[HN Gopher] Gilbert Strang's final lecture at MIT: May 15, 11:00am
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Gilbert Strang's final lecture at MIT: May 15, 11:00am
Author : deepzn
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-05-12 20:01 UTC (2 hours ago)
HTML web link (grinfeld.org)
TEXT w3m dump (grinfeld.org)
| gadrev wrote:
| Linear Algebra was a course in the first semester of freshman
| year when I was in uni (this wasn't in the US or in an english
| speaking country). It was famous for being a "filter" course,
| that made a lot of people quit the degree and switch to a
| different degree next year.
|
| It had a 94% failure rate, but I got to pass on the first attempt
| because Gil's free lectures of his LA course made me intuitively
| understand the stuff we were being taught in that course, which
| was very dry and IMO poorly explained, at least for freshmen.
| Don't think I would have dodged the bullet otherwise.
|
| Thanks Gil.
| xupybd wrote:
| I had the same experience. I didn't understand the teaching
| from my university. Once I found his lectures it all clicked. I
| understood what we were doing. It was no longer wrote learning
| of algorithms to manipulate things with no meaning.
|
| I did very well in that paper.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I have a feeling that the intellect gap at a lot of
| universities isn't as profound as one would expect and that one
| of the reasons that the students of the best unis do so well is
| because their educators can actually explain the course
| material. You can do more when you've got to spend less
| cognitive energy on trying to piece together the hieroglyphic
| puzzle that lesser professors throw at you because they believe
| they're too important to teach.
| caddemon wrote:
| A lot of the top universities have majority of their profs
| caring almost exclusively about research though. I think MIT
| is (or at least was) a bit of an exception, where there was
| enough of a critical mass of profs that cared about teaching.
| Can't say the same for a couple other "top" unis I've spent
| time at.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| I would have to agree with this. In all my time in school
| I've had terrible and amazing professors, the difference in
| the amount I learned was generally due to their ability to
| explain the subject in a way that was easy to understand. I
| also credit the MIT open courseware chemistry lectures for
| helping me through uni, because that professor was one of the
| not so great ones at my school
| fsckboy wrote:
| i find that in general (not always) the smarter people are,
| the better they understand precisely what you don't know, and
| what you need to know to understand what they are trying to
| tell you
|
| it's a bit like the old "the more I know, the more I know I
| don't know" but with an addition of "the more I know exactly
| what I know, and exactly what I don't" and it's then applied
| via theory-of-mind, "the more I know precisely what I can
| teach you"
| [deleted]
| waynecochran wrote:
| I still have his linear algebra book on my shelf from the 1980's.
| One of the great teachers of a topic that has been crucial to my
| career in computer graphics and vision.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Fully agreed. I would argue that there is no replacement for
| Strang, though many may try. My copy has only been around for
| ~20 years, well worn from when I struggled with the course.
|
| Very sad to see him go. I am fully envious of those who will be
| in attendance.
| rwl4 wrote:
| Here are 34 lectures for his Linear Algebra course he recorded in
| 1999:
|
| https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010...
| tptacek wrote:
| Along with Jacques Pepin's "deboning a chicken" .FLV video,
| these are among the greatest videos on the Internet.
| rwl4 wrote:
| Wow! I'm not sure how I missed that back in the day.
|
| Here's the video transcoded on YouTube for anybody else who's
| curious:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfY0lrdXar8
| caddemon wrote:
| IDR which lecture it was but there's a timely Monica Lewinsky
| joke somewhere in here. Small things but I appreciate when
| profs are allowed to have fun. Obviously Strang is also just an
| amazing teacher.
| eichin wrote:
| In the late 80s I bounced off of a couple of linear algebra
| courses (when MIT had a lot of trouble teaching undergrad courses
| in advanced topics because they assumed it was just prep for the
| graduate course instead of actual teaching.) Then I got in to
| Strang's course, and it was such a breath of fresh air - he was
| honestly, effusively enthusiastic about the subject and this was
| contagious. "Engaging" doesn't do it justice :-) He put a lot of
| work into both demystifying and clarifying jargon, and explicitly
| "connecting the dots" between related concepts.
| whymauri wrote:
| I took his applied linear algebra course as an undergrad. Such a
| kind man and so passionate about teaching. Very much "in the
| know" on modern ML, like LMs, and he found ways to tie the
| fundamentals to current topics. Always happy to sign a copy of a
| his books :)
|
| Cheers to his post-Institute era.
| d23 wrote:
| Ha, I knew I recognized that name in the domain. Pavel Grinfeld
| has some great lectures on YouTube, and last I looked, was
| working on a very useful interactive site for learning
| mathematics.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| This is his channel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr22xikWUK2yUW4YxOKXclQ
|
| I love it, especially the videos on Linear Algebra and
| Differential Equations. He's an extraordinary teacher, much
| like Strang, imo.
| valedan wrote:
| I picked up his linear algebra book and watched his lectures last
| year as part of my journey into machine learning. He made me fall
| in love with math in a way that I never had before, not even
| during my physics degree. Truly an inspiring teacher and amazing
| person.
| te_chris wrote:
| Agree. I'm seriously thinking of starting a GradCert in October
| thanks to his teaching.
| qersist3nce wrote:
| Thanks Prof Strang.
|
| Are there any "side channels" that host university lecture videos
| and course materials for less fortunate students in 3rd world
| countries? The ones on MIT courseware or Youtube are old.
|
| I mean something along the lines of academic torrents etc...
| tptacek wrote:
| The good news about 18.06 is that it doesn't need to be new,
| just good, and it is that already.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Huh? There's new university lecture videos being added to
| Youtube all the time, so I don't know why you'd say everything
| there is old. Besides, for many (most?) subjects it doesn't
| matter if the videos are old or not. Something like, eg Linear
| Algebra, just doesn't change _that_ much.
|
| All of that said, one other option you might check out is
| videolectures.net[1]. There's some pretty good stuff there.
|
| [1]: http://videolectures.net/
| greenyoda wrote:
| Strang's bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang
|
| He's been a professor at MIT since 1962!
| OJFord wrote:
| That's Gil for Gilbert, not GIL for, idk, Python's Global
| Interpretor Lock or something.
| OJFord wrote:
| Because this has suddenly gone from +something to -4 I want to
| point out that when I wrote it, the submitted title was 'GIL
| Strang [...]'; so it made a lot more sense (and the title
| didn't)...
|
| It'd be nice if a title change afforded a possibility to
| edit/delete comments, or if mods doing so would scan the
| comments for anything about them.
|
| (I recently had a very old tweet liked and retweeted by someone
| I mentioned in it, that I can't make head or tails of - I can
| only assume the account is now owned by someone else - so I'm a
| bit sensitive to it...)
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I wonder if enough people will tune in to a linear algebra
| lecture that it crashes the live stream.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I really enjoyed using his first textbook. He's got a nice, light
| touch.
| newprint wrote:
| There is a great book published in Russian "ZADAChI I TEOREMY
| LINEINOI ALGEBRY" (Problems and theorems in linear algebra), by
| Victor V. Prasolov. English translation was done by American
| Mathematical Society. Unfortunately, this translation is for the
| first edition of the book. Latest edition is available for free:
| http://prasolov.loegria.net/linalg.pdf (hint is you want to print
| it out, Amazon printing service is great place to print books)
| generationP wrote:
| I think this is not actually the newest edition; that is
| available on
| https://sites.google.com/site/prasolovskacatmoiknigi/home .
|
| It's a great book, though for a completely different audience
| than Strang. It collects hundreds of apocryphal results from
| 400 years of linear algebra, most with proofs, some fairly
| deep.
|
| Here's the English 1st edition:
| https://staff.math.su.se/mleites/books/prasolov-1994-problem...
| hnIsDBeesKnees wrote:
| [dead]
| cs702 wrote:
| Multiple _generations_ of scientists and engineers are forever
| indebted to Strang: He 's been teaching for over six _decades_.
|
| At first only MIT students were lucky to learn from him, but
| then, as his videos became available online, so did the rest of
| world.
|
| I've yet to meet anyone working in AI, ML, data science, signal
| processing, etc. who hasn't watched _at least some_ of Strang 's
| lectures.
|
| I've also met multiple people working in these/related fields for
| whom Linear Algebra 'clicked' only after watching Strang's
| lectures.
|
| He deserves the collective applause and giant thank-yous he's
| getting.
|
| I hope MIT names something after him.
| kennethfriedman wrote:
| I had the privilege of taking one of Strang's classes a few years
| back. He is still incredibly sharp, and has a great sense of wit.
|
| During one lecture, he was half way through solving a problem on
| the board when he jumped straight to the final answer. He then
| turned to us, and with a deadpan delivery said:
|
| "We haven't proved it, but that's okay, we only live so long."
|
| And then he moved on to the next problem.
|
| I've quoted that line a lot since then.
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(page generated 2023-05-12 23:00 UTC)