Endorsement Thread...

[LaurV]

Now, you know us, and you know that there are more chances that we would criticize before we praise, hehe, our RDS side is stronger than (feel in the forum member here, I was thinking to Brian or Nick for a while, but I am undecided yet, and I have few other candidates too) side.

But we would really like to "endorse", or at least "recommend" this series about complex numbers. Brian (that is another Brian, not the one on our forum , I assume from his age), or how he calls himself, BriTheMathGuy, really makes a great job on that series, and he has a very nice style to present the stuff, clear speaking, etc, and he made our jaw drop few times along that series - once in the very beginning, when we saw him writing upside down on the glass, you expect him to turn the back to you to write on the whiteboard, but when he does not, you brain is really playing tricks on you! You realize that he is writing on the glass, but then immediately you think "wow" when you diode blinks in your brain telling you that, in fact, for you to see it normal, he has to write right to left.. Then you jaw drop for few seconds, until you again realize that he in fact writes normal, but just flipped the video, a lot of tools can do this now.

But is still odd to see him doing that, haha...

Also, you can see that the videos are "worked", he edits them to cut out parts, and skips (fast fwd) the uninteresting parts where he erase the board, etc., if something bothers me on youtube teaching videos, that is when I must watch the so called "teachers" wiping the board or playing with neighbor's cat for half of the video.

Back to the course, the introduction is a bit boring, but you have to understand that the course is not done for mathematicians, it is done for high school students, or technicians who want to listen and learn, not guys like us who want to listen just to be able to spot mistakes and throw them in your face

So, bear with him for a while, until he moves to more interesting things. I must recognize that I stayed the first minutes because I was intrigued by him writing right-to-left on my monitor, it looks like he was writing on the inside face of my LCD, haha... but bear with him, do not skip parts. Anyhow, very few people listen with the intent to understand, most people listen with the intent to reply... (who is the famous guy who said that?). He immediately moves to more interesting things, and we also learned few things we didn't know before! (seriously!)

A lot of people talk here about multiplication, and FFT and understanding what it does, etc, but to really understand that, you must start by understanding polynomials and complex numbers first.

And BTW, about correcting mistakes, Brian is very open and prompt too, we signaled a mistake in one of his videos (not related to the Complex Numbers Theory series) and he promptly took it down in less than a week (our comment about 3 weeks ago, and his reply, are still visible in the comments section of the episode 3 of the complex number series).

Meantime, we are still watching his last episodes today (we were quite busy at job during the week).

Have fun!

[retina]

Originally Posted by LaurV

... writing upside down on the glass ... he is writing right to left..

In the spirit of "spot[ting] mistakes and throw them in your face": I think you mean back-to-front writing, or mirror writing.

Hehe, normally I don't care about these trivial things, but you started it ...

_{And, of course, if I made any mistake in this posting feel free to correct me also. I like to learn.}

[LaurV]

Haha, retina, why did we expect somehow that you be the first to comment, and say something similar?

Technically, he writes right-to-left (not back to front ) and we edited the post to fix it in one place, but let it "upside down" in another place, it is called "poetic style", hehe (it was, there, not here, a tentative of humor). (we also fixed a couple of "it" into "he", our native language has no distinction, and we mess them in English sometimes).

we also don't care about these things, and contrary to what comes out of our mouth, we like the fact that we are getting your attention from time to time, with comments as you did, this is the salt and pepper of being on this forum, with all these good people here... and this is how we all learn

[retina]

Well one of my minions already noticed one mistake in the fifth video @ 1:22

He states that "the modulus of the sum has to be less than the length of the sum of the two individual vectors."

Should be "the modulus of the sum has to be less than or equal to the length of the sum of the two individual vectors."

[LaurV]

Nitpicker!

( we didn't spot that, but of course you are right, OTOH, he was speaking "intuitively", he didn't write down anything wrong )

[LaurV]

Very nice new video from 3B1B, thematic for us (collective us).

[retina]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Very nice new video from 3B1B, thematic for us (collective us).

Very nice graphical presentation. They must have spent a lot of time on that.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by retina

Very nice graphical presentation. They must have spent a lot of time on that.

Indeed, 3B1B is one of the best presenters of math on youtube, and their videos are always easy to understand and follow, because he/she/they put a lot of efforts on making the presentations. I follow them for quite a long time, and I also provided Romanian translations for few of the the "Linear Algebra Series" episodes (which is not easy, you need a person who knows well English and Romanian, and be a math graduate, to avoid torturing all the math terms as I have seen in almost all translations on the web, movies included, and most of all, to have the will and the time to make the translation). For some reason (maybe he and his team do(es) not revisit old videos) my translations didn't make it into the caption lists, which are still missing Romanian, but 3B1B videos are so good he/she/they deserve forgivenes for everything else they do or don't do
And with or without proper Romanian translation, the Linear Algebra series is really worth a look (caution: is catchy and addictive ). Do not let the pompous math titles to scary you, the videos are really easy to understand for everybody.

[LaurV]

I found a gem of a channel on youtube.

The lady is from NZ, and she is a genius. I bought her a full set of guitar strings after watching the video with the menopause and that with "I am 16..." from Sound of Music. You should watch her videos too. Up to you if you wanna buy her guitar strings or not.

From her name I (correctly) guessed she is married to a Romanian guy, what made me appreciate her even more. But this I found after I bought the strings. She worth it even without that .

[ATH]

I can highly recommend this artist: AURORA (real name Aurora Aksnes from Norway, she turns 25 on Tuesday June 15th):
https://www.youtube.com/c/auroramusic/videos

She is the voice of the "Northern Wind" in Frozen 2.

This a cappella song is magical: https://youtu.be/CFzExUN1N8I
She also managed to perform "Murder Song" at the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Concert. Very powerful performance: https://youtu.be/vh0SWTVwXxw (she was 19 here though she looks 14-15).


She grew up in Norway away from the cities with the fjords, mountains and forests, and nature inspires her a lot. She is very outspoken in the fight against climate change, like these 2 songs:
https://youtu.be/_Mc_OM5oNA8
https://youtu.be/AvPzwKQKZTc

‘Apple Tree’ is about the potential that hides in all of us. We can all save the world if we put our minds to it.
The world won’t listen to scientific proof that the world is dying, so maybe it will listen to the dreamers, the children. In a bleeding world the power of the individual is our only hope. Let her save the world. Let him save them all.
Believe in us, and maybe we’ll be the generation that saves the world, rather than the one that killed it. The world is bleeding. It’s up to us now.

She is also pro LGBT: https://youtu.be/wULeXeQkqd0

[LaurV]

This channel is heavily-HEAVILY underrated and unsubscribed.