Online math talks

Today I am going to write about online math talks, possibly the least technical post I have written on this blog (excluding maybe this one). The other day I realized that there is a huge number of great math talks available online (on http://www.youtube.com/ , http://videolectures.net/ , and other websites) and that I rarely watch one. One of the reasons might be that these talks are not always easy to find and I am rarely suggested an online talk (unlike normal seminars, which all of us get emails about all the time). So I thought it would be really nice to make a list of interesting math talks that I have watched or am wanting to watch in the near future. Doing it on a blog post where I can also ask for the readers to comment suggesting talks, seems like the perfect solution. So below I am listing a few talks that I think are interesting (of course this is a bit biased to my interests) and I plan to edit with more as I come across them. Don’t hesitate in commenting with suggestions and I’ll also add them to the list.

The first item is Hamming’s amazing talk on “You and your research” (available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw ). I highly recommend this one, independently of your interests. If you liked it, the all course is here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30

Recently I watched Boaz Barak’s talk on TCS+ (TCS+ is a really nice series of online talks in Theoretical Computer Science that you can either watch live, and ask questions live, or watch later on youtube, look it up!) this particular talk is about Sum of Squares and is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1_tq8U4Cyk

I have also recently watched a very interesting online talk by Dennis Amelunxen on the rank of random Semidefinite programs, a topic that is very close to my interests (it’s part 2 of a series, and available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX-jt9Xvp20 )

I also recently came across a link to Joel Tropp’s talk about his “Living on the edge” paper, I had the pleasure of watching it live and recommend it. The talk is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoPX4T7ixHs

Next, in my “to watch list” is Stephen Boyd’s talk on ADMM, a very useful optimization method: http://videolectures.net/nipsworkshops2011_boyd_multipliers/

The list is short for now but with your suggestions, it will grow rapidly!

What were the best online talks you have watched? How often do you watch online math talks?