Lecture for a general audience: Terence Tao is UCLA’s Collins Professor of Mathematics, and the first UCLA professor to win the prestigious Fields Medal. Less than a month after winning the Fields Medal, Tao was named a MacArthur Fellow. The following month, Tao was named one of “The Brilliant 10” scientists by Popular Science magazine, which called him “Math’s Great Uniter” and said that “to Tao, the traditional boundaries between different mathematical fields don’t seem to exist.” His Colloquium is titled “Structure and Randomness in the Prime Numbers.” The UCLA Science Faculty Research Colloquium Series is designed to promote interdisciplinary research. The Series is sponsored by the Divisions of Life and Physical Sciences, UCLA College. *Edit: For the question posed at [43:37], the word “Inters” should be “Integers”
thehulk305 says
english please.
hwn000 says
What part needs clarification?
a1351235 says
he speaks very fast ….
BoyStreet93 says
If you pretend that ONLY AN EXAMPLE (over millions of species) could be a prove that prime numbers are tied to the cycle prey-predator it´s not only naive but stupid. Prime numbers is an abstract idea and existis only like a human bullshit (by the way i’am mathematician)
knabbers says
me likey prime numbers
PatrickLars says
Prove to us here that you are indeed somewhat a “Mathematician”.
Akito700 says
what the fuck
gatoradeee says
he does speak very fast, he’s a genius
KemptonLam says
At 38:05 Dr. Tao starts to talk about Green-Tao Theorem (2004)
silep says
Very interesting lecture. Seems like he’s kinda sad about the fact that there’s so much advanced theory/results he’s not allowed to talk about.
MadaxeMunkeee says
I find it difficult to believe that the universe hasn’t managed to find a way to make use of the unique properties of the prime numbers. Surely they’re at work all around us like the complex numbers for example.
But math doesn’t need the universe like the universe needs it. It’s a weird sort of one way mutual exclusiveness.
kikkom4n says
this man is the worst teacher
he may be good at his subject, but he is not good at teaching
PatrickLars says
Probably due to the fact that majority of mathematicians and amateur mathematicians alike love to skip step by step procedures. It has something to do with if you understand the subject quite well then we don’t have to remind you again the patterns, type of mindset. It also has something to do with mathematical maturity, if you have a strong background of primary and secondary mathematics, such as, calculus 1, 2, …, geometry, …, trigonometry, …, algebra.
kikkom4n says
its not so much the fact that he skips steps
its the idea he talks so incredibly quickly
LogicalFlawDetector says
Asians >> Niggers
YentaY0 says
Yes — I have the idea that prime numbers affect the way molecules fold, RNA, DNA etc
shallbeagain says
Why didn’t Alice just mail the locked box and then mail the key.
ilikechiks100 says
@shallbeagain thats what i thought as well, mail the box, then mail the key afterwords
Zelaron says
@shallbeagain Because the “eavesdropper” can then retrieve both the box and the key by intercepting both packages, and can consequently open the box.
sormu16 says
@kikkom4n “…he is not good at teaching …”
Here he is talking to people who are already far with math (high-school math student background), so he speaks quickly, allowing him to cover many subjects in less than an hour. On another level he’d of course have to slow down, involve the listeners with questions, examples etc.
I think he could do that too – though brilliant researchers are often not geared to teach, which could be a waste of their time.
T3st1fy says
nice camera work at 19:30
matrxmax says
@TheNexus Really? lets find out…. Genesis Ch.1:1 ; In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth. 1: In the beginning = Time, 2: God created the heavens = Space, 3: …and the Earth = Matter. Summery; In the beginning God created time, space, and matter (the basic composition of the known real universe) Want more? ok,
1: Time= past, present, future. 2: Space= height, length, width ( 3D physical universe) 3: Matter = solid, liquid, gas (physical science) God is a mathematician.
rlinfinity says
Is 30:05 correct? I think he made a mistake. Integer factorisation is not an NP-complete problem — i.e. it doesn’t matter if P = NP. Rather, it’s an exponential time problem.
i.e. the problem belongs to the set EXTIME rather than NP-Complete.
If what he says is true then Shor’s algorithm through quantum computation (which can factor large primes in polynomial time) would show that P=NP (the horror!). How can that be possible? NP-complete problems probably have no polynomial time solutions.
rlinfinity says
he should write a book. “The Tao of Mathematics” :D HAHAHHAHAHAHA!
aznxkigga says
I tried the click the information bar at the beginning of the video thinking it was an advertisement. Damn you Google!!!