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Gilbert Strang's final lecture at MIT: May 15, 11:00am
- waynecochran 3y agoI 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 3y agoFully 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.
- d23 3y agoHa, 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 3y agoThis is his channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr22xikWUK2yUW4YxOKXclQ 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoAgree. I’m seriously thinking of starting a GradCert in October thanks to his teaching.
- greenyoda 3y agoStrang's bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Strang He's been a professor at MIT since 1962!
- OJFord 3y agoThat's Gil for Gilbert, not GIL for, idk, Python's Global Interpretor Lock or something.
- OJFord 3y agoBecause 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...)
- deepzn 3y agoYes, thanks edited it after seeing your comment.
- Paul-Craft 3y agoI wonder if enough people will tune in to a linear algebra lecture that it crashes the live stream.
- rwl4 3y agoHere are 34 lectures for his Linear Algebra course he recorded in 1999: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video_galleries/video-lectures/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010...
- tptacek 3y agoAlong with Jacques Pepin's "deboning a chicken" .FLV video, these are among the greatest videos on the Internet.
- caddemon 3y agoIDR 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.
- whymauri 3y agoI 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.
- hnIsDBeesKnees 3y ago[dead]
- cs702 3y agoMultiple 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.
- gadrev 3y agoLinear 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoI 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.
- xhkkffbf 3y agoI really enjoyed using his first textbook. He's got a nice, light touch.
- newprint 3y agoThere is a great book published in Russian "ЗАДАЧИ И ТЕОРЕМЫ ЛИНЕЙНОЙ АЛГЕБРЫ" (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 http://prasolov.loegria.net/linalg.pdf (hint is you want to print it out, Amazon printing service is great place to print books)
- generationP 3y agoI think this is not actually the newest edition; that is available on https://sites.google.com/site/prasolovskacatmoiknigi/home 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-problems.pdf https://staff.math.su.se/mleites/books/prasolov-1994-problem...
- vondur 3y agoAmazon printing service? I see they have one for photos/calendar and such. Do they have one for sending PDF's to print?
- dustingetz 3y agoomg https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834340 https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834340 ah crap no pdf
- newprint 3y agoI think, that is the Amazon service I have used to print out the book. I uploaded the pdf and week later got the book from Amazon. I will go though email and will get back to you.
- newprint 3y agoYep, it is Amazon service. Here is the email that I got from Amazon. Make sure you order book as Request copy. Dear , Your request for a proof version of ‘Задачи и теоремы линейной алгебры’ is ready for checkout. Requested copies will be available in your Amazon shopping cart for the next 24 hours. You can complete checkout by clicking the following link: Proceed to Checkout Questions? Learn more on our help page. The Kindle Direct Publishing Team
- kennethfriedman 3y agoI 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- eichin 3y agoIn 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.
- qersist3nce 3y agoThanks 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 3y agoThe good news about 18.06 is that it doesn't need to be new, just good, and it is that already.
- mindcrime 3y agoHuh? 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/ http://videolectures.net/
- peter303 3y agoI took a course from him 49 years ago.
- navels 3y agoI taught a linear algebra section for Gil when I was a postdoc, will be watching this for sure.
- agumonkey 3y agoOh so this is just a retire in peace .. I was affraid for a minute.
- guender 3y ago[dead]
- ThePhysicist 3y agoI used his book on linear algebra during my studies in Germany, even though the professor teaching LA pursued a different (and I found more confusing) approach. I found the book really enjoyable, in my mental bookshelf it rests right next to the Feynman lectures in physics.
- penguin_booze 3y agoNot to steal limemlight away from Strang, but I'd recommend again Pavel Grinfeld's (the website host, also Strang's student (I think)) Linear Algebra series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlXfTHzgMRUKXD88IdzS14F4NxAZudSmv https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlXfTHzgMRUKXD88IdzS1....
- hbogert 3y agoThanks to his recorded lectures I finally passed LA in a dutch University. At the time ~2008 my university profs had a say for specific courses if they wanted it recorded or not. Of course the profs who refused were gray dinosaurs. I'm glad Gilbert didn't fall into this education conservatism.