Gil Strang is still going strong, online and in print | Around Campus - MIT News

Sandi Miller, Department of Mathematics recommends, After nearly 60 years of teaching at MIT, this math professor surpasses 10 million views on OCW, earns top reviews for his teaching style, and publishes his 12th book.

Gil Strang teaches 18.06 (Matrix Methods in Data Analysis, Signal Processing, and Machine Learning). OCW will soon post 34 videos to 18.065, and he recently released "Linear Algebra and Learning from Data," his 12th textbook.
Photo: Sandi Miller

MIT’s class 18.06 (Linear Algebra) has surpassed 10 million views on OpenCourseWare (OCW). That’s the kind of math that makes Professor Gilbert Strang one of the most recognized mathematicians in the world.

“That was a surprise to me,” says Strang. But not to those at OCW.

“He is a favorite; there is no way around it,” says OCW Director Curt Newton. Each month, OCW publishes a list of its most-visited courses, and Newton points out that Strang’s course has always been among the top 10 most-viewed since OCW launched. “He cracked the 10 million number,” he says. “It’s clear that Gil’s teaching has struck just the right chord with learners and educators around the world.”

Strang’s 18.06 lectures, posted between 2002-2011, also have more than 3.1 million YouTube views from math students in places like India, China, and Africa, among others. “His lectures are just excellent,” explains math Professor Haynes Miller. To illustrate the video’s massive popularity, Miller recounts a conversation, at the online Electronic Seminar on Mathematics Education, about revising a linear algebra course at the University of Illinois. “In the new version, they do almost no lecturing ... and one reason they feel that they can get away with that is that they can send students to Gil’s lectures on OCW.”...

A new book
OCW will soon post 34 videos, along with an introduction, to his relatively new class 18.065 (Matrix Methods in Data Analysis, Signal Processing, and Machine Learning.) To accompany the class, Strang recently released "Linear Algebra and Learning from Data," his 12th textbook.

Strang is known for his clear yet lively writing, and early reviews confirm that this new book continues his style. Even the book’s cover is evocative. He chose a photo his son Robert took, on Inle Lake in Myanmar, of a man on a boat holding a fishing net encased in a bamboo cage. The man is lifting up what Strang says resembles a neural net.
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Linear Algebra and Learning from Data

 Source: MIT News