Posted a new video this week I’m really happy with. It covers abstraction, deduction & syllogisms through the lens of Aristotle’s work on Logic. Now that this video is complete I can finally get to the real meat of this series…. the dream of a “Universal Computer”. This video also features my son Booker, his second appearance in an Art of the Problem video.
I’ve seen so many botched, overcomplicated, misconstrued and boring attempts at explaining algorithms to new minds that it was a huge relief to finally finish this video. My goal here is to explain procedural knowledge (know-how) via a thought experiment involving actors. I cover what I consider the two core ideas behind algorithms and where they came from. I also extend the explanation to setup a future video on time/space complexity. You’ll see no mention of while loops, for loops, or bubble sort…horse before cart. This is part 2 in the series on Computer Science.
This is a short documentary I produced with my friend Steve Lederer in early 2015. It was an experiment in remote collaboration and zero budget filmmaking. It explores a bipolar father of 4 and follows him through one complete cycle. My interest in this project stems from a fascination with people who suffer from very strong cyclical behaviour patterns. The question is…is his condition a blessing or a curse?
This first video explores declarative vs. procedural knowledge through the lens of the Turing Test & Oracle machines. It’s intended to hook + ground the viewer in some basics before building towards Logic & Turing Machines. After this video we will dive deeper into procedural knowledge via. Algorithms. Then we’ll explore more history (arithmetic vs. formal logic) before building towards 20th Century ideas.
After a long period of research I’m happy to report Art of the Problem’s third episode is in production. This episode will act as the final piece of a CS trilogy. Here is the first video which gives an overview of the series: (or watch on YouTube)
I’ve also published an essay version of this video with extra links below (or read on Medium).
Around 100 years ago something really exciting was happening.
In early 2014 Tony DeRose (Senior Scientist and Lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios ) and Elyse Klaidman (Director of Pixar University and Archives) approached Khan Academy with an idea. They wanted to answer a question everyone asks in school at some point: “Why do I need to learn this?” Previously, Tony had given talks which try and engage children in mathematics by demonstrating how math lives at the intersection of design and technology at Pixar. It was clear that you could motivate kids to learn math and science by showing them how concepts they encounter in school are used at Pixar to make movie magic… Continue reading
Why did Bernoulli mention Plato’s Theory of Forms in Ars Conjectandi? What does this have to do with free will?
This video is a broad introduction to the Weak Law of Large Numbers, the Central Limit Theorem and how it all led to Markov Chains…
Next, play around with this interactive, graphical Markov simulator!
3 decades later, Claude Shannon famously applied this idea to generate “english looking” messages in his Mathematical Theory of Communication:
