The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything

The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything

How a feud in Russia led to modern prediction algorithms.
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A huge thank you to Brian Hayes, David Aldous, Geoff Engelstein, Jeffrey Rosenthal, Jimmy He, Mark Priestley, Michael Choi, Peter Norvig, Sam Power, and Thomas Haigh for their invaluable expertise and contributions to this video.

And a special thank you to Madeline Johnson for her excellent fact-checking.

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0:00 The Law of Large Numbers
4:37 What is a Markov Chain?
9:43 Ulam and Solitaire
12:21 Nuclear Fission
15:46 The Monte Carlo Method
16:32 The first search engines
19:07 Google is born
25:16 How does predictive text work?
27:10 Are Markov chains memoryless?
29:41 How to perfectly shuffle a deck of cards

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References:
https://ve42.co/RefsMarkov

Images & Video:
https://ve42.co/7Z

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