Ego and Math | Stanford Math Department Commencement Speech 2023
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2023
- I had the honor and pleasure of being invited to deliver an address for the mathematics graduation ceremony at Stanford. In it, I chose to talk about one of the lesser-addressed and awkward-to-talk-about motivations for getting into math.
So glad Grant could find a human to go to deliver his speech for him since it would be hard for a living pi creature such as himself to do it 🙏
Bruh..
So pi creatures aren't real ?
Real
@@yashrawat5071They are. Luckily he found someone to go give the speech for him.
Glad 3blue1brown made a _rational_ decision
As someone from a place with a tiny math department, I’m just amazed that Stanford has enough math majors to hold a separate graduation for them lmao
The place I went to for my undergrad didn't even _have_ a math department.
You could get a math degree through the physics department or through the computer science department.
But a graduate degree was out of the question.
My school had 3 graduation ceremonies to get through the entire math faculty!
How many mathematicians does Stanford hire each year tho?
It doesn't tend to matter with regard to private schools. Departmental graduations are pretty popular there.
@@Maou3 Same for europe. Hungary we only start degrees if they got their own department to begin with. You wanna study maths? You go to the university that offers a maths degree, and specialize within that.
Maths are part of the Natural Sciences Institute.
Think we go like
Bsc
100 maths students
100 chemistry students
100 physics students
100 geology/geography students
100 biology students
MSc
15 Materials Science students
15 Chemistry students
15 physics students
15 Geology students
15 biology students
15 maths students.
Each year. (ELTE)
Butterfly effect: 6 years ago I saw Grants video on the Riemann hypothesis, and now I’m going on my fourth year in undergrad devoting my efforts towards the cascades of bifurcations of quadratic iterators. Thanks Grant.
That's wonderful!
Miles my man, is your work related to the logistic map? What makes it interesting or useful (genuinely curious)?
@@agentdarkboote the logistic map is just one of the iterators I care about. Specifically I care about iterators which are rational polynomials of two variables. I’m interested in the properties of the bifurcation points they generate. For example, is the limit of bifurcation points always transcendental?
As a math professor, I find that your words here really resonate. It is very true that "interesting research" and "seemingly hard" are so closely (but subconsciously) linked in the research community. And excessively few of us stop to wonder what drives that internalized evaluation function. Well spoken, and thank you. :-)
I can see that few of the professors evaluate themselves internally, like any other people in society. But it is not bothersome for their work, because it is the norm and deviating from norms can push you through the exit (because of you not liking the environment which is less adapted to you, or because of others don't liking you).
I'm not even sure it's necessarily a bad thing. Maybe an infatuation with intrinsic hardness is necessary to develop the pieces of math with unexpected later utility. Or maybe hardness for its own sake is what forces us to keep finding new ideas, analogous to the value of going to the moon. What does seem problematic is to have an evaluation function that works this way without ever having reflected on whether that's desirable.
@@GrantSandersonI get the sense that a purely difficult mathematical problem only really has cryptographic applications. I think usually we want to show a kind of 'computational reducibility' in math.
🙂 Hi Pat! I think part of this may be that if a problem is harder, it is likely that more people have attempted it. So interest can be generated by people investing their time. What do you think? Also, I would love to hear what drives your evaluation function.
(Hi Elijah!) Without a doubt, my "internal" evaluation function was given to me externally. Starting out in math, I liked most things I learned about, and starting graduate school, I had no clue what I wanted to specialize in (let alone what problems were particularly "interesting" or "worthy of study"). At some point, I realized that I enjoy doing quiet puzzles that I think are fun, but I firmly believed (and still do) that those things aren't "sufficiently interesting" to impress the mathematical community at large.
After understanding the game of which mathematicians are considered "good", I decided I had to choose between doing things that people perceived as interesting or doing things I really enjoy. I remember talking about this to folks outside of math, and I described it as "I need to play the game and do the stuff they care about until hopefully one day I'm hired in a nice job, and I can finally start doing the things I really enjoy."
It's been 15 years since I started thinking like that, and I don't quite know how I feel about it now. Despite the fact that I still haven't been hired for a long term position, I feel somewhat more at peace finding things I genuinely enjoy regardless of whether or not others approve. But the quiet intrusive thoughts that my work is not "good enough" (and by extension, I'm not either) still don't seem to go away.
I love how he was still respectful about this topic. For me, I literally called myself an egotistical narcissist and almost did a PhD in Math for it. I took me years to realize that being smart was way less important to me than being perceived as smart. Our high school teacher would sometimes present puzzles above our level to us and I would be the one to solve them. I took me years to realize that I liked my classmates' reaction to me solving them more than feeling good about actually solving them. It's nice to hear I'm not the only one... these days I am aware of it and took it slow with my career, trying to build it up for the better reasons but I have to say, this was a mental challenge to go through for sure. Soon to get a masters, and probably stopping there 😊
Same rn taking engineering degree. Doing really well but I'm starting to get humbled by rigorous real stuff.
This definitely describes me, but I’m also trying to change my mentality for the better. It’s nice to know that I’m not alone.
I wholly support this Buddhist view that doing something useful _for other sentient beings_ is the only meaningful thing in life, and trying to do it more, but... Keep in mind that caring about how other people perceive you is perfectly normal and even useful. In particular, if you don't want to look like a jerk, don't act like one. If you want to be perceived like honest and compassionate, be honest and show compassion through your words and actions. Totally reasonable thing to do if you ask me.
I think it's perfectly human and understandable. Admiration is a driver for everyone. You simply don't have the ropes of reality of standard brains like mine to keep you firmly on the ground. Yes, I believe this can also be seen as a deficiency, and it's good that you're trying to fix it. But don't ever refrain from pursuing your passion, a degree of self-complacency is normal, as long as you respect the ones less gifted than you... Arrogance and tendency to humiliate are the plagues of some very smart guys, and the ones to avoid...
Love this thread, very insightful
Lovely speech. Reminds me of this quote by GH Hardy.
“I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.”
I decided to get a B.S. in Math for the opposite reason. I thought masochism was necessary for self-improvement and wanted to force myself to overcome my weaknesses through brute determination. I got the degree with a good GPA but I never reached that phase transition of mathematical maturity I sometimes hear talked about. I like to tell myself that I think about math in a way that's "slow but strong", with a more thorough and less artificial understanding than my peers, but I don't know if it's true.
Great quote, almost makes you wonder how he got himself to do it before he met littlewood and ramanujan.
I started a masters in math because I understood that every problem can be modeled and have a better understanding with this approach, at the end i learned much more than i could imagine and now i can think more generally about topics and identify patterns that can be translated from one field to another. Long story short I can read biology books to propose new algorithms for automotive industry
I know this is out of context, but this quote from GH Hardy is amazing:
"1. To prove the Riemann hypothesis;
2. To make a brilliant play in a crucial cricket match;
3. To prove the nonexistence of God;
4. To be the first man atop Mount Everest;
5. To be proclaimed the first president of the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, and Germany.
6. To murder Mussolini
-From a list of New Year's resolutions sent by Hardy to a friend in the 1940s"
@@markhall2414 Are you asking because he didn't include america in the countries he'd want to be first president? If so, I think it's possible that this quote was from a time where the USA was not yet involved in WW2, hence why he might have chosen not to include it
The speech really stroke my chord.
I was once a student who did extraordinarily well in math in my junior high school years, I skipped two grades in math, attended classes specialized in science, holds numerous competition medals and got in the talented class of the best senior high school in my city.
I was considered an extremely gifted kid in math by all the teachers and peers around me, which builds up my "ego" and become a deeply rooted part of me.
But in senior high school, I found that life become more complicated. People can evaluate a person from various different aspects(sports, music, conscientiousness or something like that), and with all these people being outstanding in different area, I suddenly became a flawed person whose only worth-mentioning advantage is being slightly better at math. And as I desperately cling on the only "good at math" title I have, I found that I lost all the interest and passion I had on math and can hardly make any progress on the thing I thought I love. As time went by, I became so frustrated in math that I barely study it, every time I see my classmates solve problems that I can barely get my hands on, I felt terrible. It's as if everything I've studied and every effort I made has been utterly pointless. At this point, I simply don't know hot to face math anymore.
Your speech made me realized that the reason I've been so into math is because that I wanted to be perceived as a outstanding person, and that I don't really have to be clinging on the title anymore. I finally got the answers to why I suffer while studying in math and felt relieved after your speech. I want to say thanks.
btw, your videos showcased the beauty of math and made me fall in love with mathematics years ago. And now i'm 18 and is going to major in electrical engineering in one of the best colleges in my country(Taiwan). And I want to say thank you so much for helping me find my passion and letting me become who I am. (dramartic but true lol
this is so beautifully said!! I’m wishing you all the best in your studies
I'm also 18, and this has been my experience too. I'm glad someone else gets it.🫶
"It makes me angry just thinking about it, but perhaps its my anger thats made me blind to the truth for so long. I see it now, i fought to push down others, you only fight to push yourself" -Vegeta
This kind of self-understanding, humility, and openness is truly admirable. Quite a few people never get to this level of maturity.
I always felt that the level of perfectionism that grant displays in his 3B1B productions involved a little bit of ego.. a constructive ego, but a small need to be exceptional and unmistakable.
I would've thought that he would have to go *far* out of his way to *hide* his exceptionalism.
Having *no* ego is a very miserable way to live… a little bit is the perfect amount to have.
His ergo isn't too bad either.
@@randomjunkohyeah1As someone who's suffered for decades wirh low self-esteem... yeah, the truth hurts.
You are describing a mathematician.
I dont thnk a lot of people noticed this but like the way he talks is so fluent-
like there are no "ums" "aa" etc
he has experience speaking like that from his videos, I guess. I’m sure he also practiced this speech a bit.
This is really interesting perspective on how to think about the work we do and our relationship to the people it affects. Reminds me of this quote from C.S. Lewis's Weight of Glory:
"The schoolboy beginning Greek grammar cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment of
Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage or a general to victory. He has to begin by
working for marks, or to escape punishment, or to please his parents, or, at best, in the hope of a
future good which he cannot at present imagine or desire. His position, therefore, bears a certain
resemblance to that of the mercenary; the reward he is going to get will, in actual fact, be a
natural or proper reward, but he will not know that till he has got it. Of course, he gets it
gradually; enjoyment creeps in upon the mere drudgery, and nobody could point to a day or an
hour when the one ceased and the other began. But it is just in so far as he approaches the reward
that he becomes able to desire it for its own sake; indeed, the power of so desiring it is itself a
preliminary reward"
Forget about math, his voice and delivery flow and speech make me wanna listen to him all day long!
Was thrown off in the best way possible seeing Grant's face and immediately recognizing his Voice. Thank you Grant for literally teaching me all the foundational courses in my Math degree!
In case this is helpful for anyone... when I first watched this, I felt a little confused because I normally love Grant's thoughts, but this one didn't resonate with me much. I have now come to a better understanding, and I think this could be a nice takeaway for others too:
I originally took this as encouragement to make things that other people will want or like, and that rubbed me wrong because when I make things, I tend to make them for myself, and I like that. It's peaceful, and I don't have to worry about likes or popularity. So I chalked this up to being a one-off Grant Sanderson video I wasn't a fan of.
But then after chatting with a friend about something unrelated + some further thought, I think the takeaway could be that it's nice to frame things as doing a service.... Not for popularity, not for yourself, but as a service to others. That's where the real value is.
100%, that's the intent. I fear an unintended consequence of (some) existing educational trajectories is that students come out focussed more on their own outcome and perception than on being others-focussed, and seeking out who they can help the most with their newly gained knowledge.
Is that because educational institutions have an incentive to leverage the fundamental human instinct to want to be admired/perceived well… because it’s a simple and (historically the most?) effective/efficient strategy to drive up the output/results of their students?
(It’s easier to get Johnny to want to crush his test if being showered in praise is the reward, vs trying to get him to understand deeper meanings of life and human connection in order to instill a motivation grounded in value-adding and fulfilment, right? …Especially for younger people).
But this then has the unintended consequence that the kind of carrot they have ingrained in their students to chase produces a mentality that may not lead to them having the most fulfilling life/most use of their skills post-education?
Loved this video, Grant.
A beautiful speech. I can only imagine how it would be to have Grant Sanderson giving a speech at your graduation.
This was really funny - enjoyed it a lot. My Dad told me he was astonished that I wanted to do maths at University. It was honestly the only subject I ever felt like I was good at. And who doesn't want to do puzzles for the rest of their life? 🙂
I still remember feeling genuinely excited every day at Uni. I know it sounds corny, but I would think "What extraordinary thing will they reveal to us today?"
Ditto. Looking back, my time at uni - 4 years in Elec & E’nic Eng - was the most thought-filled and stimulating of my life. Finding good friends, great teachers (for the most part) and uncovering the “how” of things…Maths wasn’t my strongest subject, but became a familiar friend that described the rest of science, most elegantly.
@@daviddempsey8721 Awesome! My Dad also said to me "You'll never make it as a mathematician, but you could be a good engineer".
Unfortunately, this was long after I'd graduated!
@@dylanparker130my dad too, he wants me to be an engineer (as he is an electrical one) but i am more interested in doing a math doctorat
lovely spirit
@@apuapustaja2063whenever i see the word lovely i think of gordon ramsey
Well spoken! This topic DEFINITELY needs more attention. Same goes for physics.
Yeah I've realized that a lot of Physics phenomena that I found "interesting", were that way *mainly* because they were hard to understand, and I didn't understand them.
And as soon as I did understand them, I of course felt accomplished, but also a bit hollow. The physics had "lost" some of its magic in my eyes.
(I finished my Bachelor in Physics last year, for context)
@@iveharzingkeep going with physics and you'll see that magic is still there :)
The amount of wisdom capsulated in 10 minutes was breathe taking.
Outstanding. Compared to Mark Rober's MIT commencement speech (which got a lot more attention than this), I thought this was much more thoughtful and well spoken.
On the spectrum of educational entertainment, Mark Rober is almost completely entertainment while 3B1B leans heavily towards education.
@@Vim_Tim Yeah I know... I feel bad for all those MIT grads whose commencement speech was essentially just a youtube video. Unfortunately, I guess it's unfair to expect everyone to be as amazing as Grant.
@@xavierchoe8074 Why do you feel bad for MIT grads, who cares about it? This speech is great but the whole idea of a ceremony is bullshit.
@@xavierchoe8074 MIT has become so much about marketing in recent years, it was perfect for them.
@@heyman620 no
this man alone has much more value than most of the professors at most universities. The impact hes made for learners everywhere is significant. Much better than professors who will only lecture about a topic but not put much consideration into how their students understand the topic (aka NOT meeting them where they are at) and will apply a blanket grade on their performance, as if that grade determined the competence, value, and limit of the student. Grant's dad is the big MVP (most valuable person) because he, from how Grant describes him, did an amazing job as a parent to nurture a sense of curiosity and gamified the learning process to Grant, being supportive every step of the way. Ego aside, I didn't hear really much about the impact of failure in Grant's life but thats probably because Grant wasn't taught that failure is a bad thing. Now, ask yourself if the education system actually fosters learning and curiosity. You'll find very quickly that they don't and if you feel that I'm wrong about this, then good for you, it seems that the system worked out for you. But I'm telling you, based on my experiences as someone who had an abusive childhood where I was taught to fear failure and to fear trying because perfect results were expected out of me every time, thats not the case for everyone. Because of my upbringing, it severely impacted how I treated failure and school, leading to worse grades and ultimately not getting what I wanted out of my college education. You cannot attribute blame to any one person. Both parents AND the education system need to do their part to not fail our kids.
When I listen to this guy outside his normal setting, I still think I'm going to learn some advanced concept.
2:22 reminded a quote "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really... I was alive.”
dude ROFL same
I graduated with a degree in math in 2004. However, the kind of understanding I get from your approach is far superior to what I got from my (excellent) professors. I envy the students of today who have access to your content.
I am such a fan of Grant. He can talk about absolutely any topic and make it interesting. He also makes me regret not having studied maths properly. 😢
This is why I love Stanford. They invite real achievers to the podium. They know the value of his work.
Brilliant guy. His understanding of mathematics and the psychology behind studying it and liking it is just great
This hits right home. I just finished my second year of my undergraduate degree in mathematics and I have seriously considered my degree choice in various occasions, not because I'm not in love with the subject, but because the math I find the most beautiful and well rounded is the one I think is the most far away from actual real use, and I have not found a connection between what I think is genuinely important in life (mainly empathy and helping others) and pursuing math. I actually came to the conclusion my main motivation from day to day was drawn by ego and by being seen as "smart" and "good at it", even from my peers in class. You have very well summarized many of my thoughts during these months.
I'm currently in a better situation, and I'm studying more than ever, drawn by curiosity and a desire to get better at it. I would like to stay in academia in the future, and I thought any choices I would have to make would come naturally from what seems more interesting to me, but thinking about it now I think I would get drawn to those harder problems just for the sake of being the one to solve them. This was a very helpful reminder for me to keep questioning my motives and a very good path to steer towards. Thank you.
I think this too. I also just finished my second year of undergrad in math, and I’m trying to figure out a way to really learn math. Should I read textbooks/watch videos/do hard problems? Or should I try to figure out what math is myself by sitting down with a pencil and paper and thinking? The former is what I’m used to from school, and (like Grant I’m gonna always point out the positives :)) it’s nice being part of a community bonding over this subject. But sometimes I zoom out and wonder if I’m doing this for the beauty of math, or because it makes me feel smart and productive.
So what I want to do more is come up with my own ideas of what math is. Maybe it’ll align with what mathematicians and philosophers think, or maybe it’ll be more of my unique perspective. I’ve been doing a little imagining of math (understanding basics of logic and sets and functions and whatnot) and I’m trying to get more consistent in this new type of learning. For the first time in my life, I can understand why math is so hard. It’s not hard because it looks intimidating, it’s hard because the subject sparks so many possibilities that we don’t have enough time for. But I also wanna make sure I have another perspective to view math from. Math isn’t just a difficult and rigorous field, but it’s a way of thinking about things. We ask ourselves questions, no matter how basic, and then we try (and fail) to find answers. I want to make sure I ask the questions not because they’re well-known or they’re in all the math books, but because I thought of them myself.
This is all great in theory, but when school starts again I might get overwhelmed and give up on trying to learn math as a hobby. With school comes our egos, and they can get in the way. I’m not sure what the solution is here, but hearing Grant talk about something like this is great. I feel less alone and very grateful.
@@desrepeerc206
First rst paragraph good
Second paragraph ego
Third paragraph good
@@desrepeerc206go get your ego checked lol
@@skydivenext What they mentioned in second para is relevant(if I interpreted it correctly). I think of it this way.... see when you are learning/ mastering a subject, you first learn the theory as a basic understanding of the concept is necessary to dwell into the questions. For an ordinary student ,trying and pushing yourself to do difficult questions which are way beyond your understanding is like diving headfirst into a frozen lake. My dad once told me "You understand something when are able to explain it to yourself in a meaningful and a comprehensible way".
But if you are exceptionally good at something, you can ponder new possibilities and question what, why and how.. and thats what generates new ideas and intuitions. And it even goes on to show you how much you know about your particular field of interest.
WHAT?? I was just a building over for the physics commencement for my PhD! Wish I knew you were around :D great speech!
What a lucky class to have someone as well-spoken as you give a commencement speech!
I enjoy Grants videos so much, very eloquent. I went into math head first because my high school counselor in 1974 said I’d better find a college where math wasn’t required because I’d never get it. She said the same about a foreign languages which is why I became fluent in French. I guess I should thank that counselor.
Ego has its best purpose when it is aligned in its utility to others and in turn yourself (Paraphr.). What a great guy.
I love how MIT gets a pseudo engineer celeb mark rober while Stanford gets one of the most intelligent and eloquent mathematics youtubers on the platform to do their commencement speech.
😂
You also expecting Grant to turn his hat into a topological doughnut at the end?
😂😂
I started liking math when I first took geometry in 10th grade. I remember having an easier time visualizing why the formulas for area and volume of shapes were how they were. It first started as me having fun finding the volumes of the shapes of figures that resembled the toys I played with when I was a child. However, being the one in class that found it the easiest really inflated my ego. Same thing happened with precalculus and calculus. I'm ashamed to admit that I still hold a lot of that ego, but Grant's speech started to help me realize how to let go of it, even if it's little by little. Thanks Grant.
How nice to “meet” the man behind the videos! I am consistently awed by your work, not just for its beauty or originality, but for what I imagine are the incredible efforts you take to “meet me where I am” and your calmly confident manner as your deftly guide me to understanding. Throughout, there’s a generosity of spirit which seems to expect no reward beyond the shared joy of reaching that understanding. Just like your speech here. Thank you.
This is such a bold and important take, think how many of academic papers in math and computer science try to innovate and present extremely complicated new results and how many try to apply given results/understand them deeply.
A paper dedicated to understanding mathematics isn't an academic paper, those are just notes. Also about half of maths dedicated to applying results; that's why it's called "applied mathematics"
As a young math teacher, I know my highest motivation is to enlighten my students as much as possible.
Of course, I always highly appreciate words of thanks but even without that, I genuinely feel the most satisfied when I see this famous light appear in their eyes, the moment when they really understand and when their mind display that hunger and pleasure to learn more.
So yes, I have some ego but not in a problematic way imo. Ego is not a bad thing when trying to help others I think.
As for you dear M. Sanderson, you have been (and still are !) a truly great teacher for me ! Your videos have always enlightened me in a marvelous way (can't deny the visuals are the key hehe).
I think that being a teacher means to take up the immense challenge to allow various people to learn despite their respective backgrounds and abilities which may be very different.
And I believe you achieved that goal in many of your videos and all the more when changing your focus from being "original" to "meeting people where they are" as you said.
But you know what ? By doing so, you certainly produced very creative and thus very original videos !
So many thanks to your ego ;)
Even if your video is not about a unique or hard problem, you still present the topic and the explanation in a unique way that makes them easy for the viewers to understand. Finding this way is in itself a unique and hard problem you manage to solve.
PS I loved your idea of an "Evaluation function". I'm sure I'm not the only one here whose function changed hugely over 2020.
As many others have said, it's so nice to hear that I'm not the only one who feels like this - I'm a math-loving controls nerd *now* but in elementary school I was willing to trudge through the (big, bad, scary, evil) math because I wanted my lego robot to follow the line faster and better than my friends'. Thank you!
Even though I’m not a Maths major and rather am pursuing entrepreneurship, I can very much relate to the different motivations that may drive you. It’s important to learn about oneself and your true motivations, even if they may be morally tainted (like ego). They can drive you to do great things but they may also drive you to excess and waste if not balanced. So take the time to reflect, adjust, and learn about different philosophies so that you can pursue the life you want for yourself wholeheartedly.
Thanks for the reminder, Grant!
Thank you for this, and for your honest reflection on your journey. I can relate -- I chose to study mathematics mostly because I was good at it, and only prepared for exams in order to get higher scores than others in my class. Ego and competitiveness, I'm sad to say, were very much a part of it. Somewhere down the line things did "click" and the pleasure I took from beauty of mathematics overtook the egotistical satisfactions. Interesting thoughts about video topics, too -- I spend a lot of time struggling with the questions: what do people want? / what do people need? / what will people find valuable? / what will people watch? when choosing a topic, and now I'll probably struggle with them even more!
Hey Grant, this is my first time seeing you on camera haha. I took my first calculus class this last semester. After studying for my final, my RUclips algorithm was filled with calculus. I started to watch it for entertainment, even after my final. The videos that helped make that click for me was your videos. You have truly helped rekindle my love for math, and even made me consider changing my major to math. So thank you so much, never stop makeing videos!!
Wow, what an incredibly great speaker to have for your departmental commencement
wish he were ours lol
This speech wasn't very emotionally engaging the way many others are, but the message is more valuable than in any other commencement speech I've seen. It's really targeting an issue that I think steals a lot of happiness from mathematicians. Props for going for utility over dramatic flare
I can relate to the ego motivation early in my studies. I'm an academic with 20+ years experience post-Ph.D. and I have experienced re-emergence of the ego motivation and see others around me who seem to have that as their primary motivation. As the Pixies sang, "Hang on to your ego!" In my case, I think I ultimately wanted to make my family proud of my success when I was a kid, because there was a lot of other difficult stuff going on at the time with my older brothers, drugs, health and us being fairly poor. That was a huge motivation for me to want to do well at maths and physics.
I cant relate to this speech because all through my school life I was scared of math , I never "understood" it completely idk if it was the teachers or me . I scored okay because I was able to repeat the things I was being taught but it never felt intutive to me .
Then in Uni I was planning to take physics as a major but I wasnt able to get it instead I got selected in math so I took it hoping I would change my major by scoring good in physics as elective but I started to like math , well to be particular Abstract Algebra . It didnt come natural to me but I found it so interesting that I wanted to keep studying it.
I have always felt "less" because I struggled Analysis and Probability and Stats , but only my love and respect for Algebra has made me comethis far .I am starting my phd next month.
One of my goals in life is to learn to talk like Grant, that every person in the room understands
I'm still a student, but your speech made me think a lot about why I chose maths as my field and where I want to go with it. Thank you for sharing it!
I wish we could all meet and speak to him in person, chat with him for a little while. It’s unfortunately not feasible with a following of this magnitude, but it’d be amazing for him to do more public speeches like this because he’s really good and we’d all appreciate it
The voice, that you recognize instantly.
I love this guy. I was learning mathematics for ML and this guy saved me explaining some important mathematics concepts used in ML.
thank you so much for this insightful talk. i imagine it hurt to gather the humility to expose your ego to a crowd! but please know that your kindness in accepting this pain has shone through, not just here, but in every video i’ve seen from you. sometimes i watch your videos when i’m too tired or sick to truly understand them, just to cheer myself up-to remind myself that someone cares to be kind to us viewers in such a costly way
As someone who is about to enter grad school, I find this talk so relevant to how I choose projects and topics to work on as well! I have always put out the questions Grant asks, in the name of "be spontaneous, you are a student, work on what catches your attention, we will think about the valuation function later". This is one of them Ah-you-voiced-my-heart videos, perfect.
I totally resonate with you man ! Although I am good with problem solving in general , I would always beat myself up for not loving it . The situations I have gone through have made me taken up the career , at times I hate myself for not taking it up wholly just based on the love for it . Hearing your thoughts have given me some perspective .
Great video, and definitely made me reevaluate my own motivations. I'm just starting a physics degree and I definitely feel that I enjoy praise and that my comparison to others is exacerbated by every test coming along with a grade distribution to go along with it where you can see where I fall on the curve. While I love maths and enjoy understanding proofs that the lecturer writes and is not subject for any test but I do feel that my self worth is becoming tied to academic valor. I'm not certain I would pursue the field if I was ordinary or less than at it and I don't know how to feel about it.
When he started talking I began to imagine smooth animations and graphs
I could listen to this guy all day
What great starting advice! The learning I’ve had as a beginning marketer is to start with solving some real problem for your customer.
As an engineer I’ve always had more motivation helping a client solve a wicked problem, than the money or position I was in.
The greatest RUclipsr face reveal I've ever seen
First, LET’S GOOOO Jonathan Ko, congrats on graduating!!! Second, this is a fantastic speech for a math graduation, and it very accurately and eloquently summarises my experiences studying math at this place, including many opinions I came to very slowly. Thank you so much, Grant. Hearing this from you has provided me more value than any math video you’ve ever made.
grant, you are a lighthouse for humbleness!
Great talk, I love that you question passion as something self-driven or made from some kind of higher purpose and altrusitic motive. I think our motives can certainly change with time, what starts off as a passion built on praise from others can turn to a selfless act done solely for the sake of others, given we recognise these intentions as you said. I think all of these motives are valid and can create a wide variety of outcomes that help us grow and learn more. Thank you for the insight :)
I'm currently the exact description of past Grant, and I'm very thankful for this video. If I can't enjoy math when I'm alone, I don't enjoy it for what it is. Truly opened my mind!
Jaw dropped at seeing this guy in the flesh and speaking at stanford no less. On the list of people's whose hand i wanna shake 💯
This certainly has me thinking, so thank you for that. That said, I don't love talking about 'purity', like ego is something dirty. I think, especially for big life decisions like what (sub)field to work in, it's good to think mostly about yourself. If something interests you just because it's hard and you think working on that will make you happy then that's great. If you get more satisfaction from making a difference and therefore would prefer a more applied field or in education, that's obviously great too--but I don't think it's a morally superior choice, nor do I think it's the right choice for everyone.
Hm I don't think that's ego. (Not sure) From my understanding, ego would be feeling superior to others. I think what you described is being selfish/self centered. Of course I completely agree with your view though.
He didn’t mention purity, and honestly hardly disparaged ego
@@SpencerTwiddy Perhaps I should be clearer that this is a fairly minor disagreement I'm having, but 3:32 and 4:13.
It's a good point, I wouldn't want to imply it's dirty to value problems primarily when they pique your own interest. The main thing I wanted to convey is how personally, when I look back on projects that were done based more on my own interest vs those motivated by others' interests, while I often feel happy about both (and would never outright do away with the former), there's a more enriching fulfillment that comes from the latter. Also, from a pragmatic standpoint, the sense in which I meant it may have made the difference between career and hobby is that the latter are what account for more people coming to the channel, more support on Patreon, etc.
The specifics of this might not apply to everyone, I can't tell you what your evaluation function should be. The one piece of advice I feel comfortable giving is that time spent reflecting on the question is time well spent.
@@Huntracony I stand corrected
Applause. Although, he spoke so quick, I hope some students might re-watch this video after the event. I had to turn on subtitles to keep up. Regardless, worthwhile for every student everywhere.
A very, very, very good teacher. I have an engineering PhD and pride myself on how well I teach... but Grant is one of the best teachers I've ever seen. Phenomenal.
Can't agree more, my Maths journey started with me seeing the integral sign and thinking how impressed my classmates would be if I knew what it was. Have since fallen in love with the subject just as you describe
Thank you for this beautiful speech. It's easy for us to forget why we have a passion for something in the first place when ego takes over. It can happen to everyone, and maybe that's a path life follows on repeat for a lot of us. As an ego who has gone through this painful cycle many times in life, I'm grateful to see you sharing your work with the world and putting your heart behind it - this is passion! Math is beautiful, and sharing it is a gift all its own.
I loved it. Very insightful of him to recognize his own thought process for what it is
I can really relate to this speech. I‘m now in my first year of university studying physics and in school, my main motivation was pretty much just the acknowledgment I got through good grades. Even though I did get really good grades, it was hardly good enough for me and I wanted even more validation through extracurricular activities and eventually a scholarship. I also didn’t want to be the person seeming to be overly obsessed with grades, so I couldn’t accept praise openly but internally it meant pretty much everything to me to get positive feedback. Which is kind of a twisted mindset, looking back.
The four months I‘ve been studying at university have been very difficult for me now, because it is literally impossible to feel like one of the best students when the majority of people in my semester have also always been „the smart kids“. And what I‘m realizing now is that the motivation of merely being perceived as smart is not enough to get through a physics degree. I totally want to find my motivation intrinsically and maybe find some kind of passion in it, but I‘m also pretty sure it cannot be forced like that.
I know that from all the things I could study, physics is the best one and I do really like the way physics describes nature but most of all I like solving problems and understanding difficult concepts (which is maybe also because of egoistical self affirmation reasons).
Now, I did get recommended for a scholarship from my school and the election for this scholarship was after I‘ve already been studying at university for a few months. So my self-esteem wasn’t as high anymore, knowing that the motivation I was basically living after until then was falling apart. But I kind of tried to play the role of a confident person knowing what motivates me. Of course, I didn’t get the scholarship, which led me into even deeper self doubt.
I‘m starting to realize that it was actually good for me to not get the scholarship with this twisted mindset that I had, because any person who relies heavily on external validation of their abilities is set up to be unhappy and feel like a failure. Especially as they get into groups of people with equal or even better abilities in a certain field. And of course, there will always be people who have greater knowledge of something.
So now, I try to really focus on the things that I‘m learning and I try to enjoy the process of learning them rather than always having the highest expectations for my performance. Hopefully, it will help. I’m sure all these struggles and realizations can only build character and eventually I will derive confidence in another way than feeling „successful“.
Edit: This text may seem like I wasn’t interested at all in the actual things I was learning, which is not true. I did like learning just because I’m naturally curious. But I think there was (or is) a problem with wanting to be seen in a certain way.
Hi, reading your comment I was almost seeing an almost exact copy of myself and you were really able to capture the essence of this precisely twisted mindest and curiosity that drived you and me and worded it, simply in a way that im not able to. I just wanted to "share" my story because there are only so much people that can understand this sort of internal conflict you talked about. I find that talking with these people enlightened me a lot in the past few years. Btw I'm sorry if this come across as self centered its really not my intent, its just a way to spark something that you want to say or take what you find interesting in what I say that makes you think of something else and talk about it. Also I may go into some details I find them necessary but you can skim over them. Just to acknowledge it this is not my native language so my apologies for any eye scratching spelling mistakes.
Anyway before the last year in high school I wasn't interested in anything to be honest I just liked to play games because school was boring, maybe because teacher are handed out the impossible task of trying to teach for every possible career path that a student might take, but mainly, because I think i was only interested in physics or maths or maybe the two. I was lazy but I wasnt good I just listened in class and worked enough to pass. In my perspective I just had to have enough points to get my high school diploma because it wasnt really serious in my mind to not get it even though my parents didnt bothered me with it but intrisically, i knew it wouldn't make them happy.
Then because I was on youtube I discovered 3b1b Veritasium Mathlogger etc and this really turned my path. It got me interested in more "complicated", "sophitiscated" topics and I think there was a part of curiosity, really learning something, but there was a huge part about being pendantic about it, which of course im not proud of.
The main thing was that in high school you are being taught for instance about rc circuit and then you use this weird dU/dt and the teacher says that its a "limit" and you follow along without knowing what that means at all and then you use Kirchoff laws because you need to know them for the test but you have absolutely no idea where they come from and a differential equation pops out and finally the teacher is happy. Pretty quickly I think that with the videos that kind of gave me this attitude to, lets say, "prove things", combined with my feeling of no truly understanding something that was being taught and came out of nowhere, got me to be more skeptical.
I think I understood a little that derivatives where taught because they were necessary for integrals which then has like billions of applications probability distribution laplace transform you name it (doing them is now like multiplications its crazy, exagerated but you get the point) but mainly because it shapes the way that a student thinks. What recruiters in engineer broadly speaking want is a guy with problem solving abilities and a mind that can model a problem by hand make some calculations and get a result that is somewhat close to the "true" result without any help. By the way it always staggers me that without games like factorio minecraft civ6 and many more i wouldve been a stupid kid and my problem solving skills and interests all come from games and the internet. One of the stories that my professor jokes about is he's been handed out a pen and then was tasked to compute the magnetic field if it was wrapped around in copper, its basic but that its the kind of question/problem that I love. I wish teachers just explained me this, it would've been easier and much more fun to learn.
Nonetheless in my last year of high school I got really interested by electroboom veritasium and lot of people who were doing mostly project videos and this prompted me to learn a lot to be able to tackle and even make my own projects. I researched the path and diploma to go to a kind of electrical engineer job as i understood quickly that I needed to get of my ass i got from almost last to the top 5 and knew stuff that we didnt saw in the course yet and noticed that my classmates were completely oblivious to where was situated the thing they learned in this greater map of knowledge leading to uni stuff and just applied the course like printing machines, of course i bragged about this a lot too and felt a selfish feeling of domination... Then i got to prepa. Prepa is the french equivalent of uni with the same framework as high school and a lot of suffering. Its the most well regarded way to get an engineer school and the companies knows the value of this experience and that's tipically the profile they are looking for. I can go into further details (honestly this is the most intellectual growth period of my life) but this comment is already way too long and its been 5h of writing at this point, basically, i got crushed exactly like you. My self esteem was ruined and, most of all, my confidence was at an all time low so I basically couldnt learn anything and needed to smile everyday to not attract pity. We had exams in the last two year but its doesnt matter because these two years are only useful for the written and oral exams next week that last a couple months that occur at the engineering schools themselves.
I promise you, these years have been the most painful of my life and I mean it. I have an certain ego and I was humbled, but when i see people working in jobs where they break their bodies for pennies, its not that bad, even if its intellectualy painful.
What I got away with, is this :
-You need to find your techniques/workflow to self study efficiently, no one taught me to self study because i didnt really needed to work in high school to get the grades but it couldnt cut it anymore so it was necessary to react and this was only at the end of my first year that I learned methods online to study efficiently which teachers never told me about. When you achieve a self study routine you are ahead of 90% of people that study the night before the exams thats doesnt remember the content of the first semester going into the second while you can remember all possible things with incredible tools like anki and i promise you this tool is the glitch of learning it saved my ass seriously use it for a certain period it will change your life I mean it !
-This allowed me to be able to study almost anything and become an expert in any field if im interested in it. This is for the most part also what an employer wants, a guy that knows a lot of stuff in the domain, especially in engineering.
-The more you advance in the studies the more things are rigorous, everything in high school was hand wavy and questionnable at best. Everything that I learned explained/proved rigorously what I saw in high school and explained the origin and the "why" of large amount of maths and physics. And most of all the higher you go the more you understand why people taught you those topics and the better you can see the landscape of things that you learn and how everything is interconnected.
I know how you feel and i dont want to tell you the generic things because you already know them obviously you need to believe in yourself etc.. I just want to tell you this. What helped me was to try to seperate myself from the value that I attributed myself from being bad or good to a particular topic and this really helped me and was key. I really dont think its a way to gaslight myself or some sort i think its the best way to think about it is "I dont understand this concept im not stupid the things in high schools seemed hard at the time and now its childs play this is easy dont be afraid !" I encountered people that understood easily hard concepts, turns out they already learned and trained a lot on some of them, in maths context or boot camps. The only thing that you must always remember is that smart people dont exists. I've always told myself that smart people were talented/gifted and I've been proven wrong every single time. There are only three things to get success in stem, knowing by heart, understanding, practice. In physics I tend to believe that understanding makes everything easy but knowing and practice are key, in maths the knowing by heart and practice outweigh the understanding at some point because the two almost imply the understanding but this is only my take. You need to ratio thoses accordingly and remember its always personnal there isnt a perfect ratio for everyone and my take is vague and not true in certain cases but there is one for you and only you, you just have to find it just like your study methods and routine the only thing you need to do is test them and pick the best. Finally the best thing that i learned from a classmate was "This is just a game, with abilities and skill points you spends" it opened my eyes. For me exercising changed a lot of thing im overweight but not terrible and the workout is just a catalyser for learning. For me im lazy so if i grab every single thing that can make me learn faster just to make my life easy.
I haven't been able to attend both my undergrad and masters graduations so seeing this feels like it's made up for all that. I also have been asking myself these questions a lot recently, and I am glad you spoke on it and have given me some much needed insight. Thank you so much.
What a privilege to be able to have Grant as your speaker.
Well spoken and precise in language. Thank you for your work!
We need high ego math majors for our Blue Lock experiment
Fr we need the egoists to devour intimidating problems
Really appreciate the honesty and broader message here. And really related to the initial motivations for math. I’m not doing maths anymore but I’ll carry this message about finding the right evaluation function away with me.
You are in inspiration to many. I admire your work
It's so refreshing listening to Grant.
Grant, you are becoming an artist. Bravo!
Just graduated from my Bachelor degree, your speech is such a Gem 💎
Thanks for posting this! Love from India.
Some wisdom outing Stanford . Unexpected beauty .
What a speech! Very important for me to hear -- so many times I feel my ego taking over me
the way he talked about ego and self satisfaction resonates so hard within me
Well spoken! This topic DEFINITELY needs more attention. Same goes for physics.. Standford recognized who actually taught their students and invited him to speak..
Great Speach. Even primary school children that I have taught love your 3Blue1Brown videos.
Love the honesty.
I feel honored to see you as my math teacher even just learning from video on Internet, both interesting and insightful. I understand a lot of important math which I failed to learn from school.
This is something that isn’t talked about enough. I’m still struggling to know what I’ll do because I feel like I want to go into the domain of research, but at the same time I want to be useful to people given the privileges I’ve grown up with. These aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but depending on the field of math you focus on and what interests you the intersection of these might approach a null measure, and it’s incredibly frustrating.
Help kind hearted people who work. It won't solve Riemann hypothesis, but Riemann hypothesis won't solve the life of anyone.
A wonderful speech! Absolutely beautiful!
I love this. So many brilliant people go and work on such world-harming projects because they're "interesting."
not everybody knows that if you put someone as honest as a math divulgator next to someone dishonest as politician they start to emit electrons and you have free energy. jokes apart, this person taught me and other millions of people things we had lost hope of ever grasping. thank you!
Man, thank you for this general point of view
I did it... for me. I liked it. I was good at it.
- Grant Heisenberg
😂
thank you!
You are truly an inspiration, love your content, love your spirit ❤❤❤
So amazing.
Sir you are my inspiration towards maths. Thank you so much.
That was a nice speech and listen to the topic. I am autistic and slow at math but can visualize shapes in my mind. You videos helped me understand that i knew math far better than I thought was possible. I was working on a 3D mandala with spheres and cubes in my mind when your hardest math problem appeared. I solved it right away once the sphere and grid appeared and had to wait 5 minutes to check my answer was correct.
Keep up the brilliant work !!!
The moment I realized that I love maths without any specific reason was when I wrote shader code using a game engine and a modified form of HLSL. (Shaderlab/HLSL syntax and the Unity3D engine implementation)
The fact I could compile code in realtime while having a "game" running and then instantly see a visual representation of what math *actually* looks like. That was a game changer.
I am still a fairly incompetent mathematician, yet I do feel quite a bit of self respect regarding that hobby and how I can probably still use internet research, pseudo code and equations to write some weirdly high level stuff, even if I am terrible at calculus and I quickly forget some math concepts.
directX moment
@@mastershooter64 Yup. Also glsl/vulkan. I think it worked on all semi-modern devices yet I never tested that.