#183 – Po-Shen Loh: Mathematics, Math Olympiad, Combinatorics & Contact Tracing

Po-Shen Loh is a mathematician at CMU and coach of the USA
International Math Olympiad team. Please support this podcast by
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EPISODE LINKS: Po's Twitter: https://twitter.com/poshenloh Po's
Website: https://www.poshenloh.com/ Daily Challenges:
https://daily.poshenloh.com/ NOVID: https://www.novid.org/ PODCAST
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https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for
the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click
the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (08:51)
- Planes and bridges (12:28) - Writing a computer game from scratch
(14:54) - Programming competitions (18:28) - Math is hard (23:59) -
Contact tracing that preserves privacy (1:01:16) - Math Olympiad
(1:16:57) - Hard math problem (1:24:14) - Is math discovered or
invented? (1:29:09) - Intelligence (1:35:59) - Math education
(1:40:10) - How to learn math (1:49:06) - Combinatorics (1:52:13) -
Voting trees (2:02:36) - Stochastic coalescence (2:12:23) - P=NP
(2:16:39) - Tolkien and WWII (2:19:00) - Advice for young people
(2:21:05) - Meaning of life