Math interview podcast
August 5, 2011 7:02 PM Subscribe
Strongly Connected Components is a podcast of interviews with mathematicians. Hear complexity theorist Scott Aaronson (of Shtetl-Optimized), Tom Henderson (of Punk Mathematics) algebraist Olga Holtz of UC-Berkeley, master combinatorist Richard Stanley of MIT, and many more.
While we're recommending podcasts: Chaim Goodman-Strauss and Kyle Kellams do Math Factor, which has kept me distracted during my commute for a few weeks now as I work my way through their archives.
(And I gave money to Relatively Prime!)
posted by madcaptenor at 7:24 PM on August 5, 2011
(And I gave money to Relatively Prime!)
posted by madcaptenor at 7:24 PM on August 5, 2011
I have a very good friend I know only online, and since we know each other from an odd intersection of interests at the fringes of terrible, horrific erotica... and I don't use those adjectives as criticism... we are unlikely to ever meet in person.
Well, the thing is, he's a physicist, and only because he's a frustrated mathematician. He is very, very, very good at explaining and discussing obscure math, and worse, the philosophy of math.
I am a witty and fairly sharp individual, I have a very demanding and highly respected technical career, I'm pretty smart, right?
Man, I'm dumb. Slow. Lazy. Forgetful. He doesn't think so, he thinks I'm a bright layman, but everytime we chat, I have six different Wolfram and Wikipedia pages open at once, and I'm still only barely following along with stuff that he has at his ready command... and it's usually stuff that's not even his primary field!
I love it. I love the feeling of being in over my head, drowning in abstraction and conceptual thought. Just for a moment, I get a peek at a world far vaster than I can imagine. I begin to understand that there is so much out there I have yet to understand, and so very little I can understand.
So, I love links like these, that take me to places that only exist in thought, yet are flesh upon the very bones of all that exists.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:30 PM on August 5, 2011 [5 favorites]
Well, the thing is, he's a physicist, and only because he's a frustrated mathematician. He is very, very, very good at explaining and discussing obscure math, and worse, the philosophy of math.
I am a witty and fairly sharp individual, I have a very demanding and highly respected technical career, I'm pretty smart, right?
Man, I'm dumb. Slow. Lazy. Forgetful. He doesn't think so, he thinks I'm a bright layman, but everytime we chat, I have six different Wolfram and Wikipedia pages open at once, and I'm still only barely following along with stuff that he has at his ready command... and it's usually stuff that's not even his primary field!
I love it. I love the feeling of being in over my head, drowning in abstraction and conceptual thought. Just for a moment, I get a peek at a world far vaster than I can imagine. I begin to understand that there is so much out there I have yet to understand, and so very little I can understand.
So, I love links like these, that take me to places that only exist in thought, yet are flesh upon the very bones of all that exists.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:30 PM on August 5, 2011 [5 favorites]
Scott Aaronson is also the professor responsible for Quantum Computing Since Democritus, which has an extraordinarily interesting set of online lecture notes.
posted by roystgnr at 10:09 PM on August 5, 2011
posted by roystgnr at 10:09 PM on August 5, 2011
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posted by Apropos of Something at 7:10 PM on August 5, 2011