In this informatory video titled, “The Simplest Math Problem No One Can Solve – Collatz Conjecture”, renowned science communicator, Youtuber, Derek Muller, gives an introduction to the Collatz Conjecture, its history, attempts to prove it and its beautiful representations. Garious points of view on the importance of and attempts to prove the conjecture are explained with interviews with mathematicians, quotations from mathematicians and scientific papers being used as evidence. The intended audience is a quasi-academic audience interested in mathematics and the scientific nature of the video along with the easy wording explains the author’s ideas very well. The author intends to create curiosity and a willingness to learn mathematics in the viewers and the audience through this intriguing yet scientific explanation.
This video is very relevant to my project given that it covers the same topic as my project and has a similar audience. However, there is a level of bias in this video, implying that only experienced mathematicians can prove the problem, as evidenced by references to renowned mathematicians Terence Tao and the ‘warning’ to young students not to work on the problem. However, I want to eliminate this in my writing given that many problems have been proven or disproven by younger people and I want to make this an empowering fact for my readers. The representations and the pictures in the second half of the video could be an important tool for me. I could use the pictures to make the content easy to understand for readers and could also quote some mathematicians to give a logical and evidence-centric base to my work
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