THE VIDEO SHELF · mathematical errors
What Happens When Maths Goes Wrong? - with Matt Parker
Matt Parker's Royal Institution talk based on his book Humble Pi, covering everyday mathematical mistakes and spurious patterns that went wrong in engineering and software. It mixes stand-up comedy with stories of coincidence and error.
Why HN readers recommended it
Used as a funny, accessible reference for coincidences, spurious patterns and maths errors.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- The Royal Institution
- Topic
- mathematical errors
- Format
- talk
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2020–2024
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Nothing, as long as we learn the art of discerning coincidence from causation. An important part of that is deliberately noticing how many possibilities we're picking amongst when we single out a coincidence. Here's a funny anecdote about the same topic: [VIDEO]
db48x on Hacker News · 2020-12
In Ask HN: Astronomical Coincidences. What does it mean?He also covered this in a more recent talk [1] which has some better audio and a direct feed of the slides. It also comes with an entirely different set of interesting stories for anyone inclined to listen :) 1: [VIDEO]
modderation on Hacker News · 2024-06
In Saint Michael Sword: Are the cathedrals really on a straight line?
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.