A truly competent mathematician with an exceptional sense of humor while presenting stuff! Never thought math could be fun during lectures, but I changed my mind now.
The experiment at around 2:21 is mind-blowing. We used to see these tricks played by some professionals on TV or during some events, but this is the first time I have seen one from a mathematical background.
I hated maths in school, had to persevere all the way through my Electronic Engineering degree, and still didn't "like" it, until much later, many years later, when it was no longer academic, but pure interest.
I do wonder what a difference it would have made had I had teachers and lecturers half as interesting, humerous, and engaging as this.
I think this is a bit unfair. This is a fantastic talk but it is showing some selected highlights that the speaker is passionate about. To get to that point he must have learned math in some (presumably traditional) way, including parts that must have seemed tedious.
This is like listening to Mozart play some playful piece and saying "if only learning piano would have been this much fun" -- there is no shortcut to putting in the time and work to learning the foundations.
Watching it I was thinking "I should go back to hn and say thanks to OP". Glad to see someone else did the same. Tokieda is so good!What a joy to watch.
So I just spent the last hour while watching this attempting to get a python script with a menu to ask me size and shape for the tesselation then it spits out an SVG or PNG to print the patterns for folding the Miuri Ori lines (round, sq, rec, hex)
Starting from just a sheet of paper, by folding, stacking, crumpling, sometimes tearing, Tadashi will explore a diversity of phenomena, from magic tricks and geometry through elasticity and the traditional Japanese art of origami to medical devices and an ‘h-principle’. Much of the show consists of table-top demonstrations, which you can try later with friends and family.
So, take a sheet of paper. . .
Tadashi Tokieda is a professor of mathematics at Stanford. He grew up as a painter in Japan, became a classical philologist (not to be confused with philosopher) in France and, having earned a PhD in pure mathematics from Princeton, has been an applied mathematician in England and the US; all in all, he has lived in eight countries so far. Tadashi is very active in mathematical outreach, notably with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
The first time I watched this video I folded a strip of paper into a pentagon as demonstrated. What a surprise! The pentagon looked perfect. With a bit more effort, I next folded a heptagon that looked nearly as good. Haven’t gotten the Miura fold to work yet.
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The experiment at around 2:21 is mind-blowing. We used to see these tricks played by some professionals on TV or during some events, but this is the first time I have seen one from a mathematical background.
https://www.youtube.com/@numberphile/search?query=tadashi
although honmestly most of their mathematicians are lovely people!
I do wonder what a difference it would have made had I had teachers and lecturers half as interesting, humerous, and engaging as this.
This is like listening to Mozart play some playful piece and saying "if only learning piano would have been this much fun" -- there is no shortcut to putting in the time and work to learning the foundations.
still fiddling with it.
I had GPT go learn tesselations from:
https://origami-resource-center.com/origami-tessellations/
to add them to the pattern maker...
Fun.
I will never look at a piece of paper the same way again.
And as an added bonus, the issue about asking questions and guessing is outstanding.
This interview with him on his life and background is also fascinating: https://youtu.be/qrJCm10ajJw
So, take a sheet of paper. . .
Tadashi Tokieda is a professor of mathematics at Stanford. He grew up as a painter in Japan, became a classical philologist (not to be confused with philosopher) in France and, having earned a PhD in pure mathematics from Princeton, has been an applied mathematician in England and the US; all in all, he has lived in eight countries so far. Tadashi is very active in mathematical outreach, notably with the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
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