Latest / Math Therapy / S4E03: 4 million subscribers watch this guy do math w/ Grant Sanderson

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S4E03: 4 million subscribers watch this guy do math w/ Grant Sanderson · Math Therapy

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do think a lot of people have the capacity to appreciate the beauty in math.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the time that you feel ownership as a student is when you feel like you kind of made it up yourself.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Vanessa Vicarian, aka the Math Guru, and you're listening to Math Therapy, a podcast that helps guests work through their math traumas one problem at a time.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you think you're a math person or not, you're about to find out that math people don't actually exist.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the scars that math has left on many of us definitely do.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and don't worry.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: No calculators or actual math were involved in the making of this podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so today I'm talking to an actual celeb in the math world.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're talking a list.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking millions of fans.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking to Grant Sanderson.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Grant explains very high-level math on his YouTube channel, 3Blue1 Brown.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And get this, he has over 4 million subscribers, most of whom are definitely not getting their PhDs in math.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, Grant knows his audience is smart enough to grasp any math concept.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: All they need is a little guidance from him.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I do have to acknowledge that we got up to like kind of a rocky start, and that was 100% of my fault.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can only assume I was so starstruck that I got my words all jumbled up.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I really don't know what happened, and I promise I'm a professional.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, you'll see what I mean in two seconds, but he was a good sport and we made up and had a great time, and we're best friends now.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, at least I think we're best friends now.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Grand, welcome to math therapy.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're so excited to have you.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So your YouTube channel, ThreeBlue, One Brown, is all about making math accessible and engaging, but you kind of do the exact opposite of what everyone says to do.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: You make it kind of useless, theoretical, and really hard.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you use this approach and who was this website really designed for?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, so let's see the words you use.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: You said theoretical, useless, and really hard.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I try my best not to make it really hard.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the things that I find interesting and worth covering are the things that I think are um interesting.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you said who is it for?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it's kind of in the original conception, I was thinking of a younger version of myself where there's certain topics that you might not see in school, but if you're kind of into math, or if you um are bought into the idea that math is a kind of art form, you would really enjoy seeing it in some way.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, topics about fractals or like uh oh, you said useless also.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I think that the things that get me going are also like seeing the utility of something.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't really like lessons about topology when I was younger because it seemed very useless.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the videos that I made that resonated with uh certainly a younger version of me, but I think at least some other people out there was on the quote usefulness of topology, which admittedly, like if you're not bought into math, I can see why it wouldn't be useful because it's just being applied to a different field of math as opposed to being applied to something that you're doing in your day-to-day life.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I so I'm sorry, I am just gonna explain.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm obviously Are we in a fight?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like alright.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only just being a little bit defensive, maybe.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: But on the on the usefulness front, I think sometimes textbooks will do this thing where they want the math to be useful.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they clearly got this directive from on high that's like, you know, in the chapter, you have to have at least five questions and make you a real world problem.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they just make up the most BS questions.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like, okay, we were just teaching the kids about hyperbolas.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: How are hyperbolas useful?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Alice is sitting on a shoreline and she sends out a radar signal and she doesn't know the direction that it hits a boat, but she knows its distance and she measures like five to and you have this really convoluted thing, and any student can look right through it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Is this what like is it because I'm gonna be sending out radio radar signals that you want me to learn about hyperbolas?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because if that's your concern, I'll sit out this class.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to do it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, too much indexing on fake usefulness is maybe counterproductive.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, fake usefulness! I kind of love fake usefulness, though.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That is it, right?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Every single time you have one of these word problems, it's like John has 20 apples and he needs to give away like one-third of them, but 20 isn't visible.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is it just something where it's like, I don't know, just cut the apple, John.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to do some math for this.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, John, cut the apple.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the the things that actually get mathematicians going, there's no reason that doesn't also get the general public going, as long as you can get them understanding the full like significance of it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know, the word useful has a lot of baggage carried on with it.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, no, I'm gonna actually like this is so we're kind of getting right into it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like we kind of started off in a fight there, but I actually think we're on the same page and we agree more than you might think.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, I actually like work with kids in the education system, and it's this endless thing of being like real life math, like making math relevant.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I totally agree.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: They think if you mention a real life object, like an apple or like two trains passing, like that kind of thing, all of a sudden it's useful, and you're like, no, now you're using real life things, so it's less abstract, but don't confuse that with a kid being like, oh, now I see where I'm gonna use this in real life.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And also, because this was gonna be my next question almost, is like obviously as math teachers, what we hear all the time is, but when will I use this in real life?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm always like, but when will you use Shakespeare in real life?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, when will like it's not about that?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to hear what you have to say about that.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think a good analogy is the gym, right?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, let's say you've got a kid, he's on the baseball team, loves the baseball team, uh, really wants to get good at baseball specific things, and you say, now go do 20 push-ups.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: The kid never even thinks to ask, when in a baseball game am I gonna be tasked with doing 20 push-ups?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: They get that it's about building muscles as a kind of ancillary task that will ultimately help with their main goal.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And like the honest answer to the kid saying, When am I going to use this?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: is look, probably not.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: You might end up with some sort of weird esoteric job where you do use some weird math.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like that happens.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like software engineering, you always pop up with, Whoa, here's a formula I didn't think I'd never need to use, but I guess I'm using now.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but more often than not, the almost honest answer is like, hey, you're building muscles for technical thinking.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And math is one of the few things that we know that has this weird correlation with usefulness.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the particular formulas that you're learning here and there, uh, don't bank on that ever coming up in your life.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God, we're like the same person, kind of.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I always say that too.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, math is like a different lens with which to view the world.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: So as you build your math skills, you're just building your kaleidoscope of a brain so that you can kind of like see things in a new way.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it still leaves open the question, like, why should you care?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it's still this very distant thing, like, okay, maybe I'm supposed to build technical muscles if you tell me.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is like, I do think a lot of people have the capacity to appreciate the beauty in math or have certain things where you say, huh, why is that true?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like simple little number games can often get people.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you um, you know, you you you do those magic tricks where you say, choose some random two-digit number.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And now you add up its two digits, and that'll be some other number.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Subtract that from your original number.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they think about it, they're like, hey, take the two digits, add it, subtract it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't know, you you uh what do you do?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: You always get the same number or something, and people are like, How do you always end up with 32?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so you you do this kind of thing.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: No one cares about that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: No one even thinks that that should be useful or asks if it'll be useful.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the mystery of it is enough to make someone, and I honestly think like anyone ask, wait, why is that true?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you can find good examples in math that teach the lessons you want to teach that don't have the fake usefulness of like Alice sitting on a shoreline with some radar she'll never need to actually use, but that still get the mind going in the ways we want it to get going for the students.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you really scratched a certain nerve with like the the Oh my god, but it's my nerve too.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of glad you're just as annoyed by it because it literally is mine too.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And like I also hear it on the other side of things, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hearing it from students constantly being like, when will I need this?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just upset for them that for some reason our education system has made them think that art class is for fun and imagination and math is only for utility.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you don't want to go into a STEM field, feel free to drop month.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, where did we get to this point where like I agree with you?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Why aren't we going into math class and being like, you're gonna be learn all this really, really cool, fun stuff?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree with you, and I'm gonna ask you about your videos in a second because I actually think you do this.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: You notice this every time, like a math problem, like one of those dumb bed math problems goes viral on the internet, and you have the general public being crazy on Facebook, being like, no, like you multiply before you do, like whatever.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, people actually care, right?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: They actually do care about something more than utility.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: They do care about the woman, they do care about the mystery.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to ask you in your videos, because I actually watched the Bitcoin one right before this, because I was like, all right, let's see if this guy can actually explain to me what is going on here.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I loved how you kind of started off not talking about Bitcoin.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: You started off with ledgers and about something completely different that allowed me to sink into the story.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to ask what your strategy is.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you kind of evoke this sense of mystery?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: How do you engage the general public in these concepts that if you threw them in their face, if you said to someone, do you want to learn about Bitcoin?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: They'd probably be like, No, thank you.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: But like five minutes into your video and they're learning about it and they're into it.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's weird because that one's almost an exception to a lot of the others because it takes a topic that is like in the news in some way, and many others aren't.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that maybe cuts to it where half of them or so, I try to take a topic that someone would have cause to search for.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, Bitcoin, neural networks, or just classic math things that would show up in a class, like calculus or linear algebra.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just try to explain it in sort of a how could you have invented this yourself mode?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that it doesn't feel like there's arbitrary definitions, but instead you have some sense of, hey, if you if you were tasked with making a thing that accomplishes this problem, how might you go about it?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's a reasonable thing you might try.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Here's why that thing wouldn't work, but here's how you could adjust it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wait, the thing we just invented is basically the same as the thing that's the title of the video that other people have done.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: The other half are the things that you wouldn't have cause to search for, but uh evoke some kind of question for like what the heck is going on here.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe the one I would point to for that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if I was just like, if someone hadn't heard of the channel and they said, What video should I start with or something?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's this one about blocks that collide with each other in this very idealized circumstance where it's like frictionless and when they collide, they don't lose any energy and all of that kind of stuff.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you you just want to count how many collisions happen when you have a big one coming in, it hits a small one, the small one bounces off of a wall, and there's this sort of back and forth.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the number of collisions ends up having the same digits as pi.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like if the big mass is like a million or something, it starts with like three, one, four.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you increase the big mass by another factor of a hundred, the dig the number of collisions, like this counting problem, looks like three, one, four, one.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And because everyone recognizes pi, and because it's so comically absurd for the way that pi shows up to be like it's digits counting a thing in a completely discrete circumstance that doesn't seem to involve geometry.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I really think anyone who is like paying any attention or has a heart looks at that problem is like, what I'm sorry, what what what is going on?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why on earth?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so then, like, you you notice what you didn't say was like, shh, when am I ever going to use this idealized frictionless box uh circumstance in the real world?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the reason that you want to find the answer has to do with um just the the really bizarre phenomenon that whose bizarrness was approachable, right?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like the bizarrness of it depended on recognizing the digits of pi.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of bizarre things in math that are less approachable because you you really have to like understand a lot to appreciate why it's weird in the first place.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the golden problems are the one where you don't have to have a lot of background to see the weirdness, but to understand why that weirdness comes about demands a lesson that you can cover in like a 20 to 30 minute video.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And those are rare to find, but it's a gem when you get it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love this because there is always this argument of us and us, I mean like me and you and a bunch of people being like, why don't we teach this cool stuff in classrooms, you know?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And people always say, Oh, like you've got to wait till you get to university until you find the cool math.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I like what you're saying, and I think that is what your channel does.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I saw quite a few where I was like, okay, sorry, he's gonna explain the basics behind like calculus in 20 minutes, you know?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you actually can if you're thoughtful about it and the way you approach it.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I really like that you kind of do, you know, you approach it like a mystery novel.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I really like this idea of invented math.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's a concept you made up.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, what what is invented math?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you were gonna summarize it.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think a lot of times when you as a student are exposed to some new concept in math class, it's presented as the only way that things ever could have been.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And like, this is how it is, memorize how it is, and you will be asked to regurgitate that memorized version appropriately on the test.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And never is there, not never, um, not as often as there should be, is there a description of the other definitions that could have existed and maybe why they don't accomplish the goals or what the goals are in the first place of your definition.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of the time that you feel ownership as a student or an individual on a given topic is when you feel like you um kind of made it up yourself.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a number of times when I was younger and I like thought I was really clever and like invented something, and then later I learned, oh wait, that's a standard thing.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it was equally engaging because I'm like, wait, I know like why that came about.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And even though it wasn't actually original, there's this sense of ownership.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that I think you can um sort of fool other people into walking into that path of thinking they invented a thing.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then it's it's not even discouraging when you see that it already exists.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like validating that wow, that that path of thought where I was just making up some stuff and said, like, why don't we define such and such to be this?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh was exactly what other people did.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like what a mathematician did.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh my God, I'm a genius, basically.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I I remember this time I was um I was uh back in my hometown and saying hello to one of my old high school teachers, and his son was evidently someone who like watched my videos and he was um really into math, and he just wanted to show me this pattern.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I've I've been trying to understand why uh if I look at all the square numbers and I look at their differences, that it's a bunch of odd numbers.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And those differences, it's like this constant too.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then if I look at the cube numbers and look at their differences and their differences and kind of go down, um, you know, it always gets to this constant.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And basically he was low-key inventing like a discrete version of calculus and kind of understanding the nature of derivatives, but not in a in a continuous way.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just sort of told him this like, hey, the the stuff that you're doing, actually, uh in a couple of years when you learn calculus, this will all start to look very familiar.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I think that was like very exciting in this notion that this random stuff that he'd have been playing with was actually associated with this scary sounding word, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Calculus.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's so interesting too, because it's like almost a reverse of usefulness.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all of the stuff is technically to me, anyways.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have a marketing degree before my math once, and I just always think of consumer behavior.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, maybe it's not the math that needs to be useful, but it's the person learning it who needs to feel useful.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good way of putting it.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I just came up with it right now.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's I'm really glad you were here for this moment to do that.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because I'm like thinking on like the things that play into my emotion are like when I'm feeling useful, or even as a teacher, I think about, you know, it's there's such a psychology behind teachers having issues, like let's say a teacher who's really anxious around math and they can't get an answer, and they say to their class, like, I need you to help me.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I need you to help me find the solution and how that really changes the dynamic.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, I feel like you're kind of doing that in your videos in a way, by putting them, the audience in the driver's seat and saying, if you had to come up with something, what would you do?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like in a way.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you you obviously know what you're doing.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: You have four million subscribers, which actually blows my mind for so many reasons.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because on the one hand, I'm so excited for you.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm so excited that there is someone out there who's engaging audiences in math the way the school system isn't.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, I'm like, why aren't we doing this in schools?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like it doesn't seem like if you can just do this on YouTube.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I well, I would see them as I see them as very different things.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's just a lot that you need to do in school that I don't do at all in the videos.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just drilling, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: The best way to gain intuition on problems is to just drill on multiple examples of them.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's not fun to watch on YouTube.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really possible to get someone to do it on YouTube.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's not the right medium to get someone to TikTok, maybe though.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it's no, it can't be consumer, it can't be something con where you're just consuming, right?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be something that necessitates action.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's like a big missing thing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: The personal engagement where it's like the teacher actively looking at the things that excite the student and um slightly course correcting them when they have a misconception.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that at all through YouTube.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh honestly, just a lot of the more rote things were okay, I can you mentioned try to get the high level of calculus in 20 minutes.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: In a deep way, you're right that that's impossible, right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: You could never actually teach the substance of calculus in that time.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So a function of a video like that is more trying to give someone a sense of what the overall goals are, why it might be possible, and like a little bit of inspiration that it might be worth their time to um actually pursue it more deeply.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But that pursuit more deeply, I mean, it doesn't have to happen in a classroom, but in terms of just accountability and making sure there's a certain time every week when you're doing it and all that, it's clearly much better when it is in a classroom.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I I see this as pretty supplementary tasks.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like, okay, so here's a question.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: You have four million people that watch this.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Who is your audience?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who are these people?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Are they people who already like math?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Are they like math curious?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Are like what do we know about them?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm asking because I'm really trying to get a Netflix show about math.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And literally every meeting I have with a studio, they're like, oh, we can't make a show with math in the title.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, people are too scared of it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, how are you?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: How did you get these people?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Who are they?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: How did like what is it?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, those I think those studio folks are projecting, right?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if forget about my channel, um, if you look at like popular science channels like Vsauce or Veritassium, who occasionally make things that are just math, it's just pure math, it's not even math in the service of science.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those videos can be insanely popular, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like into the many tens of millions of people watching and engaging with it.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's clearly not like, oh, they they took this sidestep away from the popular things, which is science and the universe, and instead the the the scary thing, which is math.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, evidently there's an appetite for that.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so your question of who's in my audience, it's very diverse, is basically the answer.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's there's young and there's old.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a lot of the peak demographics tend to be like the college student and then the like yuppie uh ages of just like 24 to 32 or so.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Where I think probably the most realistic picture of it is people who probably liked math to some extent.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's think let's take the older ones.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: They probably liked math to some extent when they were in school.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And for whatever reason, the path they're in in life does doesn't involve actively learning it, but going to YouTube is sort of a way to scratch that itch of feeling like you're improving yourself.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um like you're not gonna you're not gonna read a textbook when you're you know 27 and you have some engineering job, even if you like to think you're the kind of person who will.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you'll watch YouTube things about technical stuff on the younger side when it's the high school students and the college students.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I do know from some notes that come in, there are some that they are just looking for help and they wanted to learn about calculus, and that was the way they landed on it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I suspect that's kind of the minority that it's it's more often the ones who are already into math in some way, and this is instead sort of fanning the flames of that enthusiasm rather than sparking it for the first time.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so like do with that what you will.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I it can be inspiring in the sense that there already exists this many math enthusiasts.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: It can be uninspiring in the sense that ah, this this channel isn't moving the needle at all.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's just um yeah.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think that's okay.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's not you kind of said this in before the leaf blower got in the way and we had to delete part of the interview.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: You said that's not what you do.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not you're not the person that, you know, is gonna get on there and explain fractions to kids so they can get a higher mark on their test.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not the person who's gonna go on there and make a video about the math behind Bitcoin.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like we all, I think, move the needle and serve um math culture in a completely different way.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what you're doing is really important because one of the things that needs to happen is that idea of getting rid of math as simply a means to utility.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like it is beautiful, it is as valuable as the arts, like there should be more math museums.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I think what you're doing is both.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's it can be both totally, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so can art.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the risk of of say of fully biting this bullet and saying people should treat math as art is that then it'll never get funded the way that it currently does.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that sounds like more of like an art problem than a math problem.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, okay, so but it does matter, right?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is it is noteworthy that math ends up as useful as it is, despite seeming useless for the reason that people get into it.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like historically, you often have mathematicians discover stuff centuries before it's used in the real world, but then when it is used, it is in like inordinately valuable.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just from a raw economic standpoint.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And something about that you don't want to throw away or like stop acknowledging, and instead saying that a microcosm of that historical trajectory can happen for individuals, where as a young student, you can try to learn about it for mere curiosity, the same way that like a 16th century mathematician might be studying numbers for mere curiosity.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then later in life, actually, there's this crazy correlation with how much math you know and like how much you can earn.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's not true.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it says something.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in the same way that like much later than the 16th century, like this theory of numbers actually had turns out to have this utility in cryptography.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's this tricky balance.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I agree though.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I'm certainly not saying, oh my God, we should call math and art.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually like, no, like please let it be known.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That is not at all what I mean.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean more exactly that.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just needs to be looked at as more than.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's like, you know what I mean?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's, yes, sure.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's useful and it's amazing and it's maybe magical.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even know.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's maybe mysterious.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's maybe rooted in this and that, but it's also like simply interesting.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's all.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's interesting.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think, oh my God.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I could talk to you about this forever, but we kind of have to wrap up, sadly.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we started off with a 10-minute fight.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that kind of took up a lot of our time.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I love this.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: This was so much fun.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you've said so many fascinating things.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a lot of really great takeaways.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that idea of everyone has that different role to play in enhancing math culture and making it more accessible to different audiences for different reasons.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: That would true that that is what true diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility in math is.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we make it more than it is right now.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: There is so much magic and beauty and mystery in math and interesting facts and like juicy gossip about mathematicians that I think we could use that to engage more people.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad you're doing what you're doing.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad we're here together because we have different audiences.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I have to ask you our two final questions.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Please.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So my the first question is what is one thing you'd like to see change about the way math is taught in schools?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're not like in schools, but if there's something you could pick, what would it be?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think it should be like a hard requirement that there's good motivation preceding the new topics that you bring in.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than just saying, like, today we're learning about blank.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you know that you know how they had those like students will be able to or something where like you you have to always like say what the students will be able to do, and that's a and uh like a constrained framing for the classroom structure in the same way.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um like this topic was motivated by or something.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like the reason this was invented was because of blank.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love this! I'm obsessed with this idea.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, it's peaking the waveforms.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I've uh no one has ever said this, and I love this idea.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: That would motivate people so much.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard, right?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's because often it's like pretty tricky to understand why something came about.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but well, I I had um I'd interviewed Sunil Singh.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know him, but I'd interviewed-oh, you do?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I kind of feel like you guys would get along.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: But, anyways, I'd interviewed him on my last season, and he's all about storytelling and math.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: So he was giving me all the like tea on mathematicians, like TMZ, celebrity style gossip.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I would share these pieces with my students and it would make them more excited.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, guys, did you know about Pythagoras?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like he was a sneaky guy, and they're immediately like just more into Pythagoras' theorem.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And like, I know that's not exactly what you're talking about, but just the idea of context, motivation, inspiration, just making it juicier, which it's not like you're making stuff up, it exists.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: The human story.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was always missing in my classes.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, that's what we need to do next.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Celeb gossip meg about mathematicians.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Final question, because we didn't even really get to talk about this, but I mean, I deal so much with math anxiety, right?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: And with people who think that there are only certain people who can do math.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we actually haven't even brought that up really once.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: So this is kind of an exciting time for me to ask you this question with no context, which is what would you say to someone who says, Oh, yeah, I'm just not a math person.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the thing they're commenting on is how you can have two people that look like they're picking up a new topic at very different speeds.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: One student seems to just get it immediately, the other student tends to get it slowly, both of them haven't seen it before, and that makes it look like it's nature, not nurture.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, look, they hadn't seen it before.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: One of them got it much faster than the other.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is an actual phenomena that happens.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: All of us have seen it in like either students that we teach or when we were students in school, that some get it faster than others.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I would emphasize that probably what's happening in the kid who gets it faster is that they have spent more brain cycles thinking about a similar pattern or something like it before.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the the nature of like what distinguishes math from a lot of other things is how interconnected it is.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you can spend your time like just mulling over some interesting pattern that seems off in a different corner of the universe, see some ostensibly new topic in school that's actually pretty connected to that thing that you were pondering.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, you're sort of carving the same neural channels.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the student who, for whatever reason, they just, you know, they spent their time thinking about other stuff.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it can feel like it's lower.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So like it really is just a function of the amount of time that's been put into it.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: But where math gets particularly sneaky is that sometimes the time that's put into prepping yourself to understand a new topic doesn't look like it's time prepped for that, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: It it looks like you know this kid was more interested in, you know, like chess and sudokus or just looking at random tile patterns or like a certain kind of drawing.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Various things that are only tangential.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what this does is it it gives this illusion of nature versus nurture, whereas I think by and large, it's like almost entirely nurture, but sometimes it's nurture so early in life that it might as well be nature.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the point where this can maybe I don't know, help amelior uh aid in some of that like anxiety is when someone realizes, okay, if I put in the time, it might just take a while.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But if I put in the time and if it's focused in the right way, there's no reason why I can't have those same intuitions.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's uninspiring because it it just really does take a lot of work, I guess, a lot of these things.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of can't get around that.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's a really good point, but I I love everything you said.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually really, really cool because I often say that.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'll think I'll talk about like Malcolm Gladwell and the 10,000 hour rule.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you know, like we like nurture often will veto nature.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, sure, there is nature.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Let's uh, but I really like the way you put it that actually a lot of it is almost like subconscious nurture, right?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like the things we think are are nature.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just love that.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love the way you put it.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's so cool.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm stealing it, not trademarking it.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: We can both use it, but I will definitely be telling people.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this was awesome.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly had a lot of fun talking to you.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was a little nervous because I only half understood that Bitcoin video, and I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna come on here.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just say, like, I do think that's not a representative video.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: For example, it was like, I know Bitcoin's like this fire hot in the news thing now.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I made it, it was honestly, it was like getting to be better known.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: It was just that I remembered reading about this thing when I was in a cryptography class in college.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, this is actually a pretty clever idea.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think people appreciate that there's like a clever idea underlying it.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't meant as like, oh, this is I think it was great.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was great.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I just I also have like I'm a 16-year-old basically, and I watch TikTok videos, which are 60 seconds.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, okay, buckle up, like 20 minutes, here we go.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, anyways, that's a whole other interview.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is amazing.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: You're amazing.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited for all of our listeners to find out about you because I think this is gonna be an actual real treat.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want to say thank you so much for all you do to change math culture, and thanks for talking to me.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for inviting me.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: This was a blast.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Grant, grant, grant.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel like we're polar opposites yet have so much in common.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I know I'll be taking that idea of fake usefulness with me forever and ever.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, fuck fake usefulness.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, also, Grant, if you're listening, I hope you're not still mad at me.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm honestly truly sorry.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: And also, I want to say it here and now for the record.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that beginning of episode beef was kind of rooted in the stars.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm betting five bucks that you're a Sag or a Virgo.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely getting that Virgo Sagittarius energy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Please DM me, tell me if I'm right.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to check out Grant's videos or follow him on Twitter, you guys know what to do.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Head straight to our show notes for all the links.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: If something in this episode inspired you, please tweet us at Math Therapy.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you can also follow me personally at the Math Guru on Instagram or Twitter.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Math Therapy is hosted by me, Vanessa Vicaria, produced by Sabina Wex, and edited by David Koachberg.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Our theme song is Waves by my band Goodnight Sunrise.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And guys, if you know someone who needs math therapy or needs to hear someone else getting math therapy, please share this podcast and rate or review it on whatever podcast app you use.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Those things actually make such a difference.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: I am determined to change the culture surrounding math and I need your help.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: So please spread the word.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's all for this week.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned for our next episode out next Thursday.