1. A strange determinant
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it to see how a top mathematician approaches an unfamiliar problem through experiments and curiosity.
What it is
Timothy Gowers thinks aloud, in real time, as he tries to understand why Pascal's determinant equals 1. He does not fully solve it in this episode, but shows his exploratory process.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec mungal · 2022-04 · on “I stopped working on black hole information loss”
I’ll add to this to give an example of someone who I feel is doing a great job of satisfying this very request in the field of mathematics: Timothy Gowers. His yt channel is an excellent resource of theoretical understanding through numerical methods. Here’s my favorite series where he confirms/elucidates a “strange” theoretical fact with an explorative numerical style: [this video] Simply superb content.
Recommends jrhvmt · 2024-04 · on “Programming vs. Mathematical Curiosity”
But I do appreciate the comedy! Well while I have you, the message I feel I failed to adhere to in my comment was my interest in letting you, or others who follow their passion in math and programming, know that what you are doing is in fact “real” math! Keep it up! Your post made me click through a bunch of links in it. Thank you, but give me back that hour! ;P Better yet, I’ll trade you a different rabbit hole. Based on your post I think you’d really enjoy this “strange determinant” series from Timothy Gowers: [this video] [LINK]
Recommends missyougowers · 2026-05 · on “An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry”
Unfortunately Gowers has taken Tao's lead on this one. Gowers has one of my favourite video series about how he approaches a problem he is unfamiliar with: [this video] It is disheartening to see him jump into this GenAI puffery. I hope these GenAI labs are paying Tao handsomely for legitimizing their slop, but more likely he's feeling pressure from his University to promote and work with these labs. My guess is Gowers wants in on that action, or his University does. Either way, it makes me sad. If its self motivated... even sadder.
Cites juniperror · 2024-02 · on “An 'education legend' has created an AI that will change your mind about AI”
> How would you solve a problem that no one has ever touched before, and that no one knows the answer to? Where are you going to be provided the answer? This is very near and dear to my heart. We are talking about “teaching” and I doubt anyone who supports the current education status quo is advocating to teach using unsolved problems. That said, I do feel, personally, and have long advocated for, teaching using unsolved problems as a better technique, because you learn strategies for approaching a problem much better than: here’s theorem 13.4 heres an exercise problem that uses the theorem, what’s the answer? It reads like you see my opinions are black and white and yours as spectra. Using