A very vloggy video in which I share a couple favorite new books, discuss four myths about math, and rant about my life goals and my crazy idea for next year.
See my day 11 blog post for the written version of my thoughts on taking a year off to just have fun learning stuff before I get another full-time job; I said basically the same thing at the end of today’s video.
Additions to my Wall of Questions
See the first set of questions and creation of the Wall of Questions in my video for day 7.
- What are the must-see math movies?
- Why do the digits of factors of 11 add up to 0 if alternating adding and subtracting?
- What is cryptology, its basic principles, and why is it cool?
- Why are people so fascinated with prime numbers?
- What patterns are there to prime numbers (if any)?
- What is number theory and why do people like it?
- What are the “five basic rules” (according to Alex) for doing proofs?
- What do mathematicians think the word “introduction” means?!
- What is graph theory all about?
- How did Euler prove that the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem has no solution?
- What’s the Euler characteristic?
- What are manifolds excatly?
- What is Euclidean space?
- What other types of geometrical spaces exist, and what’s the difference between them?
- How many mathematicians are there, are what are their demographics?
- What do mathematicians talk about when they’re together (if their work is so highly specialized that they don’t know what many of their colleagues are working on)?
- What are the best examples of how pure mathematics became unexpectedly useful?
- How do knots work and what are the basics of knot theory?
- What does “breaking the rules” mean in mathematics?
- How does one write and publish a mathematical paper? What are the steps involved, what does the process look like?
- How do you solve a Rubik’s Cube?
- Who are some of the influential women in mathematics?
- What’s Euler’s identity all about? Why is it beautiful and what does it mean?
Time breakdown
- Video production time: 1 hour 53 min
- Script writing/preparation: 8 min
- Filming/setup: 40 min
- Video editing: 50 min
- Publishing: 15 min
- Math study time: 2 hours 31 min
- Practice problems: 2 hours
- Reviewing and generating questions: 31 min