The Hardest Math Problem | Po-Shen Loh and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Po-Shen Loh is a mathematician at CMU and coach of the USA International Math Olympiad team.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[jcglez]

You can tell Po-Shen understands math so well he can visually see what he’s explaining with his hand movements

[grahamvandyke]

I've seen him in other math videos before, and I love how enthusiastic he is. You can tell math is absolutely his life.

[abztract]

I dont know wtf they are talking about but I find it fascinating.

[robertbordevik]

I’m a simple man. I enjoy listening to smart people speak. I don’t have a clue what they talk about 🤷‍♂️

[francesfuego]

The english auto translated text at 02:05 reads "USE OUR OTHER RED WING PUB PROOF A DOODLE MOOR" i think that sums up how confused we all are on this subject.

[jas.digitalnative]

I love these types of conversations. It actually makes having a Comp Sci background and going through all that fucking hell that is conceptual/discrete mathematics.... feel somewhat interesting & fun to use in application

[stephensullivan]

Haha "how the heck did anyone think of that" 😂

[slybenal]

This guy is inspiring! He loves what he does n even enjoys talking about mathematics 💯✔

[zourdy]

having a math teacher like him is a blessing

[adrianqx]

I'm laughing at myself imagining finding myself in this conversation and they both wait for my input !

[sd]

Very insightful: breaking a problem into subproblems with inputs and outputs (sockets), for which one knows solutions. Of course, one is as powerful as the number of subproblems he/she has in their inventory.

[dannyweaver]

I couldnt even do the math in his explanation

[Amlantube]

I only know that plugs go inside socket.

[babbotfinklestein]

Ive watched it 4 times and im more confused than the 1st time

[Kaslor]

"... and yes, everything here is true, but how the heck did anyone think of that?!" - literally everyone throughout their math education

[richcaputo]

Brilliant way of thinking about difficulty

[FonsecaLA]

This man is extraordinary ! The Math is beautiful!

[kukuricapica]

I'm not smart by any means, but I'm kinda happy that he said that he learn math the way he did because I did that since I was 15yo. I remember because I once asked teacher that annoying questions why and how and she couldn't tell me. She was cool about it and even give me assignment to find out these questions. That's when I learned that fundamental problem with learning something from someone is that if they know something, some equation for example, they will just repeat over and over and over until they forgot why it is the way it is. That the difference between knowing thing and understanding things. I'm not the brightest and I personally doesn't go into detail in things I don't feel I need to, but I do understands what I know enough so when someone ask me about it I'm able to explain them what the problem is and why it is even though it's abstract concept. I will try and find some analogy that I understand and I could apply in real life and you would be surprised how many people are interested after to know more.
I wish our teachers could have good analogies, real life uses or even made up bs stories about how the problem was discovered and how it was solved. And that's what he's doing naturally by himself by doing proofs he's able to understand the nature of the problem.

My point is that what I think he was trying to say was, *what makes math problem hard is the number of connections you have to make in your mind in order to solve the problem.*

[dbamman]

The two problems I’ve encountered of this idea comes from proving 1) first part of Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (3 insights) and 2) in statistics, the sample mean and the sample variance are independent (4 insights)

[Jgrande]

This man broke it down so beautifully 🙏🏽❤️🔥