’s a good point. If used right, word problems could be a great way to build intuition, but instead they’re pretty much exclusively used to teach how to translate from words to equations.
I have never signed a NDA so here goes. The company I work for, a fiberglass manufacturer, was contracted to make moulds and produce a 100 parts from each as the prototypes for a new single seat, three wheel, electric vehicle. I won't name it but it's a synonym of alone. We received solid wood models for a full suite of body panels; hood, fenders, body, etc. We manufactured the moulds and began making parts. The car company began to assemble prototypes, but when they started to attach body panels to the chassis none fit. We made all parts exactly to spec. The subsequent investigations finally revealed the "engineer"had based the dimensions for the models on surface only, with no calculations for volume. To compound the problem he hadn't allowed for this missing volume when dimensioning the chassis. So what we had was the fat man wearing the thin mans clothes. Long story short, math mistakes in industry can be VERY expensive.
"Oh I was never good at math..." I am told something very similar about computer programming on a regular basis, by parents, with their kids right there. I also often hear parents say, "oh, your brother will love this" about something STEM related with their daughters right there. Makes my blood boil. I then calmly explain the problem with that attitude to them. Sometimes, (usually?) works.
I think people have this idea that science and mathematics is naturally hard. And while some calculations and concepts might be difficult to grasp without previous knowledge, I dont think it is naturally hard.
Ultimately it boils down to how much a person has practiced. Just like any other field of study. Mathematics isnt even as subjective as other fields like art.
I liked where he said that many in math like that it’s a challenge. I work in tech. I discussed with a coworker once that many of us in software don’t mind and often even enjoy being temporarily confused.
Joe Medley It's interesting that people don't realise that, yet take it as a given in sport, which of course plenty of people do recreationally.
Did I miss something?
Early in the interview there was an implication that they would discuss something about the UK vs. the US version of the book, but I don't recall them ever coming back around to it. Can someone drop a timestamp for it?
23:11
Another mathematician to read - Adam Spencer from Australia. Informative and funny!
Fantastic interview. I love Matt's videos and Numberphile and my wife thinks I'm a bit odd for watching math vids on UA-cam. So an interview with my favourite maker just makes me feel like I'm in a room with friends! I've ordered teh book and am looking forward to a great read!
I had the luxury of teaching high school history for a year. I used math demonstrations fairly regularly. It was fun.
“I don’t recall”, “I’m not aware”, “I don’t know”, “no one knows”, “no one has ever known”, “no one can know”. I try to say the correct one. I think that it’s hilarious, when I get to use any of these.
When he calls it math, we call him Matts. Matts Parker is one of my favorite Mathsmaticians.
I like how the pages count down so you know your progress towards the end.
Much deserved Brady Haran praise in this video. Brady is always the hidden person behind the camera that it’s easy to forget that the videos wouldn’t be anywhere near as good without him applying his mind to it with such sharpness.
24:20 I still have mine from the early 80's. I find it relaxing to do with my eyes closed. (not a brag. it's very easy once you know the progression)
[edit: changed: mid 70's to early 80's]
Would love to see a tour of this library, with Adam explaining why some books are in those places and where he got them from? Anyone agree.
I was trying hard to read the titles.
HOLY CRAP! Im so excited about an Adam Savage Book Club! Did i miss something or is this completely new? will he announce the books before hand or am i just completely misunderstanding what's going on haha
Here's the announcement: ua-cam.com/video/yr0M5a1eTW0/v-deo.html
He did post this video on the site about three weeks back. ua-cam.com/video/yr0M5a1eTW0/v-deo.html
"Do I need to solve this problem right now, or do I wait for the World to solve this problem for me?"
Love it.
Speaking specifically to "you need to give students that "ah ha" moment ... not only give them the tools, but show them where they're used ..." I remember vividly asking my grade 11 math teacher as we were starting to get into calculus where I would ever use this math. Her response? "You just have to learn it." I've got a good friend who's a mechanical engineer, we were roommates in university and I remember thinking if my math teachers ever once made the connection that math and engineering were the same damn thing except interesting I'd have been intrigued. That's the failure of the traditional education system. I find math and engineering fascinating, but the math is incomprehensible to me because a single teacher couldn't give a teenager an answer that would keep him interested in math. I passed that class with 56% and never looked at math again, something which I regret and think about picking up in my "spare" time.
I'm a math teacher and thank you, guys. 36 students