University of San Diego Fletcher Jones professor of applied mathematics, Dr. Satyan Devadoss, questions whether mathematics should be learned merely for the sake of utility and efficiency. Throughout high school, we are taught mathematics because it is useful in STEM fields. It is for the sake of new technologies that you learn about percentages, Pythagoras, and polynomials. But perhaps, by turning math into merely a science, we have missed its poetry. As Dr. Devadoss discusses in his book, Mage Merlin’s Unsolved Math Mysteries, the beauty of mathematics is not its technological use, but its ability to expand our imaginations and discover the world beyond the limits of the material.
Topics:
- Modern Math Education - Skill over Discovery
- The Loss of Wonder in Modern Math Education
- Joy in Solving Unsolved Math Problems
- Rediscovering the Beauty of Mathematics
- How STEM studies Became Separated from the Humanities and why it matters
- Exploring Education and Interconnectiveness
- Complexity and Value of Different Disciplines
- The Value of Analog vs Digital - "Learning to be Human again"
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Bio:
Dr. Satyan Devadoss is the Fletcher Jones professor of applied mathematics at the University of San Diego. Before this, he was professor at Williams for nearly 15 years, and has held visiting positions at Ohio State, Harvey Mudd, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, and Stanford. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society, and recipient of two national teaching awards, with his thoughts appearing in venues such as NPR, the Times of London, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. His most recent book is Mage Merlin’s Unsolved Math Mysteries (MIT/Penguin), and his other adventures can be explored here: https://satyandevadoss.org/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Taylor Bledsoe (00:11):
University of San Diego Fletcher Jones
Professor of Applied Mathematics, dr Satyan Davidas questions
whether mathematics should belearned merely for the sake of
utility and efficiency.
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast and I'm your host,
Taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast, I interviewinteresting people from a
teenage perspective.
(00:31):
Throughout high school, we aretaught mathematics because it is
useful in STEM fields.
It is for the sake of newtechnologies that you learn
about percentages, pythagorasand polynomials.
But perhaps by turning mathinto merely a science, we have
missed its poetry.
Like Dr Davidas discusses inhis book Mage Merlin's Unsolved
(00:53):
Math Mysteries, the beauty ofmathematics is not its
technological use but itsability to expand our
imaginations and discover theworld beyond the limits of the
material.
If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and
subscribe.
You can follow us atAiming4Moon on all the socials
to stay up to date on podcastnews and episodes.
(01:15):
Check out the episode notes forDr David Doss's full bio and
links to our websiteaimingforthemooncom and our
podcast sub stack.
Lessons from Interesting People.
All right with that?
Sit back, relax and listen in.
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
We're finally live Awesome.
(01:40):
Well, thank you so much, drDavid Haas.
Did I say that correctly on air.
That's perfect, taylor Wellthank you so much, dr David Haas
.
Did I say that correctly on air?
That's perfect, taylor, greatfor coming on the podcast.
I'm very excited to discusswith you all the fascinating
array of topics you've beencovering.
So I want to start off.
You're a mathematician and ofcourse, the number one thing
that teenagers always say aboutmath is oh, it's boring.
Like when am I ever going touse this?
(02:00):
And I'm sure I might take alittle bit of flack for saying
you're right, you had on amathematician Like isn't that
the teenager's worst nightmare?
So I know you have a differentapproach to math education.
Can you kind of talk about thatwith me?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (02:13):
Yeah, that's a very you know, that
question that you just asked andthe way people feel has nothing
to do with being a teenager.
It's totally true for being ateenager, but it's also true
when you're 30 and 40 and 60.
When I'm flying on the planeand somebody next to me is a
65-year-old man and I tell themI'm a mathematician, they say
the exact same words oh, dearLord, you know, there's all of
(02:33):
this like stress and unresolvedconflict about, like completing
the square or the Pythagorean,it's like you know the quadratic
formula.
It's all coming back to themagain and and my answer and this
is this is just my personalspin on it, taylor, and this is
how we look about mathematics isI don't actually find joy in
(02:53):
how useful it is To me, math iscompletely about playing.
I just love to play.
And so if you think about, ifyou think about what Elon Musk
is saying right now, right, ifyou think about what Elon Musk
is saying right now, right, ifyou think about what the big
tech companies are saying rightnow, they're saying the
following thing to you, to yourgeneration, they're saying you
know what, if you learn math,you can build a rocket that'll
(03:13):
take you to Mars.
If you learn math, you couldfigure out how to cure COVID and
possibly cancer.
You know what the studentswould get interested in if they
hear the words math and Mars.
Nobody cares about math.
Think about Mars, think aboutCOVID, think about rockets, and
so that's not what.
Taylor Bledsoe (03:34):
I love.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (03:35):
I don't love COVID or curing cancer or
rockets.
I just want to play withmathematics.
So how do you get somebodyexcited about math is not to
tell them how useful it is tobalance a checkbook, it's just
to talk about how great math isby itself.
And the way I want to frame itis, you know, if you've ever
gone hiking on like cool trails,say in a national park, and
(03:57):
there are all these likepredetermined trails, that
somebody says, hey, if you takethis, you'll get to the top of
this beautiful view.
That sounds cool for a while.
But you know, what I love to dois, in general, is to go
off-roading Like can I find myown trail?
What if I'm going to find alake nobody's seen before or
take a view of it that nobody'sseen before?
To me, the notion of math is youjust have a handful of things
(04:18):
you can fool around with andthen just ask crazy questions.
Unlike science, which is boundby the laws of physics, this is
the way the protein is going tofold.
This is the way gravity works.
This is the way the enzymes aregoing to react.
Math has no rules.
We just play by anything wewant.
If we don't get it in thisdimension, we go to 18
dimensions or we go to 300dimensions.
(04:38):
The moment somebody asks me hey, why is a 300-dimensional idea
useful?
My answer is it isn't.
You just get to play, it'sawesome.
Taylor Bledsoe (04:50):
So I'm curious, because I'm sure a lot of the
modern world now is the way wesee usefulness, and the way we
see goodness about a topic ishow useful it is.
So how does math apply to Mars?
How does math apply to COVID,as you were saying?
How does math apply tobalancing your checkbook?
And what do you say againstpeople who are like, well, if
it's not, it's.
If you're saying that it's not,you don't do it for the
(05:12):
usefulness, then how is it not awaste of time, for example?
How do you answer that argument?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (05:17):
Yeah, that's a great question and the
response is simply do you enjoygreat food?
Do you enjoy great friends?
Do you go to a movie?
Do you love listening to music?
And, if you think about thosethings, do you like the way that
perfume was when you walked inthe door?
None of those things are useful.
You can talk about the factthat you know what all I need to
do to live is I need somecarbohydrates, I need some
(05:39):
proteins, I need a little bit offat.
Why don't you just, like youknow, give me a needle and shoot
me up with that stuff, or takea pill, and that'll give me
enough energy to make it throughthe day.
Or would you rather have, likean amazing tiramisu, you know,
or just you know, this fantasticcup of coffee and you, right
before you, have the best sliceof pizza you've ever had.
(06:01):
And then you go see that movie.
You go to a concert and youcheck out Beyonce.
And I say you know, taylor,what's the point of checking out
a Beyonce concert?
I mean, like, has that made youa better person?
Like, has that made you smarter?
No, it's made you a betterhuman.
Like that's what we do, right?
Humans care about the thingsthat are not efficient.
We care about things thatreally make us human, like what
it means to laugh, what what itmeans to laugh, what it means to
(06:22):
make friends, what it means tolike just play and create and
find joy in those things.
To me, the notion of efficiencygets you into a big trouble
about optimization.
Hey, you're not a human anymorebecause this robot can do your
work.
You know you don't love me theway I need to be loved in this
particular way because thisother thing can optimize my love
in a better way.
That's not what it means to bewho we are.
(06:43):
What we really resonate withare the silly things in life,
the goofy things in life, thethings that we find frivolous,
but that's kind of what gives usidentity.
Taylor Bledsoe (06:53):
That's really interesting.
So the next question that wouldcome to my mind if I were a
high school student.
Well, I am a high schoolstudent taking algebra two at
the moment, and it's okay.
So if we're learning math withthe beauty of math, what about
me, who might not always findsome of the topics that
beautiful?
They, you know like, have 60math problems about completing
the square.
(07:13):
They really don't feel prettyat the moment.
It just feels pretty awful andmonotonous.
So what would you say to thatperson if they tried to argue
that?
Well, math just doesn't, thebeauty doesn't resonate with me.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (07:27):
Yeah, I mean in full honesty, most of
algebra.
My worst, I think the worstcreated topic in the history of
humanity is pre-calc, like, oh,dear Lord, it is.
It's talking about the guts ofa lawnmower and talking about
carburetor design.
And the students, including me,are just what is the point of
(07:48):
this thing?
Why am I doing this thing?
And I fully agree with you.
I am on your side when you askthose questions what's the point
of completing a square?
Okay, great, maybe there's apoint somehow.
Maybe it helps me to go to Mars.
But, dear Lord, is thissupposed to be fun?
I don't find completing thesquare beautiful.
Personally, let me tell youwhat I find that's amazing in
math and this is true, what Ifind amazing in anything.
It is to try to figure outsomething nobody's figured out
(08:10):
before.
So to me, when I talk about thebeauty of mathematics, taylor,
the way a high school frameworkor even an elementary school
framework or college frameworkshould be done is to talk about
problems that nobody's eversolved before.
Like I want my students to bethinking about things nobody has
ever done before.
If you think about Beyonce, thereason it's an amazing work of
(08:31):
art and so many of the thingsshe's done is because she's at
the cutting edge of knowledgeand the cutting edge of her art
and craft, right.
How do you take ideas of race,injustice, feminism, beauty,
fashion and make one song out ofit that is powerful, in like a
four and a half minute track?
And she can do it.
She is a queen, right, and soshe is kind of pushing the
(08:53):
boundaries of so many things,and what completing the square
is is not pushing any boundaries.
People have done it before.
There's a computer that can doit.
Why are you spending 50problems doing this thing?
To me, that's not the joy ofmath.
The joy of math is to thinkabout problems that nobody
solved before, and it turns outmost of mathematics is filled
with unsolved problems.
2% have been solved, 98%.
(09:16):
Nobody has a clue what to do,and if you keep looking at the
2%, it's kind of boring, right,because somebody has done it
before.
It's like wanting for you tomake a new Beyonce album when
she's already made it.
It's like, why do you want toredo that again?
Why can't you do something newusing her idea, using Taylor
Swift's idea, maybe a littleJohn Coltrane, maybe do
something completely different?
What would that look like?
Oh my gosh.
There's a rush that you get bythinking about that.
(09:39):
That's the kind of rush I wantto give my students when they
think about math Unsolvedpuzzles.
Taylor Bledsoe (09:44):
It sounds so unattainable, like that joy of
now there's sometimes in math.
I have a particularly greatteacher at the moment and she's
like you discover kind of themath and how it kind of all
interlocks and interrelates toeach other.
It's so beautiful andfascinating about that.
But how do you kind of instillthat joy about not being able to
solve a math problem, forexample, because that's always
(10:05):
the worst possible feeling forme and so many other students,
like, oh my gosh, I cannotfigure out what is going on here
.
I must have failed, it's allover, my grade's done, I'm
failing the ACT, the SAT out thewindow.
How do you instill the joy ofnot exactly knowing and then
working through that?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (10:21):
Yeah, what a wonderful question.
To me, the joy of working onunsolved problems is that when
you say, oh my gosh, when I dothis thing and I don't get it
and I feel awful, right, I feellike I suck, I want to support
you and agree with you and say,taylor, you do suck.
That's exactly correct, girl.
You can't get it.
But the great thing about anunsolved problem is nobody has
(10:42):
gotten it.
That means you are now standingtoe to toe with the greatest
mathematicians who have everlived and you are equal to them.
Like they suck and you suckLike you're bad at math and you
know what.
So are they.
And let me give you one simpleexample.
It's one of my favoritequestions.
If you have a two by two grid,you know, like tiles on a, on a
bathroom floor and a kitchenfloor, like you know, you have a
four, you know you have fourtiles that are one by one, that
(11:06):
cover a two by two hole, right,and you could, like they match
up perfectly.
Like you know, a one tile hereand a one tile here and a one,
so it forms a perfect square,cut into like a grid.
Right Now, what if I just makethe hole a little bit bigger,
just like a touch higher and atouch wider.
So instead of a two by two, twoby two, I have like 2.00001 by
(11:28):
2.00001.
It's just like a little bithigher.
If I put those four one by onesquares, you know you can't
cover it right Because it'sgoing to have that little crack
at the top and the sides.
So here's my question to youlike how many squares do you
need to cover it?
And you can take these squaresand move it around and overlap
them and do whatever you want to.
And it turns out if you haveseven squares you can do it, and
if you have five squares youcan't do it.
And you can just sit there andkind of think about this for a
(11:50):
little bit.
There are pictures that you canfind on the web that do all
this.
But can you do it with sixsquares?
Can six one by one squares beoverlapped enough to cover a
little two by two hole?
It's a little bit bigger.
And the question, taylor, isunsolved.
Nobody in the and to me this iswhat drives and motivates those
(12:13):
questions.
Because of this you might getexcited and go wait a minute.
Are you kidding me?
You're telling me that thegreatest minds who've ever lived
don't know what to do withsquares on a hole on the floor.
This is dumb man.
Mathematicians must be stupid,and the answer is they are.
They really don't know almostanything compared to the simple
things about what squares are,and so this might make you
(12:35):
interested in the Pythagoreantheorem.
It might make you interested ingeometry a little bit.
It might make you interested inhow to rotate squares and
angles a little bit.
You're motivating and driven tolearn about how to play the
guitar because you've seen anamazing guitarist playing a
concert.
You see the edge of glory andyou go oh my gosh, I want that.
That's what drives you to learn.
If somebody says, pick up theguitar and learn it, and you've
(12:58):
never heard a cool album beforeand you've never seen guitar
played in a rock concert before,then it feels like, oh my gosh,
I have to do scales again.
This is the worst thing ever.
So what I'm encouraging is forstudents and teachers to take
kids to a concert like take themto an unsolved puzzle, take
them to the edge of whatmathematics is and let them get
(13:18):
excited by it.
And then they go oh my gosh.
This is why I'm doing geometryNow I get it.
Taylor Bledsoe (13:23):
So it's like exposing them to the beauty of
some of the unsolved aspects ofthat.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (13:27):
Exactly.
Taylor Bledsoe (13:29):
So of course, part of that is you have to get
the basics.
In order to play the guitars,you were saying, you have to
know the scales.
So at what point do you switchfrom you know learning
arithmetic, multiplication, yourmultiplication facts and some
of the rudimentary stuff, and itjust kind of seems to take
repetition into some of thesolving problems, like how do
you know when you have enough ofa base in order to approach
(13:51):
these big problems.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (13:52):
So cool, it turns out you almost need to
know nothing to know unsolvedmath problems.
So I wrote a whole book onfiguring and just taking any
student in the universe andmaking them walk to the edge of
knowledge and look over and goare you kidding me?
Nobody knows how to solve thisthing.
There are problems that all itrequires is addition and
division by two, and that isenough of a problem to even for
(14:17):
somebody to say this question isso hard, it doesn't even belong
in this century and it's just asilly thing that you might have
learned in like third grade andthat's enough to think about
these unsolved problems.
Then you're asking a verydifferent question, Taylor.
What you're asking is one iswhat do I need to know about the
problems?
It turns out you need to knownothing.
Really Anybody can like learnabout these problems and it's
gorgeous.
But the second question is howdo I solve the problems Like,
(14:39):
what weapons do I need?
The problem is nobody solvedthem yet.
So you might be taking a showerone day right after a run and
go wait a minute oh my gosh, Ithink I got and you might just
be able to solve it, or youmight need the most
sophisticated mathematics that'sever been made and you need to
develop new ideas to even crackthat code.
Nobody's ever solved them yet,so I can't even answer for you
(15:00):
the kind of classes you need.
If I tell you, oh, you got totake calculus and you got to
take trig and you got to takealgebra too, then that means I
must know something about how tosolve the problem.
I don't.
Everything in your book thatyou've ever had are people who
already know how to solve theproblem, and they're basically
testing you on how much you know.
What I'm trying to figure outis how do you do something
nobody's done before?
Taylor Bledsoe (15:21):
One of the things that I find fascinating
is we talked about this a littlebit off air is how great
innovators combine math skillswith art and humanity, and not
in the way that we see wherethey're depicting mathematic or
scientific things in a moreartistic way or something like
that, but they combine their.
They it's almost like you havetwo silos and then they
(15:43):
interconnect them.
So you have Steve Jobs isreally into calligraphy and
dance, and then he he took thatdesign in his technical
knowledge and created the Applecomputer and with the beauty and
the design and the simplicityof it he combined those two
aspects.
Then you have Leonardo da Vinciand all of his numerous
examples.
So what happened to separatethese two groups of people?
So can you kind of talk aboutwhy do we think scientists are
(16:06):
the really rational ones andthen the artists are, you know
kind of?
They are more into humans andhumanity and feelings.
Just it doesn't have to applyas much to the practicalness of
society.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (16:18):
Yeah, and that's a beautiful layered
question.
Let me get to kind of the firstpart for now, which is, you
know, the notion of college tome is one of the weirdest
(16:38):
experiences you'll ever have.
It's four years of being in abox where you can play with
anything.
In high school you already, bythe state that you live in, have
a rudimentary set of rules asto you got to take Algebra II
and you got to do this.
And to graduate you have totake at least two science
classes and one this class.
Every state has their own lawsabout what you have to do and
(17:00):
you can maybe pick one or twoelectives, but, taylor, when you
get to college you have thisbox and you could play at that
time.
And my encouragement to you andto any student who's in high
school, kind of moving on tocollege life, is don't choose
your major too early.
Don't think, oh my gosh, Ialways wanted to be a doctor.
(17:20):
You know I want to be, I wantto study mechanical engineering
or I think I love history.
It turns out that I reallybelieve, as a teacher has been
teaching for about 25 years,that about 2% of the students
really know what they want to do.
You know the weird ones, right,like?
They're the ones whose parentsare like, yeah, she's going to
do mechanical engineering, nomatter what, and that's fine.
But 98% of us, including me, iswe just liked things in high
(17:42):
school because we had a greatteacher, like somebody who was a
great music teacher, and theylike, oh my gosh, I want to play
the piano.
For that reason, right, 100%.
This person rocked in historyand that's why I want to do
history.
Don't go to college thinking youknow what you want to do.
If you want to have the coolflow of somebody like Steve Jobs
, as you're saying, who canbring calligraphy design into
(18:02):
computer science, learn thewhole field, pick some major.
Nobody really cares.
I've done data analysis withthis stuff.
It turns out your major doesn'teven matter.
Companies don't even care whatyou study.
They just want to know that youlove something, that you're
passionate about something, andso just pick a major, doesn't
even matter.
But then learn about history.
Learn about ethnography, like,learn about musicology, learn
(18:23):
about anything.
Get your hands on art history,learn about sociology, the way
people think, the way culturesmove, and over the years, after
you graduate, after you've flownaround, those little pieces of
nuggets will start changing andbeing connected in your mind.
If you want a quick turnaroundlike, oh, I want to learn this
and I want to start using it thenext day, that's not going to
(18:44):
happen.
Steve Jobs did not do thisovernight, right?
He created this company andthese ideas over a long time
with other great designers.
So that's my encouragement toyou about mixing those
disciplines.
Taylor Bledsoe (18:54):
Do you think that we should redesign some of
the elementary and then middleand high school, some of those
early learning stages, in orderto foster more of this
interconnectiveness andplayfulness?
Instead of having you know, youhave everything's very
segmented.
Is there a way we should changeit?
Or do you think it's okay andthen in college you kind of
experiment?
Dr. Satyan Devado (19:43):
no-transcript , like when you're in third
grade and fourth grade or evenin kindergarten you might have
done heard like Montessorieducation where kids play with
blocks, right, and you're tryingto do multiplication and
addition and you do kind ofmoving blocks around or moving
cubes around or dodecahedron,those things, and then somehow
(20:03):
it kind of becomes not cool todo that when you're in junior
high, like, oh, you're playingwith blocks still Dude, you're
in elementary school, right, andit certainly is not cool to do
that in high school and college.
In math, certainly If you go tocollege, or if you think about
going back to what you just saidabout completing the square in
algebra two, do you have likeplay things to do that?
It's usually just thinking inyour mind, thinking a piece of
(20:24):
paper, thinking of chalkboard orwhiteboard.
What I want to do is ask thisquestion when you're a kid, you
have arms and legs, right, youhave a head, you have your whole
body.
And as you get older, if yourarms and legs start falling off
and body, and as you get older,if your arms and legs start
falling off and as you get tohigh school, like you now have
nothing, and as you get tocollege, you're just like a
(20:45):
floating mind and as you go tograd school you don't even have
a head, it's just total digitaldata.
Then I could totally get behindthe way we're doing things,
that as a kid you have physicalthings and as you get older you
become more mental.
But you know, you and I all,thankfully, have our limbs.
Like most of us have our entirebodies.
So why don't we use our entirebodies to learn?
We have been using our bodiesto learn in elementary school.
(21:07):
Why don't we do that in juniorhigh school?
Why don't we have a math classfilled with craft supplies In
college?
Why don't you learn calculusand calc, three and quadratic
forms and differential equationsand all of these beautiful
things that are out there usingour bodies?
Why can't we touch mathematics?
That, to me, is my drive.
That's what I'm trying tofigure out.
Taylor Bledsoe (21:25):
That's really interesting.
It reminds me I know we talkedabout this author of Plato's
Republic and he talks about howgeometry is one of the most
beautiful parts of the universeand how it's the purest, and his
argument is he was really intothe realm of forms, in which I'm
not going to explain all ofthat right now, just Google it,
guys.
I'm going to butcher thedefinition, but one of the
(21:45):
reasons he loved it so much isbecause it was the purest well,
from what I understand of it, itwas the purest representation
of the physical world.
So he was into more of thisrealm of forms which was then
reflected in the physical world,and the physical wasn't as good
as this pure, almostintellectual side, and it almost
seems like that's what we dofrom elementary school.
(22:07):
Okay, so you're in the physicalkind of rudimentary part.
And then you go to high schooland you're you're enlightened
because you don't play withblocks anymore and you're in the
realm of forms.
Now you don't have to interactwith the world.
So what do you think about that?
How like.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (22:20):
Yeah, I mean that actually connects,
taylor, to the question youasked earlier about when did the
disciplines that were all mixedtogether?
Remember?
We're talking about all thesilos that have come up nowadays
, and actually that's the wordthat you just said about
enlightened, and so there's thisnotion of the Renaissance era
where all of it was mixed.
Like da Vinci would be drawinga picture but then looking at
(22:43):
the way the body works as abiologist, and then like
building something as anengineer, and for him, art,
bioengineering, all of thosedisciplines were the same, right
, he would just switch hats andhe would just be this one person
doing it.
And the Enlightenment era cameand it separated us into pieces
here's the historian, here'sinto pieces, here's the
historian, here's themathematician and here's the
artist.
And it actually did somethingthat was a little unfair.
(23:04):
It actually started, over time,valuing science over the
humanities, over the arts.
You kind of echoed it a littlebit when you said, oh, science
is doing the rational stuff.
I think you said this earlier,right, and then art is kind of
like doing emotional stuff.
That's not true.
If you work with real artists,there are incredible notions of
(23:26):
thought and brilliance andcomplexity.
If you're an artist or arthistorian or an architect, and
as a historian, even today, thenotions of history is a big deal
.
Did something happen?
Even talking about the election, right, like if that happened?
Or did this event happen eventhree to five years ago?
The notion of what it meansit's not that they're dealing
with more emotional stuff.
The way I frame it is they'redealing with more complex
(23:49):
questions.
So to a scientist, you'reasking questions that are kind
of easy.
Now you might think whoa, whoa,are you talking about COVID and
cancer and all of these thingsbeing easy questions?
And my answer is yeah.
You know why they're easyquestions is because you can
kind of measure them right.
You can do repeatableexperiments.
You can check it out and seewhat the enzyme does to the body
(24:10):
and try it again, and try it onthe mouse and then try it on
the rat and try it on.
You know, eventually getapproval to try it on humans to
see if you can do it.
But they're repeatable.
But history is not repeatable,so you can't play that game in
history because it's a muchharder question.
Things have gotten complicatedand a musician and an artist is
trying to deal with how toexpress things like a poet,
(24:32):
without even words.
So now you're dealing withsomething that you can't even
measure right like you can.
You can't even use English, foryou can only use images to try
to get across, whereas math it'sjust on the other end of the
spectrum.
We are so measurable, we haveso many lingos, like integral
and derivative and all thethings you've learned in algebra
.
Parentheses and squares andplus and minus and square, like
(24:54):
those are all symbols, right,but they're so clear that if I
write square root of three andyou write square root of three,
you know exactly what that means.
But if I say the word secular,oh my gosh, you must be a
secular girl.
Well, you're like.
Well, what does that mean?
You know like, what are youtrying to say with it?
Because that word is so loadedand complex.
That's what a poet deals withand an artist goes dude.
I wish I was lucky enough touse the word secular.
(25:16):
I don't even know how to saythat the right way.
And so you're right.
We're partitioned in differentways, but we have to be careful,
because everybody's dealingwith rational, thoughtful,
brilliant ideas, but they'redealing with different kinds of
questions of differentcomplexities.
Taylor Bledsoe (25:30):
That's really interesting, I wonder because
we've studied this a little bitin school how Kant and the
others basically said the onlyworld that really exists is what
you can measure and what youcan touch with your hands.
So you only have your ownexperience.
You don't have universals andglobal values.
So it's interesting because itseems to be what you're
proposing is.
Well, at the moment, we valuescience and math as the highest
(25:51):
possible pursuit and the mostcomplex and hardest one, because
we can grasp it and because wecan understand it.
Like that.
And no, you're flipping it onyour head and saying well, these
things that we don't reallyunderstand, that are subjective,
that's actually makes them moredifficult and even sometimes
even more influential in someways because we can't judge them
.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (26:10):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And I think the reason sciencehas become more and more
powerful over the years isbecause of ROI.
The return of investment ismuch quicker in the sciences and
in math and STEM disciplines.
Right, because if you say,build a bridge, okay, you might
need to come up with newplastics and new chemicals and
new ideas, but you know what,within five years or 10 years, I
can knock it out.
(26:30):
And then you say, hey, couldyou take care of discrimination?
You know what?
Five years and 10 years isn'tworking.
We've been talking about raceissues before the founding of
this country and we haven't.
And we're slowly chipping awayat it and we're putting we have.
Isn't it true, taylor, that weput men on the moon?
(26:50):
And my question is which isharder, rocket science or race?
And to me, it's clear thatwe've done the rocket science
stuff and we could do it again,and we've gotten to Mars and put
a rover there.
That's because it's easy.
Rocket science is the easystuff.
The really hard stuff is whatit means to love somebody, what
it means to forgive somebody,what it means to talk about what
(27:12):
equality is Like.
Is gender equality important?
Well, how do you solve thosebig issues.
That is what sociologists dealwith.
That is what philosophers dealwith.
That's what historians dealwith.
They're dealing with muchharder things than what simple
STEMI people like me deal with.
I'm the dumbest of the dumbright.
I deal with math, square rootstuff.
Taylor Bledsoe (27:32):
That's really interesting.
I wonder if so, as we weretalking about, we value the
issues that we can measure andthen, because those are the
rational and the real issues, aswe were talking about, we value
the issues that we can measure,and then, because those are the
rational and the real issues aswe see them, because we can
touch and experiment with them,the physical world and as we all
talked about stem, um, it's,it's very fascinating because,
and then if you seem to look atsome of the statistics,
economically, so, if the stempeople get paid more than you
(27:55):
know, humanities, and is thatjust because of the ROI?
I'm assuming, because you havethat return of investment with
you know, big data makes moremoney than big poetry.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (28:04):
Yeah, I think so Because we buy things
right, like it's, because theturnaround time for you to make
an Apple computer or an Applewatch is, you know, the cycle is
hey, within a year you're goingto get a new MacBook, or you're
getting new headphones, orDell's going to release this new
thing, and here's a new cameraand this, you know, this is an
updated feature that has shakereduction or all these things,
and and that technology is thisquick return of dispose the
(28:27):
computer you have.
Get the new computer, becauseit's the latest and the greatest
, to me, the lasting things thatare going to affect us.
I mean, it sounds like that is.
There's a rush when you open aChristmas present or a Hanukkah
present or a birthday presentand you go, oh my gosh, that's
cool, that's what I wanted.
But there is something that's solasting, taylor, that what
really would matter are, likethat great dinner you had with
(28:49):
your grandparents.
It's like, you know, when mygrandma took me out for that one
thing or that, or the familytrip we took, or my friends and
I we went to watch that movieand it was amazing.
Afterwards we spent three hourseating tacos and talking about
it, and so those are the thingsthat we wish.
We can kind of bottle rightLike that's the things that we
really long for, and to methat's what the arts and
(29:10):
humanities are calling us to, tobe human, whereas in the
sciences it's beautiful and itdoes what it's supposed to do.
But we put so much weight onthe short-term fix that doesn't
satisfy our cravings.
Taylor Bledsoe (29:22):
And it's really interesting.
So nowadays we apply thesethings, we try to cross the stem
and understand the humanities,and then the feelings, and then
some of these issues that are,as I guess in your line of
thought, too complex for scienceand math to tackle, and then I
guess maybe not vice versa withhumanities, but they just tackle
different issues and differenttypes of problems.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (29:42):
I think a lot of times, you know, if
somebody says, hey, could youtell me?
I struggle with things like TEDTalks because could you tell me
your entire life's work in 20minutes and I'm going to listen
to that at 1.5 speed while I'mgoing running it's just we're
reducing deep complexity intosimple things and it doesn't
help.
And so usually the way if youand I are having a tough time
(30:04):
getting along or there's anotherissue to deal with, I could
write you a text or a tweet oran email, but that's going to
get us to a certain level.
But it really is just sittingdown and breaking bread with you
and having a meal with you andtalking it out with you and
spending maybe a month to a yearworking on a relationship and
saying, hey, I'm sorry aboutthat, what were you thinking?
And that you know that's themore difficult stuff.
(30:25):
That's not what the quicktweet's going to do.
Taylor Bledsoe (30:28):
Well, I'd love to go into this more, but
unfortunately we're running outof time, so I want to end with
our last two questions, whichare the first one what books
have had an impact on you?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (30:38):
I would say the book that echoes to me from
being in high school all theway to now and my favorite book
of all time is Beowulf.
To me, instead of giving youlike a bunch of different books
to read, you know, when I readit in high school I was like,
you know, I have to read it,check the box, you know, nerdy
AP, something lit or somethinglike that.
I forgot what I read it for andBeowulf is actually written in
(31:00):
three parts.
It's the greatest, I think it'sthe greatest work of art of all
time in terms of a written word, and it's written as this young
punk who, like slays you knowthis creature and rock star
right Grendel, this like demonof demons kind of, and then he
kind of gets old, he becomesking, he's like middle-aged, you
know, 30s to 40s, and then hefights Grendel's mom and at this
(31:20):
time he's established.
And then the last part is he isnow like the old, legendary
king and he fights this dragonwho comes back.
I think this is a book that Iencourage, you know, any of your
listeners, any high school kids, to read, but then put it away
and then read it again like 10years later.
It's not something you have toread every day, but, man, it's
so amazing to see it again infresh eyes.
(31:41):
Me, I'm on the dying end oftrying to fight my dragon as I
fade into the grave.
But yeah, that's myrecommendation.
I love that book.
Taylor Bledsoe (31:50):
So then our last one is what advice do you have
for teenagers?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (31:54):
I would say learn to touch with analog
things again.
Try to put your phone down,which has pieces of glass.
Try to get away from Teslasthat have glass monitors,
computers and iPads that areglass, because you know what
Glasses.
It actually, to me, is givingthe middle finger to your hands,
because your hand is notdesigned for glass, it's curvy,
(32:17):
it's designed for knobs anddials to turn and touch.
And so learn to play with likeanalog things again, like lp
records, like.
Learn to make a cake with a whip, you know, and then you can.
And if it's a bad, bad cake,you'll make some enemies, and
that's awesome, because life'sgreat to have awesome enemies.
And if you make a great cake,you'll make some friends,
because that's awesome, life'sgreat to have friends.
(32:37):
That's what Beowulf is you findgreat enemies, great friends.
Every superhero I know has anarchvillain.
If you don't have anarchvillain, make a cake.
You're going to get one,because your cake might suck and
it might be amazing, and thenyou might have other super
friends with you.
So that's my recommendationJust be analog.
Taylor Bledsoe (32:53):
I'm curious do you have analog stuff in your
life that could be digital?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (32:58):
Yeah, in fact, when I came to San Diego,
I was in the East Coast for along time as a professor.
When I came to San Diego, Isaid I'd love to have a
laboratory, a mathematicallaboratory where we can touch
things, where it has no digitalthings, just chalkboards and
popsicle sticks and toothpicks.
I'd like to have some money, tohave a salary and in my office
I want to make sure I have myown chalkboard also because I'm
(33:19):
a big fan of just like touchingthings with chalk.
It might make that weirdsqueaky noise, but if you use
the right chalk Hagoromo chalkfrom Japan it's amazing.
If you use the right chalk, itis like melting butter on a
skillet.
It is gorgeous.
Taylor Bledsoe (33:32):
All right.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on the podcast.
I really enjoyed our discussion.
We covered so many coming onthe podcast.
I really enjoyed our discussion.
We covered so many like so manydifferent topics and then how
topics intersect with each other.
It was fascinating.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (33:43):
Thanks, so you had some brilliant questions
.
This is joy to be here.
University of San Diego Fletcher Jones
Professor of Applied Mathematics, dr Satyan Davidas questions
whether mathematics should belearned merely for the sake of
utility and efficiency.
This is the Aiming for the Moonpodcast and I'm your host,
Taylor Bledsoe.
On this podcast, I interviewinteresting people from a
teenage perspective.
(00:31):
Throughout high school, we aretaught mathematics because it is
useful in STEM fields.
It is for the sake of newtechnologies that you learn
about percentages, pythagorasand polynomials.
But perhaps by turning mathinto merely a science, we have
missed its poetry.
Like Dr Davidas discusses inhis book Mage Merlin's Unsolved
(00:53):
Math Mysteries, the beauty ofmathematics is not its
technological use but itsability to expand our
imaginations and discover theworld beyond the limits of the
material.
If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and
subscribe.
You can follow us atAiming4Moon on all the socials
to stay up to date on podcastnews and episodes.
(01:15):
Check out the episode notes forDr David Doss's full bio and
links to our websiteaimingforthemooncom and our
podcast sub stack.
Lessons from Interesting People.
All right with that?
Sit back, relax and listen in.
Thanks again to Paxton Page forthis incredible music.
We're finally live Awesome.
(01:40):
Well, thank you so much, drDavid Haas.
Did I say that correctly on air.
That's perfect, taylor Wellthank you so much, dr David Haas
.
Did I say that correctly on air?
That's perfect, taylor, greatfor coming on the podcast.
I'm very excited to discusswith you all the fascinating
array of topics you've beencovering.
So I want to start off.
You're a mathematician and ofcourse, the number one thing
that teenagers always say aboutmath is oh, it's boring.
Like when am I ever going touse this?
(02:00):
And I'm sure I might take alittle bit of flack for saying
you're right, you had on amathematician Like isn't that
the teenager's worst nightmare?
So I know you have a differentapproach to math education.
Can you kind of talk about thatwith me?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (02:13):
Yeah, that's a very you know, that
question that you just asked andthe way people feel has nothing
to do with being a teenager.
It's totally true for being ateenager, but it's also true
when you're 30 and 40 and 60.
When I'm flying on the planeand somebody next to me is a
65-year-old man and I tell themI'm a mathematician, they say
the exact same words oh, dearLord, you know, there's all of
(02:33):
this like stress and unresolvedconflict about, like completing
the square or the Pythagorean,it's like you know the quadratic
formula.
It's all coming back to themagain and and my answer and this
is this is just my personalspin on it, taylor, and this is
how we look about mathematics isI don't actually find joy in
(02:53):
how useful it is To me, math iscompletely about playing.
I just love to play.
And so if you think about, ifyou think about what Elon Musk
is saying right now, right, ifyou think about what Elon Musk
is saying right now, right, ifyou think about what the big
tech companies are saying rightnow, they're saying the
following thing to you, to yourgeneration, they're saying you
know what, if you learn math,you can build a rocket that'll
(03:13):
take you to Mars.
If you learn math, you couldfigure out how to cure COVID and
possibly cancer.
You know what the studentswould get interested in if they
hear the words math and Mars.
Nobody cares about math.
Think about Mars, think aboutCOVID, think about rockets, and
so that's not what.
Taylor Bledsoe (03:34):
I love.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (03:35):
I don't love COVID or curing cancer or
rockets.
I just want to play withmathematics.
So how do you get somebodyexcited about math is not to
tell them how useful it is tobalance a checkbook, it's just
to talk about how great math isby itself.
And the way I want to frame itis, you know, if you've ever
gone hiking on like cool trails,say in a national park, and
(03:57):
there are all these likepredetermined trails, that
somebody says, hey, if you takethis, you'll get to the top of
this beautiful view.
That sounds cool for a while.
But you know, what I love to dois, in general, is to go
off-roading Like can I find myown trail?
What if I'm going to find alake nobody's seen before or
take a view of it that nobody'sseen before?
To me, the notion of math is youjust have a handful of things
(04:18):
you can fool around with andthen just ask crazy questions.
Unlike science, which is boundby the laws of physics, this is
the way the protein is going tofold.
This is the way gravity works.
This is the way the enzymes aregoing to react.
Math has no rules.
We just play by anything wewant.
If we don't get it in thisdimension, we go to 18
dimensions or we go to 300dimensions.
(04:38):
The moment somebody asks me hey, why is a 300-dimensional idea
useful?
My answer is it isn't.
You just get to play, it'sawesome.
Taylor Bledsoe (04:50):
So I'm curious, because I'm sure a lot of the
modern world now is the way wesee usefulness, and the way we
see goodness about a topic ishow useful it is.
So how does math apply to Mars?
How does math apply to COVID,as you were saying?
How does math apply tobalancing your checkbook?
And what do you say againstpeople who are like, well, if
it's not, it's.
If you're saying that it's not,you don't do it for the
(05:12):
usefulness, then how is it not awaste of time, for example?
How do you answer that argument?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (05:17):
Yeah, that's a great question and the
response is simply do you enjoygreat food?
Do you enjoy great friends?
Do you go to a movie?
Do you love listening to music?
And, if you think about thosethings, do you like the way that
perfume was when you walked inthe door?
None of those things are useful.
You can talk about the factthat you know what all I need to
do to live is I need somecarbohydrates, I need some
(05:39):
proteins, I need a little bit offat.
Why don't you just, like youknow, give me a needle and shoot
me up with that stuff, or takea pill, and that'll give me
enough energy to make it throughthe day.
Or would you rather have, likean amazing tiramisu, you know,
or just you know, this fantasticcup of coffee and you, right
before you, have the best sliceof pizza you've ever had.
(06:01):
And then you go see that movie.
You go to a concert and youcheck out Beyonce.
And I say you know, taylor,what's the point of checking out
a Beyonce concert?
I mean, like, has that made youa better person?
Like, has that made you smarter?
No, it's made you a betterhuman.
Like that's what we do, right?
Humans care about the thingsthat are not efficient.
We care about things thatreally make us human, like what
it means to laugh, what what itmeans to laugh, what it means to
(06:22):
make friends, what it means tolike just play and create and
find joy in those things.
To me, the notion of efficiencygets you into a big trouble
about optimization.
Hey, you're not a human anymorebecause this robot can do your
work.
You know you don't love me theway I need to be loved in this
particular way because thisother thing can optimize my love
in a better way.
That's not what it means to bewho we are.
(06:43):
What we really resonate withare the silly things in life,
the goofy things in life, thethings that we find frivolous,
but that's kind of what gives usidentity.
Taylor Bledsoe (06:53):
That's really interesting.
So the next question that wouldcome to my mind if I were a
high school student.
Well, I am a high schoolstudent taking algebra two at
the moment, and it's okay.
So if we're learning math withthe beauty of math, what about
me, who might not always findsome of the topics that
beautiful?
They, you know like, have 60math problems about completing
the square.
(07:13):
They really don't feel prettyat the moment.
It just feels pretty awful andmonotonous.
So what would you say to thatperson if they tried to argue
that?
Well, math just doesn't, thebeauty doesn't resonate with me.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (07:27):
Yeah, I mean in full honesty, most of
algebra.
My worst, I think the worstcreated topic in the history of
humanity is pre-calc, like, oh,dear Lord, it is.
It's talking about the guts ofa lawnmower and talking about
carburetor design.
And the students, including me,are just what is the point of
(07:48):
this thing?
Why am I doing this thing?
And I fully agree with you.
I am on your side when you askthose questions what's the point
of completing a square?
Okay, great, maybe there's apoint somehow.
Maybe it helps me to go to Mars.
But, dear Lord, is thissupposed to be fun?
I don't find completing thesquare beautiful.
Personally, let me tell youwhat I find that's amazing in
math and this is true, what Ifind amazing in anything.
It is to try to figure outsomething nobody's figured out
(08:10):
before.
So to me, when I talk about thebeauty of mathematics, taylor,
the way a high school frameworkor even an elementary school
framework or college frameworkshould be done is to talk about
problems that nobody's eversolved before.
Like I want my students to bethinking about things nobody has
ever done before.
If you think about Beyonce, thereason it's an amazing work of
(08:31):
art and so many of the thingsshe's done is because she's at
the cutting edge of knowledgeand the cutting edge of her art
and craft, right.
How do you take ideas of race,injustice, feminism, beauty,
fashion and make one song out ofit that is powerful, in like a
four and a half minute track?
And she can do it.
She is a queen, right, and soshe is kind of pushing the
(08:53):
boundaries of so many things,and what completing the square
is is not pushing any boundaries.
People have done it before.
There's a computer that can doit.
Why are you spending 50problems doing this thing?
To me, that's not the joy ofmath.
The joy of math is to thinkabout problems that nobody
solved before, and it turns outmost of mathematics is filled
with unsolved problems.
2% have been solved, 98%.
(09:16):
Nobody has a clue what to do,and if you keep looking at the
2%, it's kind of boring, right,because somebody has done it
before.
It's like wanting for you tomake a new Beyonce album when
she's already made it.
It's like, why do you want toredo that again?
Why can't you do something newusing her idea, using Taylor
Swift's idea, maybe a littleJohn Coltrane, maybe do
something completely different?
What would that look like?
Oh my gosh.
There's a rush that you get bythinking about that.
(09:39):
That's the kind of rush I wantto give my students when they
think about math Unsolvedpuzzles.
Taylor Bledsoe (09:44):
It sounds so unattainable, like that joy of
now there's sometimes in math.
I have a particularly greatteacher at the moment and she's
like you discover kind of themath and how it kind of all
interlocks and interrelates toeach other.
It's so beautiful andfascinating about that.
But how do you kind of instillthat joy about not being able to
solve a math problem, forexample, because that's always
(10:05):
the worst possible feeling forme and so many other students,
like, oh my gosh, I cannotfigure out what is going on here
.
I must have failed, it's allover, my grade's done, I'm
failing the ACT, the SAT out thewindow.
How do you instill the joy ofnot exactly knowing and then
working through that?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (10:21):
Yeah, what a wonderful question.
To me, the joy of working onunsolved problems is that when
you say, oh my gosh, when I dothis thing and I don't get it
and I feel awful, right, I feellike I suck, I want to support
you and agree with you and say,taylor, you do suck.
That's exactly correct, girl.
You can't get it.
But the great thing about anunsolved problem is nobody has
(10:42):
gotten it.
That means you are now standingtoe to toe with the greatest
mathematicians who have everlived and you are equal to them.
Like they suck and you suckLike you're bad at math and you
know what.
So are they.
And let me give you one simpleexample.
It's one of my favoritequestions.
If you have a two by two grid,you know, like tiles on a, on a
bathroom floor and a kitchenfloor, like you know, you have a
four, you know you have fourtiles that are one by one, that
(11:06):
cover a two by two hole, right,and you could, like they match
up perfectly.
Like you know, a one tile hereand a one tile here and a one,
so it forms a perfect square,cut into like a grid.
Right Now, what if I just makethe hole a little bit bigger,
just like a touch higher and atouch wider.
So instead of a two by two, twoby two, I have like 2.00001 by
(11:28):
2.00001.
It's just like a little bithigher.
If I put those four one by onesquares, you know you can't
cover it right Because it'sgoing to have that little crack
at the top and the sides.
So here's my question to youlike how many squares do you
need to cover it?
And you can take these squaresand move it around and overlap
them and do whatever you want to.
And it turns out if you haveseven squares you can do it, and
if you have five squares youcan't do it.
And you can just sit there andkind of think about this for a
(11:50):
little bit.
There are pictures that you canfind on the web that do all
this.
But can you do it with sixsquares?
Can six one by one squares beoverlapped enough to cover a
little two by two hole?
It's a little bit bigger.
And the question, taylor, isunsolved.
Nobody in the and to me this iswhat drives and motivates those
(12:13):
questions.
Because of this you might getexcited and go wait a minute.
Are you kidding me?
You're telling me that thegreatest minds who've ever lived
don't know what to do withsquares on a hole on the floor.
This is dumb man.
Mathematicians must be stupid,and the answer is they are.
They really don't know almostanything compared to the simple
things about what squares are,and so this might make you
(12:35):
interested in the Pythagoreantheorem.
It might make you interested ingeometry a little bit.
It might make you interested inhow to rotate squares and
angles a little bit.
You're motivating and driven tolearn about how to play the
guitar because you've seen anamazing guitarist playing a
concert.
You see the edge of glory andyou go oh my gosh, I want that.
That's what drives you to learn.
If somebody says, pick up theguitar and learn it, and you've
(12:58):
never heard a cool album beforeand you've never seen guitar
played in a rock concert before,then it feels like, oh my gosh,
I have to do scales again.
This is the worst thing ever.
So what I'm encouraging is forstudents and teachers to take
kids to a concert like take themto an unsolved puzzle, take
them to the edge of whatmathematics is and let them get
(13:18):
excited by it.
And then they go oh my gosh.
This is why I'm doing geometryNow I get it.
Taylor Bledsoe (13:23):
So it's like exposing them to the beauty of
some of the unsolved aspects ofthat.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (13:27):
Exactly.
Taylor Bledsoe (13:29):
So of course, part of that is you have to get
the basics.
In order to play the guitars,you were saying, you have to
know the scales.
So at what point do you switchfrom you know learning
arithmetic, multiplication, yourmultiplication facts and some
of the rudimentary stuff, and itjust kind of seems to take
repetition into some of thesolving problems, like how do
you know when you have enough ofa base in order to approach
(13:51):
these big problems.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (13:52):
So cool, it turns out you almost need to
know nothing to know unsolvedmath problems.
So I wrote a whole book onfiguring and just taking any
student in the universe andmaking them walk to the edge of
knowledge and look over and goare you kidding me?
Nobody knows how to solve thisthing.
There are problems that all itrequires is addition and
division by two, and that isenough of a problem to even for
(14:17):
somebody to say this question isso hard, it doesn't even belong
in this century and it's just asilly thing that you might have
learned in like third grade andthat's enough to think about
these unsolved problems.
Then you're asking a verydifferent question, Taylor.
What you're asking is one iswhat do I need to know about the
problems?
It turns out you need to knownothing.
Really Anybody can like learnabout these problems and it's
gorgeous.
But the second question is howdo I solve the problems Like,
(14:39):
what weapons do I need?
The problem is nobody solvedthem yet.
So you might be taking a showerone day right after a run and
go wait a minute oh my gosh, Ithink I got and you might just
be able to solve it, or youmight need the most
sophisticated mathematics that'sever been made and you need to
develop new ideas to even crackthat code.
Nobody's ever solved them yet,so I can't even answer for you
(15:00):
the kind of classes you need.
If I tell you, oh, you got totake calculus and you got to
take trig and you got to takealgebra too, then that means I
must know something about how tosolve the problem.
I don't.
Everything in your book thatyou've ever had are people who
already know how to solve theproblem, and they're basically
testing you on how much you know.
What I'm trying to figure outis how do you do something
nobody's done before?
Taylor Bledsoe (15:21):
One of the things that I find fascinating
is we talked about this a littlebit off air is how great
innovators combine math skillswith art and humanity, and not
in the way that we see wherethey're depicting mathematic or
scientific things in a moreartistic way or something like
that, but they combine their.
They it's almost like you havetwo silos and then they
(15:43):
interconnect them.
So you have Steve Jobs isreally into calligraphy and
dance, and then he he took thatdesign in his technical
knowledge and created the Applecomputer and with the beauty and
the design and the simplicityof it he combined those two
aspects.
Then you have Leonardo da Vinciand all of his numerous
examples.
So what happened to separatethese two groups of people?
So can you kind of talk aboutwhy do we think scientists are
(16:06):
the really rational ones andthen the artists are, you know
kind of?
They are more into humans andhumanity and feelings.
Just it doesn't have to applyas much to the practicalness of
society.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (16:18):
Yeah, and that's a beautiful layered
question.
Let me get to kind of the firstpart for now, which is, you
know, the notion of college tome is one of the weirdest
(16:38):
experiences you'll ever have.
It's four years of being in abox where you can play with
anything.
In high school you already, bythe state that you live in, have
a rudimentary set of rules asto you got to take Algebra II
and you got to do this.
And to graduate you have totake at least two science
classes and one this class.
Every state has their own lawsabout what you have to do and
(17:00):
you can maybe pick one or twoelectives, but, taylor, when you
get to college you have thisbox and you could play at that
time.
And my encouragement to you andto any student who's in high
school, kind of moving on tocollege life, is don't choose
your major too early.
Don't think, oh my gosh, Ialways wanted to be a doctor.
(17:20):
You know I want to be, I wantto study mechanical engineering
or I think I love history.
It turns out that I reallybelieve, as a teacher has been
teaching for about 25 years,that about 2% of the students
really know what they want to do.
You know the weird ones, right,like?
They're the ones whose parentsare like, yeah, she's going to
do mechanical engineering, nomatter what, and that's fine.
But 98% of us, including me, iswe just liked things in high
(17:42):
school because we had a greatteacher, like somebody who was a
great music teacher, and theylike, oh my gosh, I want to play
the piano.
For that reason, right, 100%.
This person rocked in historyand that's why I want to do
history.
Don't go to college thinking youknow what you want to do.
If you want to have the coolflow of somebody like Steve Jobs
, as you're saying, who canbring calligraphy design into
(18:02):
computer science, learn thewhole field, pick some major.
Nobody really cares.
I've done data analysis withthis stuff.
It turns out your major doesn'teven matter.
Companies don't even care whatyou study.
They just want to know that youlove something, that you're
passionate about something, andso just pick a major, doesn't
even matter.
But then learn about history.
Learn about ethnography, like,learn about musicology, learn
(18:23):
about anything.
Get your hands on art history,learn about sociology, the way
people think, the way culturesmove, and over the years, after
you graduate, after you've flownaround, those little pieces of
nuggets will start changing andbeing connected in your mind.
If you want a quick turnaroundlike, oh, I want to learn this
and I want to start using it thenext day, that's not going to
(18:44):
happen.
Steve Jobs did not do thisovernight, right?
He created this company andthese ideas over a long time
with other great designers.
So that's my encouragement toyou about mixing those
disciplines.
Taylor Bledsoe (18:54):
Do you think that we should redesign some of
the elementary and then middleand high school, some of those
early learning stages, in orderto foster more of this
interconnectiveness andplayfulness?
Instead of having you know, youhave everything's very
segmented.
Is there a way we should changeit?
Or do you think it's okay andthen in college you kind of
experiment?
Dr. Satyan Devado (19:43):
no-transcript , like when you're in third
grade and fourth grade or evenin kindergarten you might have
done heard like Montessorieducation where kids play with
blocks, right, and you're tryingto do multiplication and
addition and you do kind ofmoving blocks around or moving
cubes around or dodecahedron,those things, and then somehow
(20:03):
it kind of becomes not cool todo that when you're in junior
high, like, oh, you're playingwith blocks still Dude, you're
in elementary school, right, andit certainly is not cool to do
that in high school and college.
In math, certainly If you go tocollege, or if you think about
going back to what you just saidabout completing the square in
algebra two, do you have likeplay things to do that?
It's usually just thinking inyour mind, thinking a piece of
(20:24):
paper, thinking of chalkboard orwhiteboard.
What I want to do is ask thisquestion when you're a kid, you
have arms and legs, right, youhave a head, you have your whole
body.
And as you get older, if yourarms and legs start falling off
and body, and as you get older,if your arms and legs start
falling off and as you get tohigh school, like you now have
nothing, and as you get tocollege, you're just like a
(20:45):
floating mind and as you go tograd school you don't even have
a head, it's just total digitaldata.
Then I could totally get behindthe way we're doing things,
that as a kid you have physicalthings and as you get older you
become more mental.
But you know, you and I all,thankfully, have our limbs.
Like most of us have our entirebodies.
So why don't we use our entirebodies to learn?
We have been using our bodiesto learn in elementary school.
(21:07):
Why don't we do that in juniorhigh school?
Why don't we have a math classfilled with craft supplies In
college?
Why don't you learn calculusand calc, three and quadratic
forms and differential equationsand all of these beautiful
things that are out there usingour bodies?
Why can't we touch mathematics?
That, to me, is my drive.
That's what I'm trying tofigure out.
Taylor Bledsoe (21:25):
That's really interesting.
It reminds me I know we talkedabout this author of Plato's
Republic and he talks about howgeometry is one of the most
beautiful parts of the universeand how it's the purest, and his
argument is he was really intothe realm of forms, in which I'm
not going to explain all ofthat right now, just Google it,
guys.
I'm going to butcher thedefinition, but one of the
(21:45):
reasons he loved it so much isbecause it was the purest well,
from what I understand of it, itwas the purest representation
of the physical world.
So he was into more of thisrealm of forms which was then
reflected in the physical world,and the physical wasn't as good
as this pure, almostintellectual side, and it almost
seems like that's what we dofrom elementary school.
(22:07):
Okay, so you're in the physicalkind of rudimentary part.
And then you go to high schooland you're you're enlightened
because you don't play withblocks anymore and you're in the
realm of forms.
Now you don't have to interactwith the world.
So what do you think about that?
How like.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (22:20):
Yeah, I mean that actually connects,
taylor, to the question youasked earlier about when did the
disciplines that were all mixedtogether?
Remember?
We're talking about all thesilos that have come up nowadays
, and actually that's the wordthat you just said about
enlightened, and so there's thisnotion of the Renaissance era
where all of it was mixed.
Like da Vinci would be drawinga picture but then looking at
(22:43):
the way the body works as abiologist, and then like
building something as anengineer, and for him, art,
bioengineering, all of thosedisciplines were the same, right
, he would just switch hats andhe would just be this one person
doing it.
And the Enlightenment era cameand it separated us into pieces
here's the historian, here'sinto pieces, here's the
historian, here's themathematician and here's the
artist.
And it actually did somethingthat was a little unfair.
(23:04):
It actually started, over time,valuing science over the
humanities, over the arts.
You kind of echoed it a littlebit when you said, oh, science
is doing the rational stuff.
I think you said this earlier,right, and then art is kind of
like doing emotional stuff.
That's not true.
If you work with real artists,there are incredible notions of
(23:26):
thought and brilliance andcomplexity.
If you're an artist or arthistorian or an architect, and
as a historian, even today, thenotions of history is a big deal
.
Did something happen?
Even talking about the election, right, like if that happened?
Or did this event happen eventhree to five years ago?
The notion of what it meansit's not that they're dealing
with more emotional stuff.
The way I frame it is they'redealing with more complex
(23:49):
questions.
So to a scientist, you'reasking questions that are kind
of easy.
Now you might think whoa, whoa,are you talking about COVID and
cancer and all of these thingsbeing easy questions?
And my answer is yeah.
You know why they're easyquestions is because you can
kind of measure them right.
You can do repeatableexperiments.
You can check it out and seewhat the enzyme does to the body
(24:10):
and try it again, and try it onthe mouse and then try it on
the rat and try it on.
You know, eventually getapproval to try it on humans to
see if you can do it.
But they're repeatable.
But history is not repeatable,so you can't play that game in
history because it's a muchharder question.
Things have gotten complicatedand a musician and an artist is
trying to deal with how toexpress things like a poet,
(24:32):
without even words.
So now you're dealing withsomething that you can't even
measure right like you can.
You can't even use English, foryou can only use images to try
to get across, whereas math it'sjust on the other end of the
spectrum.
We are so measurable, we haveso many lingos, like integral
and derivative and all thethings you've learned in algebra
.
Parentheses and squares andplus and minus and square, like
(24:54):
those are all symbols, right,but they're so clear that if I
write square root of three andyou write square root of three,
you know exactly what that means.
But if I say the word secular,oh my gosh, you must be a
secular girl.
Well, you're like.
Well, what does that mean?
You know like, what are youtrying to say with it?
Because that word is so loadedand complex.
That's what a poet deals withand an artist goes dude.
I wish I was lucky enough touse the word secular.
(25:16):
I don't even know how to saythat the right way.
And so you're right.
We're partitioned in differentways, but we have to be careful,
because everybody's dealingwith rational, thoughtful,
brilliant ideas, but they'redealing with different kinds of
questions of differentcomplexities.
Taylor Bledsoe (25:30):
That's really interesting, I wonder because
we've studied this a little bitin school how Kant and the
others basically said the onlyworld that really exists is what
you can measure and what youcan touch with your hands.
So you only have your ownexperience.
You don't have universals andglobal values.
So it's interesting because itseems to be what you're
proposing is.
Well, at the moment, we valuescience and math as the highest
(25:51):
possible pursuit and the mostcomplex and hardest one, because
we can grasp it and because wecan understand it.
Like that.
And no, you're flipping it onyour head and saying well, these
things that we don't reallyunderstand, that are subjective,
that's actually makes them moredifficult and even sometimes
even more influential in someways because we can't judge them
.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (26:10):
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And I think the reason sciencehas become more and more
powerful over the years isbecause of ROI.
The return of investment ismuch quicker in the sciences and
in math and STEM disciplines.
Right, because if you say,build a bridge, okay, you might
need to come up with newplastics and new chemicals and
new ideas, but you know what,within five years or 10 years, I
can knock it out.
(26:30):
And then you say, hey, couldyou take care of discrimination?
You know what?
Five years and 10 years isn'tworking.
We've been talking about raceissues before the founding of
this country and we haven't.
And we're slowly chipping awayat it and we're putting we have.
Isn't it true, taylor, that weput men on the moon?
(26:50):
And my question is which isharder, rocket science or race?
And to me, it's clear thatwe've done the rocket science
stuff and we could do it again,and we've gotten to Mars and put
a rover there.
That's because it's easy.
Rocket science is the easystuff.
The really hard stuff is whatit means to love somebody, what
it means to forgive somebody,what it means to talk about what
(27:12):
equality is Like.
Is gender equality important?
Well, how do you solve thosebig issues.
That is what sociologists dealwith.
That is what philosophers dealwith.
That's what historians dealwith.
They're dealing with muchharder things than what simple
STEMI people like me deal with.
I'm the dumbest of the dumbright.
I deal with math, square rootstuff.
Taylor Bledsoe (27:32):
That's really interesting.
I wonder if so, as we weretalking about, we value the
issues that we can measure andthen, because those are the
rational and the real issues, aswe were talking about, we value
the issues that we can measure,and then, because those are the
rational and the real issues aswe see them, because we can
touch and experiment with them,the physical world and as we all
talked about stem, um, it's,it's very fascinating because,
and then if you seem to look atsome of the statistics,
economically, so, if the stempeople get paid more than you
(27:55):
know, humanities, and is thatjust because of the ROI?
I'm assuming, because you havethat return of investment with
you know, big data makes moremoney than big poetry.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (28:04):
Yeah, I think so Because we buy things
right, like it's, because theturnaround time for you to make
an Apple computer or an Applewatch is, you know, the cycle is
hey, within a year you're goingto get a new MacBook, or you're
getting new headphones, orDell's going to release this new
thing, and here's a new cameraand this, you know, this is an
updated feature that has shakereduction or all these things,
and and that technology is thisquick return of dispose the
(28:27):
computer you have.
Get the new computer, becauseit's the latest and the greatest
, to me, the lasting things thatare going to affect us.
I mean, it sounds like that is.
There's a rush when you open aChristmas present or a Hanukkah
present or a birthday presentand you go, oh my gosh, that's
cool, that's what I wanted.
But there is something that's solasting, taylor, that what
really would matter are, likethat great dinner you had with
(28:49):
your grandparents.
It's like, you know, when mygrandma took me out for that one
thing or that, or the familytrip we took, or my friends and
I we went to watch that movieand it was amazing.
Afterwards we spent three hourseating tacos and talking about
it, and so those are the thingsthat we wish.
We can kind of bottle rightLike that's the things that we
really long for, and to methat's what the arts and
(29:10):
humanities are calling us to, tobe human, whereas in the
sciences it's beautiful and itdoes what it's supposed to do.
But we put so much weight onthe short-term fix that doesn't
satisfy our cravings.
Taylor Bledsoe (29:22):
And it's really interesting.
So nowadays we apply thesethings, we try to cross the stem
and understand the humanities,and then the feelings, and then
some of these issues that are,as I guess in your line of
thought, too complex for scienceand math to tackle, and then I
guess maybe not vice versa withhumanities, but they just tackle
different issues and differenttypes of problems.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (29:42):
I think a lot of times, you know, if
somebody says, hey, could youtell me?
I struggle with things like TEDTalks because could you tell me
your entire life's work in 20minutes and I'm going to listen
to that at 1.5 speed while I'mgoing running it's just we're
reducing deep complexity intosimple things and it doesn't
help.
And so usually the way if youand I are having a tough time
(30:04):
getting along or there's anotherissue to deal with, I could
write you a text or a tweet oran email, but that's going to
get us to a certain level.
But it really is just sittingdown and breaking bread with you
and having a meal with you andtalking it out with you and
spending maybe a month to a yearworking on a relationship and
saying, hey, I'm sorry aboutthat, what were you thinking?
And that you know that's themore difficult stuff.
(30:25):
That's not what the quicktweet's going to do.
Taylor Bledsoe (30:28):
Well, I'd love to go into this more, but
unfortunately we're running outof time, so I want to end with
our last two questions, whichare the first one what books
have had an impact on you?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (30:38):
I would say the book that echoes to me from
being in high school all theway to now and my favorite book
of all time is Beowulf.
To me, instead of giving youlike a bunch of different books
to read, you know, when I readit in high school I was like,
you know, I have to read it,check the box, you know, nerdy
AP, something lit or somethinglike that.
I forgot what I read it for andBeowulf is actually written in
(31:00):
three parts.
It's the greatest, I think it'sthe greatest work of art of all
time in terms of a written word, and it's written as this young
punk who, like slays you knowthis creature and rock star
right Grendel, this like demonof demons kind of, and then he
kind of gets old, he becomesking, he's like middle-aged, you
know, 30s to 40s, and then hefights Grendel's mom and at this
(31:20):
time he's established.
And then the last part is he isnow like the old, legendary
king and he fights this dragonwho comes back.
I think this is a book that Iencourage, you know, any of your
listeners, any high school kids, to read, but then put it away
and then read it again like 10years later.
It's not something you have toread every day, but, man, it's
so amazing to see it again infresh eyes.
(31:41):
Me, I'm on the dying end oftrying to fight my dragon as I
fade into the grave.
But yeah, that's myrecommendation.
I love that book.
Taylor Bledsoe (31:50):
So then our last one is what advice do you have
for teenagers?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (31:54):
I would say learn to touch with analog
things again.
Try to put your phone down,which has pieces of glass.
Try to get away from Teslasthat have glass monitors,
computers and iPads that areglass, because you know what
Glasses.
It actually, to me, is givingthe middle finger to your hands,
because your hand is notdesigned for glass, it's curvy,
(32:17):
it's designed for knobs anddials to turn and touch.
And so learn to play with likeanalog things again, like lp
records, like.
Learn to make a cake with a whip, you know, and then you can.
And if it's a bad, bad cake,you'll make some enemies, and
that's awesome, because life'sgreat to have awesome enemies.
And if you make a great cake,you'll make some friends,
because that's awesome, life'sgreat to have friends.
(32:37):
That's what Beowulf is you findgreat enemies, great friends.
Every superhero I know has anarchvillain.
If you don't have anarchvillain, make a cake.
You're going to get one,because your cake might suck and
it might be amazing, and thenyou might have other super
friends with you.
So that's my recommendationJust be analog.
Taylor Bledsoe (32:53):
I'm curious do you have analog stuff in your
life that could be digital?
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (32:58):
Yeah, in fact, when I came to San Diego,
I was in the East Coast for along time as a professor.
When I came to San Diego, Isaid I'd love to have a
laboratory, a mathematicallaboratory where we can touch
things, where it has no digitalthings, just chalkboards and
popsicle sticks and toothpicks.
I'd like to have some money, tohave a salary and in my office
I want to make sure I have myown chalkboard also because I'm
(33:19):
a big fan of just like touchingthings with chalk.
It might make that weirdsqueaky noise, but if you use
the right chalk Hagoromo chalkfrom Japan it's amazing.
If you use the right chalk, itis like melting butter on a
skillet.
It is gorgeous.
Taylor Bledsoe (33:32):
All right.
Well, thank you so much forcoming on the podcast.
I really enjoyed our discussion.
We covered so many coming onthe podcast.
I really enjoyed our discussion.
We covered so many like so manydifferent topics and then how
topics intersect with each other.
It was fascinating.
Thank you so much for coming on.
Dr. Satyan Devadoss (33:43):
Thanks, so you had some brilliant questions
.
This is joy to be here.
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