It's our birthday today! And we couldn't think of a better present than this extremely enjoyable talk all about maths and what happens when it goes wrong. We've even been told there's Pi. Mm, pi...
UH problem with the Heads-Tails-Tails game he played: NONE OF HIS PREDICTIONS WERE A SET OF THREE (he had no prediction that was TTT or HHH) Well given 8 sets of probabilities, 2 of those 8 were consecutive 3-of-a-kind, but none of HIS predictions were three of a kind. Well in a continuous string of binary (H / T) the probability of producing a string of 3-of-a-kind is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the probability of producing a 2-of-a-kind scenario. Look at this string: HHTHTTHTHHTTTHHTHTTHHTHTTHHTHTHTHHTHTHTHTTHTHTHTHHHT only TWICE in that entire string, are there any 3-of-a-kinds! Yet how many examples of two of a kinds are there? 14 Yet this he does not explain. He doesnt even actually understand why his game makes him the winner every time. Or he DOES understand and he is trying to pull a fast one on you. If two of his predictions were 3-of-a-kind (TTT or HHH) then he would NOT have won that game, because not a single 3-of-a-kind ever came up, so at least 2 of his predictions would have been wrong instead of right, UNLESS he simply reversed the two 3-of-a-kind predictions (he predicted TTT for HHH, and HHH for TTT) which would have evened out his odds again, in which case the odds of him winning go back to 50% and whether or not he won would be entirely based on the moment that he decided to end the game. A few more tosses and every victory becomes a loss. You people should really come to understand this or you will lose a lot of money gambling
"Maths is difficult, but the people who're enjoying maths are not the people who finds it easy but the people who enjoy how difficult it is." very inspiring.
It's not quite that easy The people who do math are able to do math it is so miserable complex precise and so alien to your personal everyday experience very few people can do it and if you can do it it's still a giant pain. You don't get big muscles cuz you want big muscles you get big muscles cuz you go to the gym and you love to swing Big iron. You don't get to be a problem solving monster because you want to be a problem solving monster you get to be a problem solving monster because you can't pass a problem and you've got to chew on it a little bit to see if you could get a piece out of it where the other guy failed.
From the moment the first spin landed on "probability" I had a feeling it was going to be a long-haul joke; I just couldn't decide whether the wheel was weighted or it was done in multiple takes. Well done, Matt; and props to that audience for being so patient hahaha
@HappyBeezerStudios - by Lord_Mogul We have a lot of white people like that in America not only where they chosen at random they were chosen at random 13 times in a row.
Here's one for the book. I learned in a highway design course that early on, they studied accident statistics and determined that, since accidents were more likely when driving on a curve or over a hill, that they could reduce the number of dangerous stretches of road by combining curves and hills whenever possible. This worked perfectly in achieving that result; of course that made the road even more dangerous.
We have some long, straight roads here in Australia and one of the design goals on many of them was to make them appear absolutely straight to drivers. Since they were laid out before GPS technology, it was necessary to make occasional corrections. These were usually made at the peak of a hill so that drivers couldn't get a long view showing the kinks.
@Ashmeed Mohammed our prof didn't say, but I think accident statistics might have had a hand in it. Either that and/or someone realized the logical error and explained it. Note that the people who made the invalid deduction might or might not have changed their minds. It is not as if there is a single cabal of engineers who make decisions about design methodology, and are the ones responsible for correcting their mistakes.
"You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want as long as you're prepared to ignore enough data." That's a huge thing to realize.
@Michael McKenzie Indiginous English people are more likely to identify as British than any of the other nations. In addition we have a majority of non indigenous people and they are more likely to identify as British. However of the 68 million people living in the UK alone around 56 million live in England. That is a vast majority.
@Gareth Farman vast majority is a stretch. Speaking strictly about people who are residents of the UK, 37.6 million out of 67 million identify as English. Majority? Sure. Vast majority? No.
@Voor Naam I am English. Since the final fall of the British Empire in 1997 the vast majority of British people are English. From about either if 1979 or 1982 the English made up the majority of British people. Gibratarians, Falklanders and Bermudans are British from Overseas Territories. Channel Islanders and Manx are British from Crown Dependencies Scots and Cymraeg are British from the UK and they are not English. However the language we all have in common is called English. Whether you are in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand .... the language is called English. Scotland speaks 4 languages, Scots Gealic, English, Doric and Scots. The latter 2 are based on North Eastern English with varying degrees of Gaelic and Norse and Modern English influences. We still call it Scots and not Northumbrian or Middle North Eastern English because Scots is the name of the language. We should never refer to the UK as England or the Netherlands as Holland. However both England and Holland still exist.
I'll have to say that the way you brought this with comedy, metaphors and plot twist this is one of the best shows I have seen so far. Amazing work I'm a great fan or yours
You know, when it landed on probability the first time, I figured that Matt had rigged it to land on probability all three times. I did not expect him to have people spin it until it got green all three times, I figured these talks had a time time schedule and at 1:07 it had probably already spilled over by a bit. Bravo.
In the crescent moon misrepresentation, Matt correctly points out that stars shouldn’t be drawn inside the moon’s circumference. What is more troubling (to me) is that the tips of the horns have to be antipodal, I.e. 180 degrees apart.
When wheel landed on purple the 2nd time i suspected it was rigged but I underestimated Matt. He actually went out of his way to involve the audience and editors to fool us viewers! Love it!
I love the idea of maths being a progression in which you get less and less wrong. At school I got a lot wrong. Five years later I met my old maths teacher and he asked me what I was doing now. I was able to tell him that I was teaching maths!
Hats off to you, Matt! Loved it, esp. the ending -- @ 1:07:14 "...and I'm like, yeah, people have to earn the book"......yes, Matt, I'll do that.....thank you for this superb video!
The 3 cogs logo is a surprisingly common mistake. It happened at my work - a multi-national engineering firm. Upper management proudly emailed their new logo to tens of thousands of engineers, hilarity and red faces followed.
@Keith Mills actually, no. The speed on the outside of the gears will be the same all the way around. Gear ratios would only change if there were two gears of different size sharing the same axel.
And, in the case of the gear train on the coin, it’s more complicated than just having an even number of cogs. The gear ratios have to be correct so that it runs smoothly without locking up.
@Ray Habenicht in a drafting course that was required of civil engineering students, one day we were shown a video of a guy demonstrating how to go about sketching a threaded rod. He was doing a great job until he noticed that the threads on the model went the other way than in his sketch. I immediately laughed out loud as I knew what he was going to do correct the discrepancy. But when he turned the model end for end i was very disappointed to not hear anyone else laughing. I guess the guy thought that screws did not become left or right handed until they were given a head.
Although I will probably (pun intended) never be a huge maths enthusiast myself. I can appreciate the fun you can do with it and the important part it plays in the world we live in. Thanks for this interesting video! My younger self would've never believed I'd spend an entire hour watching a video about math in my spare time and enjoy it ;-).
This makes me realize how easy it is to mess something up. Like imagine writing an entire movie franchise without having these kind of mistakes would be so hard.
45:15 Another fact that has to be considered is that the projections that the maps used to pinpoint the locations could also affect the shape. The previous researcher could have even selected the same locations on a different kind of a projection and identified another pattern. They're just random conincidents.
Great show from Matt as usual! And Happy Birthday RI! The cogs thing reminds me of when my wife showed me her team's illustration of a marketing process with interlocking cogs: "that won't work!" I said. She was unconvinced it would matter, but did go back with my fixes. The next customer she spoke to confirmed that they were all engineers and, yes, it would have been a major barrier to credibility if they'd carried on with it as it was. I don't think I got any brownie points: she just realised that 'nerd' is a wider-spread condition than she'd thought.
@Alexander LegisNonScriptae Ummm, excuse me, what the frick? That is the most forced transition I have heard in a long time and I don't see how your single-origin stuff is related to the original comment or video in *any* way whatsoever. I'd write you off as a bot if it wasn't for this horrible introduction that shared a word with the original comment. That would still be impressive to pull of for a bot.
Mr Parker is someone who takes a few moments to get used to , but now I am very grateful he has these videos. He is really interesting and entertaining.😅😊👍👍
Brilliant. I love this lecture, thank you! I genuinely laughed out loud with the wheel (no spoilers) : Brilliant - would have been some nice mathematical poetry
Just went through the comments and I'm kinda shocked to see how little people appreciated this lecture. This guy is absolutely phenomenal. I was smiling throughout and learning some really cool stuff at the same time. He did an amazing job and I hope to see more from him on Ri. Huge fan, Matt!
I just recently started realising what Matt meant when he said that math is about "getting it wrong and working towards the right answer". That is exactly what my current course in Applied Mathematics is like - that course is about a bunch of super-complicated equations that simply cannot be solved exactly, and instead require a lot of trial and error with various approximation techniques.
I honestly thought the wheel was rigged, as the audience were turning it clockwise and matt was spinning it anti-clockwise and there was some mechanism that only worked in one direction.
Something none of you have brought up... each of the three times Matt pulls the wheel it also landed on the same colour (programming). Was that also edited?
@OB1KXB 'i thought "but what if the video ISNT edited?"' Agreed, how can we be sure he didn't just get a lucky joke in, we need some video proof he made them spin it repeatedly, it's not *that* unlikely to get the same colour after all :)
Probability, probability, probability, first time, what are the chances? I was wondering what the conjuring trick was, until Matt admitted it was editing for internet. This is an absolutely fascinating talk, and Matt Parker is every bit as entertaining as you might hope a comedian would be, and he achieves this by skill, not just chance. (Same goes for the Royal Institution, and the probability of finding fascinating talks they hosted, time after time, is a great deal greater than on most other channels.)
I was in an 80 story building during construction that during a strong wind storm that started twisting ( not just swaying) like crazy. It was quite scary. This was before the mass damper tank was constructed on top which I’m sure was where all the maths came in 😊
This was just delightful for me. In the first statistics course I ever took, the teacher said he could teach an entire course on how to lie with statistics.
Fascinating. I wanna watch more. I was a math major, and I can't intuitively figure out why the Grimes dice are not transitive. Going to have to research.
The glitch in the matrix started when the 'guest' spinner was supposed to call out the category, but then Matt did for the teen and adult. A good use of a Good Hour! Keep up the great content!
I've been very pedantic regarding the "stars where the moon should be" for years now, the difference between me and Matt is that he makes people laugh about it and I make people want to throw things at my face.
When it fell on "probability" the second time I joked to myself, "what's the probability of that!?". When it happened the third time I thought, surely it's rigged, but then I remembered you spinning it at the beginning and then you spun it again. Once you revealed the truth, it put my mind at ease, "oh thank God, it's just someone on the internet lying to me.".
Great video lecture and easy to follow.Lots of funny bits. My favourite is around 1:00 where his guest (wife) puts on gloves because the object might be covered in rocket fuel. And then as she is talking, she brushes her hair back. I would not have noticed this if not for Covid-19
I took an engineering ethics course in undergraduate. A couple of our case studies were in your book. I recall we watched a video interview: the person said CAD really stands for "Computer Aided Disaster". As often the output is "trusted" because the computer calculated it (and often there isn't an easy way to check it)
"Texas, undone by a lone star" That's a lot funnier than the audience reaction gives it credit. That would have been mystery-bisuit worthy on Citation Needed.
The single golden star on a blue background on the Texas state flag signified Texas as an independent republic and was a reminder of the state’s struggle for independence from Mexico. The “Lone Star” can be found on the Texas State Flag and on the Texas State Seal today. It is found almost everywhere in Texas - on bridges and even on the huge ferris wheel at the Texas State Fair known as the Texas Star. The Lone Star State nickname became the official nickname of the state on June 19, 2015. Texas will vote to become part of Mexico again as soon as enough people that Democrats are allowing to illegally enter the country get the right to vote. Texas is the only state in the union that can legally secede.
The earthquake/exercise class story reminds me of a Blaster Bates tale: His job was close to houses so instead of one big blast he was setting off a series of small charges. First he sent someone to the nearest house and set off a test detonation. The observer and householder were happy that there was no effect on the house or it's contents so Bates carried on with the sequence. He had hardly started, however, when a lady came running and shouting from further along the road saying that her home was being shaken badly: resonance and wavelengths!
I was lamenting the same topic coming up but ended up glad about it, I do hope there will be another to cover some other topics as examples and in the meantime I'll buy the book.
That it works or not is definitely important to the artistic side of the design. How could anyone say otherwise. Little things like the cogs this are immensely important in art and you can appreciate it when it is done correctly in any context, or more importantly when it is done incorrectly for a purpose.
gotta say very well presented, i put this video on at 3am and figured id watch 10-15mins before bed and see the rest when i got up lol i was wrong but i enjoyed being wrong and enjoyed the video as well so thank you for that
Awesome video this one. My favourite probability quote, and I wish I could remember who to attribute it to: "The thing about one in a million coincidences is that they happen ALL THE TIME" Also, yay, Lucy Green. If you want to know anything about the sun she is the person to ask.
To speak to the probability stories in this video: My wife is originally from Utah, and her dad grew up in American Fork. After we moved to the Portland, Oregon area, we were in a mall where we overheard a woman talking to a store clerk about her upcoming voyage to Utah. We had just moved to Oregon (literally a few months before), and we interjected ourselves into the conversation saying that we had just moved from Utah and was curious as to where she was going. She mentioned where she was going, but she also happened to mention that she lived in American Fork for a while. My wife said, "That's where my dad's from!" She asked his name, and when my wife told her his name, she exclaimed, "I dated your dad in junior high school!" We were BLOWN AWAY. Right then, my wife called her dad, and they talked for about twenty minutes on the phone in the most impromptu lovers' reunion I had ever experienced. It still brings a smile to my face.
I come from a small village in Germany (just about 2,000 people living there) and went to university a couple of hundred kilometers away. I had rented a room in an apartment with a few other students. When one of them asked me where exactly I come from, not only did she recognize the name of the village (already quite unusual) - it turned out that her parents had lived in the house opposite ours 30 or 40 years ago! (These are houses where only one family lives, not apartment blocks, mind you.)
my father told me he was there when it happed: a priest and two teachers who didn't know each other before moving to the same town (more: being sent there) noticed while talking about relatives that each had a grandmother with the same surname who was borne in the same small village (few hundred people). They then decided not to follow this line because they didn't want to be related :-)
Small number of people in the same location. And its easy. Only 300+million outta a few billion so what are the odds? Remember most Americans never leave the States. East coast to West coast its not even the entire continent.
@Stephen Powell Not to mention that we have to factor in what constitutes a "weird occurence". If there are no rules set up before hand, literally anything goes. While it is unlikely that one specifik freak occurrence happens to one person, and it is likely that it will happen to someone at least once, it is also,. by the same logic and reasoning, impossible to go through life without experiencing at least one weird event as an individual. You just need to look for the patterns.
Last summer a young lady I had never met had her small puppy named "Stevie Nix" chase my young kitten named "Little Richard" up a tree. Strange coincidence? Sure, but that's not the real strange coincidence. After finally retrieving poor Little Richard, we got to talking and discovered that we had both gone to the same high school - 4500 km away. Albeit 40 years apart That was a day to play the lottery.
It's the enthusiasm in the teacher that holds peoples attention to the lesson. If you knock the enthusiasm out of the teacher with too much BS during their career they will lose that spark. Hopefully we have all had those one or two teachers that have inspired us to learn. I was lucky enough to have the same favourite teacher twice in Primary school, in grade 2 and 6. What's the probability of that happening?
I really enjoy your work, and didn't think I was in the mood for it at the moment but let it play in the background anyway. Well I'm happy to be wrong. A good show so far and I'll be letting it play to the end.
Something similar to the Disney photo happened to a friend of mine. She was at Disney World with her marching band. Another marching band ran through her group, crashing into some people. What she didn't find out until later is that the group that ran into hers contained her future spouse. They were both about 800 miles from home.
If you built an *indoor* model of one of those bridges, and populated it with *metronomes* ... I've always wondered what would happen if you compounded one of these issues by introduced two simultaneously ... Would the metronomes still self-synchronize? Could the bridge be part of the synchronization if the right tempo were chosen?
The craziest thing that happened to me is that I once flipped a 5p and it landed on it's edge, entirely stationary. I couldn't even PUT the coin on it's edge afterwards. What I really like about coincidence. In addition to a specific event being very likely to happen given enough people, it is also certain that some incredibly unlikely events will happen to every person. Simply because we have the chance to experience an anomaly thousands of times every day without even realising it!
What a lovely man! I noticed the man who spun the wheel held it back slightly to make sure it was on green. Perhaps after how many times the 2nd spin took, according to Matt. I quite enjoyed watching this. I was going to switch You Tube video but I got involved.
@Classical Physics the entire beginning of quantum mechanics started when physicists decided to rethink their theories because it couldnt explain what they saw.
@Gertjan Eisink so this why most adults in adult trainings don't volunteer. Please don't produce broken adults. We need participation in the work place.
Teacher here. When that happens to me, I sometimes like to go: Is there anyone who....[all hands in the air].... Peed their pants? :D humor is easy with kids, I love it.
This is so strange. I had no intention of watching this video. But when I found it I was interested in the math aspect. Last night I was in bed, and somehow I was thinking about how people are so certain of the truth, yet we always ask if it will be heads or tails, when in reality it has another option. So I was a bit alarmed to see it addressed in less than 24 hours.
People have known about the problem of people moving en masse within a structure for hundreds if not thousands of years. Armys marching switch to a break step when they cross bridges to avoid the bridge collapsing. I'd imagine this problem has been known to military strategists since antiquity.
It could but it becomes irrelevant because you can just choose tails if you suspect that there are 2 sides. You know there aren't 2 heads, so you can safely choose tails and have a 50% or greater chance of success
@BlankPaper Well no, because the interaction wouldn't have ended there, had it actually been double-sided. The question is not redundant, as if it had been a yes, the person could have said something to the effect of "I pick whatever side is on the coin", or simply asked "Which side is doubled" and then proceeded to pick that one. It would only have been redundant, if the answer was "Yes, it is double-sided" and then they simply went on to pick whatever anyways without inquiring or thinking further
The confusing part is that he asked before making a choice... If it was a double-sided coin, he still had a 50% chance to win or lose. It was redundant to even ask.
I was a bit shocked when he started talking about the Ariane 5 rocket here, just after finishing up on the probability talk (and the plot twist). Just two hours ago, I was watching the James Webb Telescope launch, *which was launched on the Ariane 5*
I always look at the topic of a video followed by the duration and then decide. When I saw 1:07:33, I thought, OK I will watch 6 minutes and then move on. 1:07:33 I am still here! Hugely entertaining and fun well done.
If I manage to watch this to the end, it will be the longest I ever listened to a maths teacher without secretly reading a novel under my desk. Wait. I don't have a desk. 😧
I've struggled with math all my life. I'm a writer. It infuriates me that I was barred from getting into a 4-year university due to the entry requirement for intermediate algebra! (This as a mid-life student!--by that time, I'd been running a household, raising children, volunteering with Girl Scouts as a troop leader and day-camp coordinator...I feel I already knew how to "think logically," which was the excuse given for the math requirement!) As I said, I'm a writer. Why would a writer need math? I write humor, blank verse poems, travel essays, and the like. I do not write technical manuals or anything remotely similar. I don't need math. The human brain being how it is, the oft-repeated adage of "use it or lose it" applies. If I had learned algebra, I would never have a need to use it, therefore I'd have lost it, and the time spent studying it would have been wasted. Therefore, why would I want to spend the time and effort learning a subject for which I'd have no future use, and would end up forgetting?! Answer: I wouldn't. So, my education stopped with an Associate's degree in liberal arts from a 2-year community college. Administrators should make reasonable requirements based on the students' planned future occupations. Also, I don't trust percentages. As a member of a parent group trying to save a school threatened with closure, we learned that you use percentages if you want to make something sound BIGGER than it is. To wit: we surveyed the teachers of said school, and found that 14% of them would leave the school district and teach elsewhere were that school to be closed. Fourteen percent!!! Guess what? That fourteen percent amounted to a single teacher!!! But by stating it as a percentage, we were able to manipulate the facts without lying, and make the situation sound more dire than it was. No, percentages are not to be trusted! (Oh, and here in the USA, hearing people refer to "maths" is grating. to us, it's a singular word! It's either "math," or, if you insist on using the plural, then don't shorten the word, and call it "mathematics" instead! Thank you! ;-) ) Probability is like gambling chances--my late husband was listening to his step father brag about winning $25K at the casino. Dad was not happy when asked, "How much did you spend to win that?" LOL
You make some good points. I would argue that there’s nothing wrong with using a percentage; it is a very useful way to indicate a fraction. If I said 467 out of 934 people like cheese, that may be hard to visualize, but 50% is much easier! The example you gave is an abuse of a method, where the numbers are used to obscure the truth
I've kind of had one of those photo moments happen to me. When I was 10, my mother, my brother and I went to a place called Kemer in Turkey for a couple of weeks. It was a really good vacation and next year we decided to go to Turkey again. We were looking at possible cities to go to in a catalogue, and as we came upon Kemer we stopped to reminisce a bit and looked at the aerial photo... and noticed "Hey, the hotel the picked for this town looks a lot like the one we stayed in... Actually, it's the same one! And look at that, those three people you can see at a table look like a woman and two boys. They could be us. Actually, what clothes were you wearing? And the hair colors match. And that's our table! THAT'S US!!" So the same people who had their picture taken unawares were the ones who the year after sat together and saw themselves.
Mildly interesting probability story. I once visited Tokyo and during a wild night out lost my mobile phone. The next day my friend received a phonecall to come and pick up my phone. Turns out, it had been picked up by someone I had gone to primary school with 15 years prior who had recognised me in the photos on my phone, had contacted back to our mutual home country to get all the relevant phone numbers and then called through to arrange a meeting spot. The chances are pretty small and I am eternally thankful they went to the effort.
I don't know about luck. what I do know is that it has nothing to do with my comment that you are replying to. Maybe you meant to put in the main thread?
I am amazing at math. Grade 12 math for me, was a nightmare. Every other day there was a new formula I needed learn. ALL THE WAY through grade 12 math, I would do the math PERFECTLY but I would use the wrong formula. In the end, I had 50.2%. I truly believe the teacher fudged that number because he knew, I could do the math! After high school, I applied to join the army. They looked at my high school record and said, If ya want to go into that field ya will have to upgrade my grade 12 math. I looked right at them and said **** that.
I love the idea that math is a matter of being wrong and less wrong and less wrong until you can get it down to where you're the least wrong you can be.
As soon as they got the first "probability" on the wheel spin, I was calculating what was the probability of getting it three times in a row, and was hoping that he DIDNT have three probability stories.
@joepie91 Maths. A mathematician should do maths. A mathemetician known for other things is better loved for those things. Better to say that Matt Parker is your favourite comedian in the maths niche.
@Peter others have pointed this out, but yes that's just a stupid stereotype. I in fact know funny math professors. The other problem is, that Matt Parker doesn't do anything a mathematician would. He doesn't do research, he doesn't teach students.
@Peter - Richard Feynman was a lot like Matt Parker but you only got to see it in interviews, biographies and videos of his lectures. But he was a physicist, which means he was also a mathematician. And a musician. And a prankster. I think you'd agree that the objective of any educator should be to create some kind of passion for the subject matter whether that's curiosity, inspiration, enthusiasm, determination, a sense of responsibility or simply awe.
When I was a much younger man, I saw and felt I had to read "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Ulam. It was fascinating. Thanks goodness it had lots of physics too :-) And many adventures!
I found this video while aimlessly browsing (It's COVID time and I'm bored). Well, it could be a turning point in my life, or not... But either way, thank you so much for sharing your time, energy, friends, and family with the rest of us. For now, my lips are frozen in the shape of a big warm smile.
@BlankPaper Yes this is a conundrum that has haunted me for some time... If only the people who recognize the wisdom of limited reproduction abstain from gratuitous replication, they will ultimately be outnumbered by those who reproduce with no thought of the consequences. Unfortunately there is no obvious solution to this dilemma, as any attempt to limit the "reproductive rights" of the masses would seem dystopian and heavy-handed. The alternate civilization envisioned by Robert J. Sawyer in his brilliant three-part series The Neanderthal Parallax had some very clever societal adaptations to both limit population and heighten the average IQ of their populace, but it is hard to imagine anything like that ever happening in our world.
Procreation is a funny thing... Those who procreate more, think less. Those who think more, think about NOT procreating as much, just "enough", if at all. The people breeding like bunnies, don't think much at all. Our problem, as a society, is that we base OUR intelligence, off a few rare individuals or "teams", as if WE are that smart. Most of the brilliant minds in history, are honestly not brilliant. History is in the hands of those who write about it. Most historians are not bright, but profess to be a writer of brilliance. (That is not a derogatory statement, but a fact. Just as teachers are rarely ever "applied" in what they teach. There is no time to teach if you are doing, and no time to do, if you are teaching. Teachers usually work on providing tools for great minds to use. The hope is that one of those who was given tools, will actually be a "great mind". The reality is that most people rarely use the tools they are given and the greatest minds never needed the tools to begin with. It's a lovely, ironic, catch-22.)
You can simulate the same phenomenon in a bathtub full of water. If you shove your hands back and forth randomly, no meaningful waves will form. Only if you hit the resonance frequency of the tub (that is dependant on the size and shape of the tub) will a big wave form. For normal sized tubs that means pushing way slower than your intuition tells you.
Oh, man, ANOTHER RI vid. At least they're getting me out of chemistry, physics... IF I don't learn anything (oh, too late for that), it's hella entertaining.
Since the participants all spun the wheel the opposite way you did, I assumed there was a secondary flywheel and/or cam catch on the back side that engaged in clockwise rotation but not counter-clockwise, but I guess film edits and a room full of complicit participants is easier.
This is my favourite Matt Parker video because not only is it the length of a feature film, but it has the plot twists of one too.
@Jkirek _ tr
@Carl Williams I would disagree but with stuff like this it really is just a subjective opinion
@Carl Williams no u
It's our birthday today! And we couldn't think of a better present than this extremely enjoyable talk all about maths and what happens when it goes wrong. We've even been told there's Pi. Mm, pi...
Happy belated birthday front Florida!
@Icy Uranus A real word everywhere except North America it seems - grammarist.com/spelling/math-maths/
Ahh it's new!
UH problem with the Heads-Tails-Tails game he played: NONE OF HIS PREDICTIONS WERE A SET OF THREE (he had no prediction that was TTT or HHH) Well given 8 sets of probabilities, 2 of those 8 were consecutive 3-of-a-kind, but none of HIS predictions were three of a kind. Well in a continuous string of binary (H / T) the probability of producing a string of 3-of-a-kind is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the probability of producing a 2-of-a-kind scenario.
Look at this string: HHTHTTHTHHTTTHHTHTTHHTHTTHHTHTHTHHTHTHTHTTHTHTHTHHHT
only TWICE in that entire string, are there any 3-of-a-kinds! Yet how many examples of two of a kinds are there? 14
Yet this he does not explain.
He doesnt even actually understand why his game makes him the winner every time. Or he DOES understand and he is trying to pull a fast one on you.
If two of his predictions were 3-of-a-kind (TTT or HHH) then he would NOT have won that game, because not a single 3-of-a-kind ever came up, so at least 2 of his predictions would have been wrong instead of right, UNLESS he simply reversed the two 3-of-a-kind predictions (he predicted TTT for HHH, and HHH for TTT) which would have evened out his odds again, in which case the odds of him winning go back to 50% and whether or not he won would be entirely based on the moment that he decided to end the game. A few more tosses and every victory becomes a loss.
You people should really come to understand this or you will lose a lot of money gambling
is "maths" a real word in your country or is it an attempt at humor?
"Maths is difficult, but the people who're enjoying maths are not the people who finds it easy but the people who enjoy how difficult it is."
very inspiring.
@Michelle You should capitalise the beginning of a sentence.
It's not quite that easy The people who do math are able to do math it is so miserable complex precise and so alien to your personal everyday experience very few people can do it and if you can do it it's still a giant pain. You don't get big muscles cuz you want big muscles you get big muscles cuz you go to the gym and you love to swing Big iron. You don't get to be a problem solving monster because you want to be a problem solving monster you get to be a problem solving monster because you can't pass a problem and you've got to chew on it a little bit to see if you could get a piece out of it where the other guy failed.
@Michelle A KZclip comment section is not an English grammar lecture.
the op quote's statement is true facts, too bad the comments got derailed by nonsense
From the moment the first spin landed on "probability" I had a feeling it was going to be a long-haul joke; I just couldn't decide whether the wheel was weighted or it was done in multiple takes. Well done, Matt; and props to that audience for being so patient hahaha
Yeah, that was possibly going to happen.
Watching Matt keep holding back smiles as his wife demonstrates the evidence of the recovery was amazing. That's a team.
As soon as I saw probability as a subject to be chosen *at random* my eyes narrowed. Well done.
@HappyBeezerStudios - by Lord_Mogul We have a lot of white people like that in America not only where they chosen at random they were chosen at random 13 times in a row.
@toriless That's the Toxoplasmosis Gondii talkin' innit?
@HappyBeezerStudios - by Lord_Mogul That's 100% random!
Ontology recapitulates phylogeny!
you would be surprised of how common this is, if you spin it with kinda the same force, it will land at the same colour most of the time
Here's one for the book. I learned in a highway design course that early on, they studied accident statistics and determined that, since accidents were more likely when driving on a curve or over a hill, that they could reduce the number of dangerous stretches of road by combining curves and hills whenever possible. This worked perfectly in achieving that result; of course that made the road even more dangerous.
We have some long, straight roads here in Australia and one of the design goals on many of them was to make them appear absolutely straight to drivers. Since they were laid out before GPS technology, it was necessary to make occasional corrections. These were usually made at the peak of a hill so that drivers couldn't get a long view showing the kinks.
There is another road in Spain I think that is completely straight and has one of the highest accident rates in the world. It is a very long road.
@Ashmeed Mohammed our prof didn't say, but I think accident statistics might have had a hand in it. Either that and/or someone realized the logical error and explained it.
Note that the people who made the invalid deduction might or might not have changed their minds. It is not as if there is a single cabal of engineers who make decisions about design methodology, and are the ones responsible for correcting their mistakes.
@Al Dunbar what led them to realize it what bad?
@Ashmeed Mohammed when they realized their error they stopped designing roads that way.
"You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want as long as you're prepared to ignore enough data."
That's a huge thing to realize.
...or if you don't have enough data.
* or if you measure for long enough
the motto of everyone in the 21st Century
That is politics 101...
whose data?
People in the live audience have no idea how huge those name drops were. "My friend James Grime... My friend Tom Scott..."
Tom Scott was in the Royal Institution aswell
@Michael McKenzie Indiginous English people are more likely to identify as British than any of the other nations. In addition we have a majority of non indigenous people and they are more likely to identify as British.
However of the 68 million people living in the UK alone around 56 million live in England.
That is a vast majority.
@Gareth Farman vast majority is a stretch. Speaking strictly about people who are residents of the UK, 37.6 million out of 67 million identify as English.
Majority? Sure. Vast majority? No.
@Voor Naam I am English. Since the final fall of the British Empire in 1997 the vast majority of British people are English. From about either if 1979 or 1982 the English made up the majority of British people.
Gibratarians, Falklanders and Bermudans are British from Overseas Territories. Channel Islanders and Manx are British from Crown Dependencies Scots and Cymraeg are British from the UK and they are not English.
However the language we all have in common is called English. Whether you are in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia or New Zealand .... the language is called English.
Scotland speaks 4 languages, Scots Gealic, English, Doric and Scots. The latter 2 are based on North Eastern English with varying degrees of Gaelic and Norse and Modern English influences. We still call it Scots and not Northumbrian or Middle North Eastern English because Scots is the name of the language.
We should never refer to the UK as England or the Netherlands as Holland. However both England and Holland still exist.
People on youtube have no idea what a huge deal is lol
I'll have to say that the way you brought this with comedy, metaphors and plot twist this is one of the best shows I have seen so far. Amazing work I'm a great fan or yours
You know, when it landed on probability the first time, I figured that Matt had rigged it to land on probability all three times. I did not expect him to have people spin it until it got green all three times, I figured these talks had a time time schedule and at 1:07 it had probably already spilled over by a bit. Bravo.
Some game of luck
This guy is precisely my kind of pedantic nerd, and I freaking love it
In the crescent moon misrepresentation, Matt correctly points out that stars shouldn’t be drawn inside the moon’s circumference. What is more troubling (to me) is that the tips of the horns have to be antipodal, I.e. 180 degrees apart.
As an Australian, watching him discuss the ancient Woolworth stores in England is fascinating.
He does such a good job with his lectures. So much fun to watch!
When wheel landed on purple the 2nd time i suspected it was rigged but I underestimated Matt. He actually went out of his way to involve the audience and editors to fool us viewers! Love it!
Man, about five spins each time
Fun with magnets!
I love the idea of maths being a progression in which you get less and less wrong. At school I got a lot wrong. Five years later I met my old maths teacher and he asked me what I was doing now. I was able to tell him that I was teaching maths!
Thanks for an inspiring show - as a maths teacher, I appreciate this!
Hats off to you, Matt! Loved it, esp. the ending -- @ 1:07:14 "...and I'm like, yeah, people have to earn the book"......yes, Matt, I'll do that.....thank you for this superb video!
The 3 cogs logo is a surprisingly common mistake. It happened at my work - a multi-national engineering firm. Upper management proudly emailed their new logo to tens of thousands of engineers, hilarity and red faces followed.
@Keith Mills actually, no. The speed on the outside of the gears will be the same all the way around. Gear ratios would only change if there were two gears of different size sharing the same axel.
And, in the case of the gear train on the coin, it’s more complicated than just having an even number of cogs. The gear ratios have to be correct so that it runs smoothly without locking up.
and it was the artist that decided to make it work...
@Al Dunbar I laughed so hard
@Ray Habenicht in a drafting course that was required of civil engineering students, one day we were shown a video of a guy demonstrating how to go about sketching a threaded rod. He was doing a great job until he noticed that the threads on the model went the other way than in his sketch. I immediately laughed out loud as I knew what he was going to do correct the discrepancy. But when he turned the model end for end i was very disappointed to not hear anyone else laughing.
I guess the guy thought that screws did not become left or right handed until they were given a head.
I wish I had you as a maths teacher! You make me wanna grab my old A-level notes and do some calculus and logarithms.
Although I will probably (pun intended) never be a huge maths enthusiast myself. I can appreciate the fun you can do with it and the important part it plays in the world we live in. Thanks for this interesting video! My younger self would've never believed I'd spend an entire hour watching a video about math in my spare time and enjoy it ;-).
This makes me realize how easy it is to mess something up. Like imagine writing an entire movie franchise without having these kind of mistakes would be so hard.
45:15 Another fact that has to be considered is that the projections that the maps used to pinpoint the locations could also affect the shape. The previous researcher could have even selected the same locations on a different kind of a projection and identified another pattern. They're just random conincidents.
"But neither of them are going anywhere because parents are jamming up the whole system..."
fell out my chair, Matt
Great show from Matt as usual! And Happy Birthday RI!
The cogs thing reminds me of when my wife showed me her team's illustration of a marketing process with interlocking cogs: "that won't work!" I said. She was unconvinced it would matter, but did go back with my fixes. The next customer she spoke to confirmed that they were all engineers and, yes, it would have been a major barrier to credibility if they'd carried on with it as it was. I don't think I got any brownie points: she just realised that 'nerd' is a wider-spread condition than she'd thought.
Thats a good one!! 👌
Bwahahahahaha!
@Alexander LegisNonScriptae Ummm, excuse me, what the frick? That is the most forced transition I have heard in a long time and I don't see how your single-origin stuff is related to the original comment or video in *any* way whatsoever.
I'd write you off as a bot if it wasn't for this horrible introduction that shared a word with the original comment. That would still be impressive to pull of for a bot.
IceMetalPunk, LMAO. 😂😅🤣
@Alexander LegisNonScriptae Do you realize that none of those links work?
This is one of my favorite maths (and logic) presentations, because it is fun! Thanks Parker, still love it.
Teaching concepts like resonance using real world examples. I learnt a lot of things from this video. Keep it up
Matt, Thank you very much for being honest that took so many times to get three instances of Probability.
it's scripted that he will reveal it though
I thought it was a crooked wheel...
Mr Parker is someone who takes a few moments to get used to , but now I am very grateful he has these videos. He is really interesting and entertaining.😅😊👍👍
Brilliant. I love this lecture, thank you! I genuinely laughed out loud with the wheel (no spoilers) : Brilliant - would have been some nice mathematical poetry
Just went through the comments and I'm kinda shocked to see how little people appreciated this lecture. This guy is absolutely phenomenal. I was smiling throughout and learning some really cool stuff at the same time. He did an amazing job and I hope to see more from him on Ri. Huge fan, Matt!
There's not enough of us in this world who appreciate knowledge... who possibly want to expand themselves, learning new topics... he's quite good...
I read Humble Pi. The examples are all found in the book but the jenga tower wasn't.
I just recently started realising what Matt meant when he said that math is about "getting it wrong and working towards the right answer". That is exactly what my current course in Applied Mathematics is like - that course is about a bunch of super-complicated equations that simply cannot be solved exactly, and instead require a lot of trial and error with various approximation techniques.
i love how there are so many kids willing to learn, listening in the talk
get em young then they're gone.
I love Matt Parker as a mathematician and stand-up comedian.
I am 5:00 into the video and i gotta say.. this is why Matt Parker is my fav. maths educator on this planet.
This was a very fascinating and entertaining talk. Loved it...
I honestly thought the wheel was rigged, as the audience were turning it clockwise and matt was spinning it anti-clockwise and there was some mechanism that only worked in one direction.
@YAFU2 gets
@YAFU2 SO DID I !!!!
Something none of you have brought up... each of the three times Matt pulls the wheel it also landed on the same colour (programming). Was that also edited?
@OB1KXB 'i thought "but what if the video ISNT edited?"'
Agreed, how can we be sure he didn't just get a lucky joke in, we need some video proof he made them spin it repeatedly, it's not *that* unlikely to get the same colour after all :)
go learn before you talk
Probability, probability, probability, first time, what are the chances? I was wondering what the conjuring trick was, until Matt admitted it was editing for internet. This is an absolutely fascinating talk, and Matt Parker is every bit as entertaining as you might hope a comedian would be, and he achieves this by skill, not just chance. (Same goes for the Royal Institution, and the probability of finding fascinating talks they hosted, time after time, is a great deal greater than on most other channels.)
I love these lectures, and just ordered both books.
I was in an 80 story building during construction that during a strong wind storm that started twisting ( not just swaying) like crazy. It was quite scary. This was before the mass damper tank was constructed on top which I’m sure was where all the maths came in 😊
This was just delightful for me. In the first statistics course I ever took, the teacher said he could teach an entire course on how to lie with statistics.
Fascinating. I wanna watch more. I was a math major, and I can't intuitively figure out why the Grimes dice are not transitive. Going to have to research.
The glitch in the matrix started when the 'guest' spinner was supposed to call out the category, but then Matt did for the teen and adult. A good use of a Good Hour! Keep up the great content!
I've been very pedantic regarding the "stars where the moon should be" for years now, the difference between me and Matt is that he makes people laugh about it and I make people want to throw things at my face.
I find it much more satisfying when they force me to duck!
When it fell on "probability" the second time I joked to myself, "what's the probability of that!?". When it happened the third time I thought, surely it's rigged, but then I remembered you spinning it at the beginning and then you spun it again. Once you revealed the truth, it put my mind at ease, "oh thank God, it's just someone on the internet lying to me.".
Great video lecture and easy to follow.Lots of funny bits. My favourite is around 1:00 where his guest (wife) puts on gloves because the object might be covered in rocket fuel. And then as she is talking, she brushes her hair back. I would not have noticed this if not for Covid-19
I loved seeing this talk live! The part with the wheel was very funny!
I took an engineering ethics course in undergraduate. A couple of our case studies were in your book. I recall we watched a video interview: the person said CAD really stands for "Computer Aided Disaster". As often the output is "trusted" because the computer calculated it (and often there isn't an easy way to check it)
"Texas, undone by a lone star"
That's a lot funnier than the audience reaction gives it credit. That would have been mystery-bisuit worthy on Citation Needed.
@atlucas1 I thought it was a pun relating to hanging the fruit of a Horse Chestnut tree on a piece of string and smashing it against a similar item,
@atlucas1 What about concker?
The single golden star on a blue background on the Texas state flag signified Texas as an independent republic and was a reminder of the state’s struggle for independence from Mexico. The “Lone Star” can be found on the Texas State Flag and on the Texas State Seal today. It is found almost everywhere in Texas - on bridges and even on the huge ferris wheel at the Texas State Fair known as the Texas Star. The Lone Star State nickname became the official nickname of the state on June 19, 2015. Texas will vote to become part of Mexico again as soon as enough people that Democrats are allowing to illegally enter the country get the right to vote. Texas is the only state in the union that can legally secede.
@nitehawk86 mystery biscuits? is that like scooby-snacks?
lone star beer?
The earthquake/exercise class story reminds me of a Blaster Bates tale: His job was close to houses so instead of one big blast he was setting off a series of small charges. First he sent someone to the nearest house and set off a test detonation. The observer and householder were happy that there was no effect on the house or it's contents so Bates carried on with the sequence. He had hardly started, however, when a lady came running and shouting from further along the road saying that her home was being shaken badly: resonance and wavelengths!
I enjoy the part where you get the same category three times in a row out of five, and it has to be probability. Good trick.
I don’t know what it is about watching a conspiracy theorist be absolutely thrashed by a mathematician that’s so satisfying, but I love it.
Such a naturally talented maths communicator. Wish my math teacher was this engaging.
You must have composed that comment on an aeroplane. I can spot the point at which you crossed the Atlantic.
I was lamenting the same topic coming up but ended up glad about it, I do hope there will be another to cover some other topics as examples and in the meantime I'll buy the book.
Parker is funny, articulate, and entertaining. The way in which he has explained these concepts and ideas is remarkable, good show.
That it works or not is definitely important to the artistic side of the design. How could anyone say otherwise. Little things like the cogs this are immensely important in art and you can appreciate it when it is done correctly in any context, or more importantly when it is done incorrectly for a purpose.
Goodness, the guy really goes on. I can't believe I actually enjoyed watching this. Good job Matt! :D
gotta say very well presented, i put this video on at 3am and figured id watch 10-15mins before bed and see the rest when i got up lol i was wrong but i enjoyed being wrong and enjoyed the video as well so thank you for that
Excellent post! This guy is a "natural born" teacher.
Awesome video this one.
My favourite probability quote, and I wish I could remember who to attribute it to:
"The thing about one in a million coincidences is that they happen ALL THE TIME"
Also, yay, Lucy Green. If you want to know anything about the sun she is the person to ask.
To speak to the probability stories in this video: My wife is originally from Utah, and her dad grew up in American Fork. After we moved to the Portland, Oregon area, we were in a mall where we overheard a woman talking to a store clerk about her upcoming voyage to Utah. We had just moved to Oregon (literally a few months before), and we interjected ourselves into the conversation saying that we had just moved from Utah and was curious as to where she was going. She mentioned where she was going, but she also happened to mention that she lived in American Fork for a while. My wife said, "That's where my dad's from!" She asked his name, and when my wife told her his name, she exclaimed, "I dated your dad in junior high school!"
We were BLOWN AWAY. Right then, my wife called her dad, and they talked for about twenty minutes on the phone in the most impromptu lovers' reunion I had ever experienced. It still brings a smile to my face.
I come from a small village in Germany (just about 2,000 people living there) and went to university a couple of hundred kilometers away. I had rented a room in an apartment with a few other students. When one of them asked me where exactly I come from, not only did she recognize the name of the village (already quite unusual) - it turned out that her parents had lived in the house opposite ours 30 or 40 years ago! (These are houses where only one family lives, not apartment blocks, mind you.)
my father told me he was there when it happed: a priest and two teachers who didn't know each other before moving to the same town (more: being sent there) noticed while talking about relatives that each had a grandmother with the same surname who was borne in the same small village (few hundred people). They then decided not to follow this line because they didn't want to be related :-)
Small number of people in the same location. And its easy. Only 300+million outta a few billion so what are the odds? Remember most Americans never leave the States. East coast to West coast its not even the entire continent.
@Stephen Powell Not to mention that we have to factor in what constitutes a "weird occurence".
If there are no rules set up before hand, literally anything goes.
While it is unlikely that one specifik freak occurrence happens to one person, and it is likely that it will happen to someone at least once, it is also,. by the same logic and reasoning, impossible to go through life without experiencing at least one weird event as an individual.
You just need to look for the patterns.
Last summer a young lady I had never met had her small puppy named "Stevie Nix" chase my young kitten named "Little Richard" up a tree. Strange coincidence? Sure, but that's not the real strange coincidence. After finally retrieving poor Little Richard, we got to talking and discovered that we had both gone to the same high school - 4500 km away. Albeit 40 years apart
That was a day to play the lottery.
It's the enthusiasm in the teacher that holds peoples attention to the lesson. If you knock the enthusiasm out of the teacher with too much BS during their career they will lose that spark. Hopefully we have all had those one or two teachers that have inspired us to learn. I was lucky enough to have the same favourite teacher twice in Primary school, in grade 2 and 6. What's the probability of that happening?
Very nicely done.
I love the lesson to try and then correct and then try again.
I really enjoy your work, and didn't think I was in the mood for it at the moment but let it play in the background anyway. Well I'm happy to be wrong. A good show so far and I'll be letting it play to the end.
As pratchett once said "A one in a million chance happens 9 times out of 10"
@Amaury Leblanc there was one chance in a million that I would find this particular comment amusing
@Monsieur Alfonse ah lol i got confused
@solarea You mean the reciprocal, 1/2863. Altho its more now
@Amaury Leblanc no there actually was 2863/1
there was one chance in a million that I would find this particular comment
Something similar to the Disney photo happened to a friend of mine. She was at Disney World with her marching band. Another marching band ran through her group, crashing into some people. What she didn't find out until later is that the group that ran into hers contained her future spouse. They were both about 800 miles from home.
I'm a simple man. I see Matt Parker on RI, I hit like and binge an hour watching him rant about numbers
Did anybody notice a segment called "Meet Mario"?
It's a girl and her name is Maria.
@Luna Dusk you have failed to use the word "your" correctly
please try again
I hit like and made the number of likes the first 3 digits of pi.
Nice.
(Assuming an accuracy over 3 digits, no rounding)
Agree. No Parker Square tho.
your not the only one.
If you built an *indoor* model of one of those bridges, and populated it with *metronomes* ...
I've always wondered what would happen if you compounded one of these issues by introduced two simultaneously ...
Would the metronomes still self-synchronize? Could the bridge be part of the synchronization if the right tempo were chosen?
Awesome Matt!
What do you think about HHHTTT or TTTHHH as a starting pattern and changing the probability of winning?
The craziest thing that happened to me is that I once flipped a 5p and it landed on it's edge, entirely stationary. I couldn't even PUT the coin on it's edge afterwards.
What I really like about coincidence. In addition to a specific event being very likely to happen given enough people, it is also certain that some incredibly unlikely events will happen to every person. Simply because we have the chance to experience an anomaly thousands of times every day without even realising it!
its
This guy is so awesome!
What a lovely man!
I noticed the man who spun the wheel held it back slightly to make sure it was on green. Perhaps after how many times the 2nd spin took, according to Matt.
I quite enjoyed watching this. I was going to switch You Tube video but I got involved.
"Are there any... wait for the end of the sentence."
This has 'teacher' written all over it, I love it
@Classical Physics the entire beginning of quantum mechanics started when physicists decided to rethink their theories because it couldnt explain what they saw.
@Gertjan Eisink so this why most adults in adult trainings don't volunteer. Please don't produce broken adults. We need participation in the work place.
Wait for the end, not if Sheldon Cooper said it. It would still be going on.
@Classical Physics What.
Teacher here. When that happens to me, I sometimes like to go:
Is there anyone who....[all hands in the air].... Peed their pants?
:D humor is easy with kids, I love it.
Excellent. Should be compulsory viewing in school and beyond
Starting off a conversation about logic asking people whether they can hear you. Have to love it.
Probability comes for the second time:
"What are the chances!?"
Audience: "..."
It's because he edited out the spins that weren't probability, meaning the audience were in on it
@Jana Š. np fam
omar garaali Thanks
This is so strange. I had no intention of watching this video. But when I found it I was interested in the math aspect. Last night I was in bed, and somehow I was thinking about how people are so certain of the truth, yet we always ask if it will be heads or tails, when in reality it has another option. So I was a bit alarmed to see it addressed in less than 24 hours.
People have known about the problem of people moving en masse within a structure for hundreds if not thousands of years. Armys marching switch to a break step when they cross bridges to avoid the bridge collapsing. I'd imagine this problem has been known to military strategists since antiquity.
When Matt asked "Does the coin have two heads?" and "Is there tails on one side?" it still could have been a coin with two tails :)
It could but it becomes irrelevant because you can just choose tails if you suspect that there are 2 sides. You know there aren't 2 heads, so you can safely choose tails and have a 50% or greater chance of success
@Sleek Otter if both sides have tails, side has tails. So one side has tails. And the other one as well, but this was not the question.
@BlankPaper Well no, because the interaction wouldn't have ended there, had it actually been double-sided. The question is not redundant, as if it had been a yes, the person could have said something to the effect of "I pick whatever side is on the coin", or simply asked "Which side is doubled" and then proceeded to pick that one. It would only have been redundant, if the answer was "Yes, it is double-sided" and then they simply went on to pick whatever anyways without inquiring or thinking further
The confusing part is that he asked before making a choice... If it was a double-sided coin, he still had a 50% chance to win or lose. It was redundant to even ask.
or a coin with three heads but we only see two of them.
I was a bit shocked when he started talking about the Ariane 5 rocket here, just after finishing up on the probability talk (and the plot twist). Just two hours ago, I was watching the James Webb Telescope launch, *which was launched on the Ariane 5*
I always look at the topic of a video followed by the duration and then decide. When I saw 1:07:33, I thought, OK I will watch 6 minutes and then move on. 1:07:33 I am still here! Hugely entertaining and fun well done.
If I manage to watch this to the end, it will be the longest I ever listened to a maths teacher without secretly reading a novel under my desk. Wait. I don't have a desk. 😧
I've struggled with math all my life. I'm a writer. It infuriates me that I was barred from getting into a 4-year university due to the entry requirement for intermediate algebra! (This as a mid-life student!--by that time, I'd been running a household, raising children, volunteering with Girl Scouts as a troop leader and day-camp coordinator...I feel I already knew how to "think logically," which was the excuse given for the math requirement!) As I said, I'm a writer. Why would a writer need math? I write humor, blank verse poems, travel essays, and the like. I do not write technical manuals or anything remotely similar. I don't need math. The human brain being how it is, the oft-repeated adage of "use it or lose it" applies. If I had learned algebra, I would never have a need to use it, therefore I'd have lost it, and the time spent studying it would have been wasted. Therefore, why would I want to spend the time and effort learning a subject for which I'd have no future use, and would end up forgetting?! Answer: I wouldn't. So, my education stopped with an Associate's degree in liberal arts from a 2-year community college. Administrators should make reasonable requirements based on the students' planned future occupations.
Also, I don't trust percentages. As a member of a parent group trying to save a school threatened with closure, we learned that you use percentages if you want to make something sound BIGGER than it is. To wit: we surveyed the teachers of said school, and found that 14% of them would leave the school district and teach elsewhere were that school to be closed. Fourteen percent!!! Guess what? That fourteen percent amounted to a single teacher!!! But by stating it as a percentage, we were able to manipulate the facts without lying, and make the situation sound more dire than it was. No, percentages are not to be trusted!
(Oh, and here in the USA, hearing people refer to "maths" is grating. to us, it's a singular word! It's either "math," or, if you insist on using the plural, then don't shorten the word, and call it "mathematics" instead! Thank you! ;-) )
Probability is like gambling chances--my late husband was listening to his step father brag about winning $25K at the casino. Dad was not happy when asked, "How much did you spend to win that?" LOL
You make some good points. I would argue that there’s nothing wrong with using a percentage; it is a very useful way to indicate a fraction. If I said 467 out of 934 people like cheese, that may be hard to visualize, but 50% is much easier! The example you gave is an abuse of a method, where the numbers are used to obscure the truth
I've kind of had one of those photo moments happen to me.
When I was 10, my mother, my brother and I went to a place called Kemer in Turkey for a couple of weeks. It was a really good vacation and next year we decided to go to Turkey again. We were looking at possible cities to go to in a catalogue, and as we came upon Kemer we stopped to reminisce a bit and looked at the aerial photo... and noticed "Hey, the hotel the picked for this town looks a lot like the one we stayed in... Actually, it's the same one! And look at that, those three people you can see at a table look like a woman and two boys. They could be us. Actually, what clothes were you wearing? And the hair colors match. And that's our table! THAT'S US!!" So the same people who had their picture taken unawares were the ones who the year after sat together and saw themselves.
Mildly interesting probability story. I once visited Tokyo and during a wild night out lost my mobile phone. The next day my friend received a phonecall to come and pick up my phone. Turns out, it had been picked up by someone I had gone to primary school with 15 years prior who had recognised me in the photos on my phone, had contacted back to our mutual home country to get all the relevant phone numbers and then called through to arrange a meeting spot.
The chances are pretty small and I am eternally thankful they went to the effort.
I don't know about luck. what I do know is that it has nothing to do with my comment that you are replying to. Maybe you meant to put in the main thread?
I can't believe I sat through all that … BUT … it was interesting and well done. Impressive.
The Christmas Lectures are brilliant, sadly lacking on terrestrial television nowadays.
I am amazing at math. Grade 12 math for me, was a nightmare. Every other day there was a new formula I needed learn. ALL THE WAY through grade 12 math, I would do the math PERFECTLY but I would use the wrong formula. In the end, I had 50.2%. I truly believe the teacher fudged that number because he knew, I could do the math! After high school, I applied to join the army. They looked at my high school record and said, If ya want to go into that field ya will have to upgrade my grade 12 math. I looked right at them and said **** that.
I love the idea that math is a matter of being wrong and less wrong and less wrong until you can get it down to where you're the least wrong you can be.
As soon as they got the first "probability" on the wheel spin, I was calculating what was the probability of getting it three times in a row, and was hoping that he DIDNT have three probability stories.
Parker is my favorite mathematician which is something I never thought I'd say about a mathematician xD.
@NEW No, but you can put in a little effort and explore those persons out there who have some reputation for math jokes.
But can you have a favorite out of a selection of one?
@joepie91 Maths. A mathematician should do maths. A mathemetician known for other things is better loved for those things. Better to say that Matt Parker is your favourite comedian in the maths niche.
@Peter others have pointed this out, but yes that's just a stupid stereotype. I in fact know funny math professors. The other problem is, that Matt Parker doesn't do anything a mathematician would. He doesn't do research, he doesn't teach students.
@Peter - Richard Feynman was a lot like Matt Parker but you only got to see it in interviews, biographies and videos of his lectures. But he was a physicist, which means he was also a mathematician. And a musician. And a prankster.
I think you'd agree that the objective of any educator should be to create some kind of passion for the subject matter whether that's curiosity, inspiration, enthusiasm, determination, a sense of responsibility or simply awe.
When I was a much younger man, I saw and felt I had to read "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Ulam. It was fascinating. Thanks goodness it had lots of physics too :-) And many adventures!
I found this video while aimlessly browsing (It's COVID time and I'm bored). Well, it could be a turning point in my life, or not... But either way, thank you so much for sharing your time, energy, friends, and family with the rest of us. For now, my lips are frozen in the shape of a big warm smile.
I love this guy ! I hope he has procreated like his friends have, we need the intelligence boost in the gene pool. Thanks for the video Matt.
@BlankPaper Yes this is a conundrum that has haunted me for some time...
If only the people who recognize the wisdom of limited reproduction abstain from gratuitous replication, they will ultimately be outnumbered by those who reproduce with no thought of the consequences.
Unfortunately there is no obvious solution to this dilemma, as any attempt to limit the "reproductive rights" of the masses would seem dystopian and heavy-handed.
The alternate civilization envisioned by Robert J. Sawyer in his brilliant three-part series The Neanderthal Parallax had some very clever societal adaptations to both limit population and heighten the average IQ of their populace, but it is hard to imagine anything like that ever happening in our world.
Procreation is a funny thing... Those who procreate more, think less. Those who think more, think about NOT procreating as much, just "enough", if at all. The people breeding like bunnies, don't think much at all.
Our problem, as a society, is that we base OUR intelligence, off a few rare individuals or "teams", as if WE are that smart. Most of the brilliant minds in history, are honestly not brilliant. History is in the hands of those who write about it. Most historians are not bright, but profess to be a writer of brilliance. (That is not a derogatory statement, but a fact. Just as teachers are rarely ever "applied" in what they teach. There is no time to teach if you are doing, and no time to do, if you are teaching. Teachers usually work on providing tools for great minds to use. The hope is that one of those who was given tools, will actually be a "great mind". The reality is that most people rarely use the tools they are given and the greatest minds never needed the tools to begin with. It's a lovely, ironic, catch-22.)
The second time the spin goes green. I began to laugh really loudly. The best joke ever.
When he showed the falling Jenga tower that required less energy because of the resonance, that was absolutely amazing.
now go find a gyroscope.
@DacuberTM I thought the same about swinging and how it's like two things (the person and the swing) moving synchronously
Its so easy to show.
Take a swing set.
Watch someone swing.
There you go?
You can simulate the same phenomenon in a bathtub full of water. If you shove your hands back and forth randomly, no meaningful waves will form. Only if you hit the resonance frequency of the tub (that is dependant on the size and shape of the tub) will a big wave form.
For normal sized tubs that means pushing way slower than your intuition tells you.
Oh, man, ANOTHER RI vid.
At least they're getting me out of chemistry, physics...
IF I don't learn anything (oh, too late for that), it's hella entertaining.
Humble pi was excellent. Going to give it another read soon.
I read the book and you definitely mentioned people dying in it.
Since the participants all spun the wheel the opposite way you did, I assumed there was a secondary flywheel and/or cam catch on the back side that engaged in clockwise rotation but not counter-clockwise, but I guess film edits and a room full of complicit participants is easier.