The Enigma of Miracle Years in Mathematics

I had a lot of fun chatting with Grant Sanderson (who runs the excellent 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel) about:

- Whether advanced math requires AGI

- What careers should mathematically talented students pursue

- Why Grant plans on doing a stint as a high school teacher

- Tips for self teaching

- Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem actually matter

- Why are good explanations so hard to find?

- And much more

Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform. Full transcript here.

Timestamps

(0:00:00) - Does winning math competitions require AGI?

(0:08:24) - Where to allocate mathematical talent?

(0:17:34) - Grant’s miracle year

(0:26:44) - Prehistoric humans and math

(0:33:33) - Why is a lot of math so new?

(0:44:44) - Future of education

(0:56:28) - Math helped me realize I wasn’t that smart

(0:59:25) - Does Godel’s incompleteness theorem matter?

(1:05:12) - How Grant makes videos

(1:10:13) - Grant’s math exposition competition

(1:20:44) - Self teaching