Mathematician Answers Geometry Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED
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Published 2023-12-05
Jordan Ellenberg's book Shape is available on Amazon or Penguin Random House
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Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Constantine Economides
Editor: Richard Trammell
Expert: Jordan Ellenberg
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Nick Sawyer
Camera Operator: Christopher Eustache
Gaffer: Rebecca Van Der Meulen
Sound Mixer: Michael Guggino
Production Assistant: Sonia Butt
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
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All Comments (21)
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I'm a fan of this series, but Jordan was a particularly strong communicator. Thank you for bringing him on, and thank you to Jordan for being a fantastic ambassador for geometry and math writ large.
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I have a use for the pythagorean theorem in real life application. I’m told a TV’s screen size always as side C and I know it is a 16:9 aspect ratio. I can find the height and width of that screen when the site doesn’t list the dimensions.
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As a quilter I use the Pythagorean theorem to figure out how many triangles I can get out of my fabric and how big to measure them. Once I had a pattern for a skirt that wanted right triangles of a certain length on the "c" side so I used it to calculate the "a" and "b" sides
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As a regular Dungeons & Dragons DM, I have sometimes used the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the distance of flying creatures moving diagonally to the ground to attack players. I'm just glad online calculators exist so I don't have to do the math myself. 🤣
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I highly recommend the essay “A Mathematician’s Lament” for anyone who wants to go deeply into the way we teach math and how poorly it’s taught that most students find math boring and frustrating in most math classes (I know mine classes were definitely not taught well). Jordan has the energy and love of mathematics that would make him an excellent teacher, and I wish I had someone like him while I was crying over my algebra 2 homework.
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I think the issue with the "Does a straw have one hole or two?" question is that everyone treats it as a geometry problem when it's more of a language problem.
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The Pythagorean theorum has a lot of real world applications in architecture. For example, it's useful for designing staircases, since if you know the height of the upper floor, you can calculate the length of the staircase for any given footprint.
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6:58 The A paper sizes (A4, A3 etc) have a similar property, but it uses sqrt(2) instead of the golden ratio. When you fold it in half the ratio between the long and short side remains sqrt(2).
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Honey combs is 100% a packing efficiency problem. If you take any circular object, beer bottle, golf ball, whatever. Any circle, and more circles of the same size. You can wrap 6 more circles around the original.
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I used to use Pythagoras to mark out an accurate filed when laying out our clubs field hockey lines at the start of each season. Mark the baseline and then use a 3,4,5 triangle to make 90 degree corners for each sideline.
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6:00 How many holes in a bottle? Topologically speaking there are 0 holes.
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Pythagorean theorem is really handy for figuring out distances in D&D where all battles are on a grid
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As we all know, hexagons are the bestagons, but it was nice to hear an explanation about it being incidental in the case of hive cells. Never heard that before in explanations of the subject.
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One hole, two openings.
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The Pythagorean theorem is used constantly in data science as a measure of similarity between data points, like if you want to know which of your customers are most similar to each other.
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"[Geometry] is the only part of math where you're asked to prove something..." Number theorists: "Am I a joke to you?" war flashbacks to Abstract Algebra (To be clear, it's fun, but hard)
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As an Army Sniper I used to do a brief/lecture called "How the Pythagorean Theorem Saved My Life." We use it in ballistics.
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I love how unapologetic Jordan is about drawing crappy circles! 😂 On a more serious note, I was impressed by how well you pronounce the German names (Einstein and Möbius) in such a casual manner.
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5:04 There is one hole on the straw. When you cover the bottom, then the straw has no holes (a water bottle can be deformed into a bowl or a plate, for example)
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6:10 if you pinch the bottom, it has zero holes. A bowl or a plate don't have a hole, and an open-topped bottle is the same shape as a bowl or a plate.
