A slacker was 20 minutes late and received two math problems… His solutions shocked his professor.

the student received a difficult assignment and his solution shocked the professor hello friends today i will tell you a relatively short story about a young man which occurred many years ago even though the story contains nothing supernatural i'm not exaggerating when i say it was able to change the lives of millions across the world in one way or another every self-respecting successful person knows about it and i think each one of you should hear it as well it began in the distant 1914 when a baby named george was born to a family of jewish immigrants in portland oregon his dad was a math teacher and his mom was a linguist in the library i will not speak about george's early childhood because it contained nothing extraordinary he grew up like a typical boy of those days and did not stand out from his peers the only thing that his dad literally forced him to do was study geometry it's probably inaccurate to say that the boy was thrilled by this but he obeyed his dad at first he solved simple problems that his dad gave him but by the time he was ready to graduate high school he was solving pretty difficult ones be that as it may he was definitely not a genius he was relatively well versed in mathematical science which ultimately got him accepted into the university of maryland to the faculty of mathematics but he was a regular student and was no different from the hundreds or even thousands of others like him what's more is that george would often allow himself to skip class which resulted in him being punished with extra homework by the way at this point we have approached our central point one that can change your world view so imagine the following scenario in the university of california in berkeley in 1939 a 25 year old student named george is running down one of the university's long hallways for unknown reasons as it happened many times before he was late to professor jersey neyman's statistics class what's more is that he was a whole 20 minutes late having caught his breath only a little bit prior to entering the auditorium he quietly opened the door and entered the young man wanted to be unnoticed so he sat down at a desk quickly afterwards he started looking around trying to figure out what he missed but when he noticed his professor's face he realized it was not the best time to draw attention to himself by the time he showed up in the auditorium the conditions of two math problems were written on the blackboard george thought that it was the next homework assignment for next class so the irresponsible student simply copied the problems in his notebook and started listening to the professor while thinking about his own things but friends soon after returning home from class he deeply regretted being late to that class the problems were very hard and the young man thought he likely missed something important at the beginning of class which would have helped him solve the problems but there was nothing left to do and he had to seriously struggle for a couple days in order to solve the problems and complete the assignment by the next statistics class i'll get ahead of myself to say that things turned out to be a lot simpler and a lot more complicated at the same time a few days later the happy student went to see the professor to hand in his notebook and the completed assignment the professor took the notebook absentmindedly without turning his eyes away from the blackboard on which he was drawing graphs before the next class he said okay thank you of course he did not immediately remember that he did not assign his students anything of the sort and simply put the notebook on top of his desk to check later two weeks passed and george still did not get an answer from the professor what's more is that in the following class the professor went up to george and said that his assignment was still being checked this made the young man even more nervous because such a long checking process could end badly for him especially since the midterm grades would come out soon but what happened next is hard to fathom after some time george was asked into the dean's office he had a bad feeling about it and when he opened the door he saw that in addition to the dean a number of men he didn't know and his statistics professor were sitting in the office it's hard to explain what the student was feeling at the time and maybe he was preparing for the worst but what his professor said surprised him congratulations george how did you come up with it did you do it by yourself or did someone help you the young man did not understand what was going on so he asked professor what are you talking about after that jersey neyman showed him his notebook with the homework it turns out that he solved everything correctly only it wasn't a homework assignment when the professor finally found the time to look at the notebook that a student brought him he could not believe his eyes he remembered that at the beginning of one of his lectures he really did show his students the conditions of those two problems however those conditions were of two unsolved problems the problems were a mystery that at the time not only the professor but also the rest of the great minds in the whole world could not solve for decades the most outstanding mathematicians tried to solve them and even the most venerable scientists simply struggled however george simply did not know that they were unsolvable because of a stupid turn of events he didn't hear the part of the lecture where the professor said that nobody in the whole world was able to solve them that's how after struggling for only a few days george was able to solve that professors from the mathematical academy of sciences came to the dean's office to congratulate the student our hero's full name is george bernard danzig a famous scientist of the 20th century who developed the algorithm to solve problems by the simplex method he is also considered the founder of linear programming and became the first recipient of the von neumann theory prize in 1974 later our student received the national medal of science and an honorary doctorate from the university of maryland in the 1970s he became a member of the national academy of sciences the national academy of engineering and the american academy of arts and sciences he authored many papers and books all this would have likely not happened and his name would not have been so widely known had he come to that class on time at least that's what professor george dancing himself used to say with the smile sometimes you're capable of doing the impossible something that seems completely unrealistic something that nobody else has done before you all this is possible only if you yourself do not convince yourself that it's impossible when asked how he was able to achieve all that george danzig said that had he come to the lecture on time and heard those problems were unsolvable he would have obviously never been able to solve them this story is a lesson to the most daring and successful people innovators of our time billionaires and pioneers all of them are convinced that all of our problems are only in our heads and in our perception of what we are doing friends what do you think is that really so is the whole problem simply us not believing that this or that is realistic definitely write your opinions and personal thoughts in the comments that's all for today rate the video if you liked it see you soon

Channel: Life Stories

Views: 5,867,281

Rating: 4.8611107 out of 5

Keywords: Story, life story, real-life story, motivation, a life story, a real-life story, science, problems, two problems, a success story, belief in yourself, belief in your capabilities, incredible story, George Bernard Dantzig, class, university, student, deep story, scientific pop, success, accomplishment, professor, professor Dantzig, the story of George Dantzig, a story about two problems, the impossible is possible, mathematician, a great mathematician, became a mathematician

Id: O_bVUeQw38c

Length: 7min 12sec (432 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Mentott510]

Great story and important message. Impossible to me is just a label for "We haven't figured it out yet.", not "There is no solution to the problem. The word needs to be dropped from common usage to avoid discouraging people from attempting to solve problems.