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He made linear algebra fun
- auggierose 3y agoThis headline sounds like somebody died.
- toomanydoubts 3y agoYeah, clicked thinking about the same thing.
- infocollector 3y agoHe is a legend in linear algebra, and probably will be for a long time. His video lectures have proven invaluable, benefiting millions.
- sgift 3y agoThat brings me back. Strang probably saved my computer science degree. That professor I had in linear algebra and me really couldn't communicate and without Strangs lectures (to his credit, my professor recommended them) I wouldn't have stood a chance. Thanks, professor. And enjoy your well-earned retirement.
- strikelaserclaw 3y agoi aced linear algebra even though i didn't attend many classes because i always watched strang's lectures.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoI aced lin algebra because I realized early the potential and ran home after every lecture and worked on a 3d engine incorporating most concepts.
- jessekv 3y agoLove this. Why can't all education be this way?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoNever took his courses but used his book. My linear algebra teacher was awesome. The two changed my life.
- perihelions 3y ago51 more comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038635
- dang 3y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Students give Gilbert Strang a standing ovation after his last lecture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36038635 - May 2023 (51 comments) A thank you to Gilbert Strang, retiring after his 61-year long teaching career - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35981340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35981340 - May 2023 (1 comment) Gilbert Strang's final lecture at MIT: May 15, 11:00am - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35921538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35921538 - May 2023 (56 comments) Gilbert Strang Teaches Linear Algebra - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22382337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22382337 - Feb 2020 (91 comments) Gilbert Strang's New Course on Linear Algebra+ for ML Now Online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19939030 - May 2019 (23 comments) Matrix Methods in Data Analysis, Signal Processing, and Machine Learning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19933274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19933274 - May 2019 (21 comments) Strang's “Linear Algebra and Learning from Data” is printed and available - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18862719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18862719 - Jan 2019 (22 comments) A conversation with Gilbert Strang [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18048316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18048316 - Sept 2018 (19 comments) Too Much Calculus – Gilbert Strang (2001) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9189553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9189553 - March 2015 (134 comments) Calculus by Gilbert Strang - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=343332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=343332 - Oct 2008 (3 comments)
- the__alchemist 3y agoThis dude taught the Lin alg courses that went on MitX. Super good!
- levzettelin 3y ago[flagged]
- Errancer 3y agowhat? i feel like it is completely opposite; per the "A Mathematician’s Lament" essay
- kiechu 3y agoThe same with spelling.
- levzettelin 3y agoOuch!
- l33t233372 3y agoAs someone with graduate level math experience and many friends in mathematics grad school, I know what you mean, but it definitely depends on your idea of fun. You have to enjoy bashing your head against a problem for a dozen hours. Or to be more precise, you have to enjoy the feeling of solving such a hard problem sufficiently much to find math fun.
- levzettelin 3y agoHeh, fair point regarding the "idea of fun". Disagree, though, that you have to enjoy the feeling of banging your head against hard problems (no one does). You just have believe that getting through it will make you better off eventually.
- ta_rhdetvd 3y agoYou sound like someone who wasn't enjoying mathematics that much in class. I hope you'll manage to get over it someday.
- levzettelin 3y agoI actually have a PhD in linear algebra lol.
- kiechu 3y agoStrang course is available on YT as part of MIT OCW. Amazing lecturer.
- beyonddream 3y agoI have listened to his lectures but found it hard to follow his train of thoughts and pace and I am sure I am in the minority :). What worked somewhat is listening to 2x speed.
- linster 3y agoI know this article is about Strang from the context of his retirement a few weeks ago, but the title is clickbait.
- mb7733 3y agoI guessed this was about Strang just from the title! I hadn't heard about his retirement.
- stavros 3y agoI saw the title, and thought "the only person I can think of that this applies to is Gilbert Strang". Imagine my surprise when it was actually him, when I haven't thought of him or linear algebra for fifteen years.
- b33j0r 3y agoGiven other trending headlines, I thought he’d died. The past tense thing. Glad it was just a celebration!
- omgmajk 3y agoI just watched that video in the article of his last lecture and it was indeed fun!
- bkartal 3y agoGil needs to be remembered as one of the key people that helped AI developments behind the scenes by having students master linear algebra! I hope you enjoy your retirement in health and peace!
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoMIT's profs Strang and the late professor Winston have positively changed my life. I knew it was him from the title and was worried he ... yeah.
- imbusy111 3y agoI remember watching his lectures 17 years ago online when I was a teenager. That was the first online course I've done and it was on MIT OpenCourseWare. Then, when I was actually getting a math degree years later in Manchester, UK, I got the highest score on the linear algebra exam out of all the classes I did. I doubt I would have done so well without Strang.
- bluenose69 3y agoI really appreciated the sentence following the title, because I was thinking this would be an obituary. And, to make things better, there's an informative and very sweet video interview with him at the end of the article. Even in that, he takes a didactic approach, teaching other teachers how to teach. Whether one likes or dislikes mathematics, it's hard to argue that he was anything but captivating in the classroom.
- machineering 3y agoA fun anecdote: I taught him some machine learning for an afternoon! He used to spend a few months per year in Oxford, and he had gotten in touch with my PhD advisor to ask some ML questions, as at the time he was writing his new book about linear algebra and learning from data. My advisor couldn't make it to their meeting so he sent me at the last minute instead. So bewildered me, a PhD student, met with Gilbert Strang to explain him some basic machine learning concepts! Interestingly, whenever I'd asked if he was already familiar with some concept, he'd always say no, which I suspect was a strategy to hear it explained in new words. Anyway, Gil is a very polite and kind person, his encounter will stay a great memory.
- rottencupcakes 3y agoI started taking Gilbert Strang's "new" course, "Matrix Methods In Data Analysis, Signal Processing, And Machine Learning" (18.065), in my free time after hearing about his retirement news. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-065-matrix-methods-in-data-analysis-signal-processing-and-machine-learning-spring-2018/pages/syllabus/ https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-065-matrix-methods-in-data-an... It's been 17 years since I took 18.06 with Professor Strang and I've always been disappointed with my grasp of Linear Algebra, especially as it's become more and more of an important and applicable topic. It very much stopped then and I've never felt terribly confident in it. The course is great because it starts with a 6 lecture refresher that brings you back up to speed on the basics of Linear Algebra before diving into the meat of the course. To avoid being completely 100% on the Strang bandwagon, his lectures are a little off the cuff and could probably benefit from some visual aids or interactive tools outside of white boards to help students visualize what's really going on with these matrices, but the current version of the course (https://github.com/mitmath/18065/tree/main/psets https://github.com/mitmath/18065/tree/main/psets) has a bunch of Julia IJupyter Notebook assignments that help you get down and dirty with what you're really trying to learn - the application of Linear Algebra.
- iamcreasy 3y agoIs this course related to his most recent book, Linear Algebra and Learning from Data[1]? [1] https://math.mit.edu/~gs/learningfromdata/ https://math.mit.edu/~gs/learningfromdata/
- rottencupcakes 3y agoprécisément
- katzgrau 3y agoI had very intelligent linear algebra professor in college but he was, in my opinion, a very poor communicator. I paid attention to lectures and stared at the text, but couldn't really understand the material. For the first part of a linear algebra course, students who don't mind blindly following mechanical processes for solving problems can do very well. Unfortunately I'm one of those people who tends to reject the process until I understand why it works. If it wasn't for Strang's thoughtful and sometimes even entertaining lectures via OCW, I probably would have failed the course. Instead, as the material became considerably more abstract and actually required understanding, I had my strongest exam scores. I didn't even pay attention in class. I finished with an A. Although my first exam was a 70/100, below the class average, the fact that I got an A overall suggests how poorly the rest of the class must have done on the latter material, where I felt my strongest thanks to the videos. So anyway, thank you Gilbert Strang.
- hexo 3y agoThanks to Him I've learned how to solve a linear algebra problem even when I had no clue what to do. He was/is absolute champion in that. At the exam, I've used his methods to approach the problem and my solutions were real different from what my examiner expected - so much that he marked my solutions as wrong(! :D), I had to point out that "wait; don't!, it IS correct" so the test correcting person had to actualy go though my solutions and proofs and really check them. I was right and passed the test. Thank you so much Sir! OCW rullz!
- sva_ 3y agoA small note, to those who like Podcasts: Gilbert Strang has been on Lex's Podcast in 2019 (damn, time flies nowadays): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lEZPfmGCEk0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lEZPfmGCEk0
- tomjakubowski 3y agoI took a combination linear algebra/series course in college and barely remembered anything from it. Years later, when I was learning 3D graphics, almost any time I did matrix-matrix or matrix-vector multiplication, I had to look up a formula or painfully work through remembering how it worked. My attempts to memorize the simple algorithm all failed. Then I bought Strang's book, watched the OCW lectures, and did the homework. Now any time I have to do or think about a matrix multiplication, Strang's voice echoes in my head, "combinations of columns." There is something special about his words, his tone of voice, and his repetition, which all together make it click for me.
- neodypsis 3y agoI struggled with a very deficient linear algebra course from my local university in 2009-2010. Fortunately I discovered Gilbert Strang's book and OCW lectures, which gave me the motivation to continue. I still own that copy.
- zgs 3y agoLinear algebra was one of my favourite series of subjects during my mathematics degrees. It has always been fun. There was only one rocky moment I can recollect, in first year after a three lecture proof which the lecturer finished with words along the lines of: "I won't go through this again because you wouldn't understand it the second time either." Quite possibly true, although I understood the steps of the proof the theorem itself wasn't at all obvious. In later years it became so.
- satiric 3y agoMy linear algebra professor put a lot of effort into showing us the processes; how to do things, how and why they worked. Unfortunately they spent no time showing us how this stuff was actually used in the real world, and so for me it all went in one ear and out the other. A buddy of mine said that his professor spent about half an hour discussing some applications of linear algebra, and just that half hour lecture made the subject much more palatable. Then a few years later, I took a computer graphics class for my CS degree, and we were learning how to render a 3D object on a 2D monitor. And of course we used linear algebra, and then it made perfect sense. I figure all the people in the math department that cared about practical applications had left to join the CS department, or EE, or Physics or whatever. So the math department, at least at my university, had only the people who just cared about the theory, which just didn't work for my brain.
- ronnykylin 3y agoKisses goodbye to linear algebra way years ago. I think if I knew how it is applied in real life, I would be way more into it. Always respect people who can teach difficult or abstract stuffs in a fun way.
- 8bitsrule 3y agoI tried a linear algebra course once; guess I got the wrong teacher, checked out in 3 weeks. A few teachers have the juice, most have the pulp.
- revskill 3y agoThere's no shortcut to Linear Algebra understanding. Most of reasoning is boring, lack of creativity, dry as hell.
- mochaki 3y ago[dead]
- munro 3y agoI watched a bit of his lectures on YouTube, it wasn't very fun lol Hamming lectures though.... those are great
- benburton 3y agoI struggled with linear algebra in college, in part because my professor had a tenuous grasp of the English language. Strang's book was our textbook, and I did a bit of digging and found the OCW lectures. I stopped going to class, and instead would spend the time at the library to watch Strang's lectures and take notes. I was one of the very few students to ace the class, and I will be forever grateful.
- jamesgill 3y agoFor those unfamiliar: Dr. Strang is still very much alive and active and involved in math; he just retired from his full-time job at MIT.