At JuliaCon 2018 in London, one of the keynote presentations was a conversation with Gil Strang led by Alan Edelman and Pontus Stenetorp. Gil is well known for his many books on linear algebra, applied mathematics and numerical analysis, as well as his research contributions.
Gil talked about his famous 18.06 linear algebra course at MIT, which in its YouTube form has had almost 3 million views. A number of people in the audience commented that they had learned linear algebra from Gil.
Gil also talked about his book Linear Algebra and Learning from Data, due to be published at the end of 2018, which includes chapters on deep neural networks and back propagation. Many people will want to read Gil’s insightful slant on these topics (see also my SIAM News article The World’s Most Fundamental Matrix Equation).
As well as the video of Gil’s interview embedded below, two written interviews will be of interest to Gil’s fans:
- Farooq Ahmed, QnAs with Gilbert Strang, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 108 (11), p. 4273, 2011.
- Y. K. Leong, Mathematical Conversations. Gilbert Strang: The Changing Face of Applied Mathematics, Newsletter of Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Institute for Mathematical Sciences National University of Singapore, pp 8-12, 2003.
Nick Higham 