YouTube, Github, & Media

  

YouTube

YouTube is the place to find wonderful Mathematics content: lectures, workshops, expository talks, interviews, fun problems, etc. Rather than link to all of these individually, I have a YouTube channel to house all the videos I think are interesting or helpful. I also feature a number of other YouTube channels that I believe are worth subscribing to if you are interested in this kind of content. So be sure to check out the playlists and featured channels!

YouTube: CoffeeIntoTheorems

  

GitHub

GitHub is probably the most useful place I have found for housing the various TeX files related to course notes and other projects I have made. While the PDF versions can be found under my ‘Paper, Notes, & Talks’ section, feel free to check out or download the TeX versions at my GitHub page.

GitHub: CoffeeIntoTheorems

  

Math TV Shows

When it comes to good ‘mathy’ TV shows, there really is only one option:
 

Numb3rs

 
Another nice thing about this TV show, is there is a whole website dedicated to how the Mathematics plays a role.

  

Math Movies

What are the best movies that are ‘mathy.’ The criterion here is that they should involve (mostly) real Mathematics and do so with at least some accuracy. At the very least, they should be good movies.

  • Stand and Deliver: Based on the true story of a High School teacher who manages to teach near drop-out students Calculus.
  • Hidden Figures: A fantastic film about the real young African American women who helped put men on the moon in the early days of NASA (then known as NACA). Although it was a bit cringy to have the ‘key’ to be Euler’s method, the most basic technique in Numerical Analysis.
  • Proof: Based on a play, this is a film about a young mathematician dealing with the passing of her mentally ill father and wrestling with the ownership of a groundbreaking new proof. Although the movie never states, it is strongly suggested that the problem is the Riemann Hypothesis. This still stands (for some reason) as one of my favorite movies of all time. This certainly my most watched film of all time at over 200 times, and I am usually able to quite it line-by-line (through the argument), matching times, inflections, and body motions – even without looking at the screen and without sound.
  • A Beautiful Mind: A mostly fictional telling of the life of mathematician John Nash. Some aspects reflect real life, for example his schizophrenia. However, he never had visual hallucinations. The real life story is far more exotic and interesting. In any case, it is a good film by Ron Howard. The movie also contains an interesting non-trivial math problem that I have used as a Calculus project.
  • Good Will Hunting: A great movie staring the late Robin Williams and Matt Damon, who stars as a troubled but brilliant mind. While the Mathematics isn’t as deep the movie wants you to believe (I mean introductory Linear Algebra for ‘advanced’ Math), the movie itself is solid with quite a few good mathematical references and lines.
  • The Man Who Knew Infinity: A nice retelling of the story of Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician who independently taught himself some of the most advanced Mathematics in the world. Ramanujan rose to fame only to die tragically young. Another great thing about the film was it used a number of real mathematicians as movie consultants, for example Ken Ono.
  • The Theory of Everything: This wonderful movie starring Eddie Redmayne about the life of late famed physicist Stephen Hawking. Although sadly, the movie does not actually discuss much of the mathematics and not too much more of the physics.
  • October Sky: Arguably Jake Gyllenhaal’s first major role, October Sky is based on the memoirs ‘Rocket Boys’, by Homer Hickam Jr, that tells the real life story of Hickam, who grew up in a small town in Coalwood, WV, only to go on to win the National Science Fair, getting himself into college. Later, Hickam would work for NASA. The movie is good but the mathematics presented in it rather simple. The memoir itself is perhaps more worth the investment, and still stands as my favorite (and most read) book of all time.
  • 21: Very loosely based on a true story, this movie tells of six MIT students who use their mathematics skills to win big in Vegas.
  • The Imitation Game: A film very loosely based on the story of Alan Turing: mathematician, creator of the Turing Test, and who is considered the father of modern Computer Science, who helped the Allies crack the Enigma code, which often attributed as one of the key reasons the Allies won the war. I am split on these for two reasons: first is the obvious ‘U-ler’ (Euler, which is as any mathematician knows is ‘oiy-ler’, could they not hire a consultant?), but the strong disservice it does to Turing. Turing was later medically castrated by the British government for being a homosexual, which later led to his suicide just 15 days before his 42nd birthday. For the sake of drama, the movie (falsely) implies that Turing protected a spy to cover up his homosexuality – a slap in the face for a movie mostly about Turing.
  • The Martian: Yet another movie about Matt Damon being saved, The Martian tells the story of Mark Watney, who is stranded on Mars. The movie is engaging, fun, and light. Although the mathematics actually featured is best described as ‘cute’, it’s still a great movie.

  

Where Can I Be Found

Rather than playing a game of ‘Where’s Waldo’, here are a few links where you could find me online. In fact if you search hard enough, you could even find my High School Cross Country times.