What videos should everybody watch?

Question

Stanford University now has a Youtube channel, with free access to HD video of full courses on everything from dynamical systems to quantum entanglement. More conferences and workshops are videotaping their talks. What are videos online that you think everyone should know about?

I'll seed this with a few answers to presentations that are mostly expository, but what I'm hoping might happen is that this community wiki could turn into a resource to share excellent presentations of new research, as well as a place to learn (or reinforce) background in an unfamiliar area.

Microsoft Research also has a youtube channel. I also like Dominic Verity's talk on category theory for programmers. Asking everyone to watch the same material seems like a bad idea because it will reduce diversity and increase groupthink. — isomorphismes, Sep 11 '13 at 21:46
Do we have any videos lectures related to basic approximation and randomized algorithms. — Kumar, Dec 01 '14 at 06:56
Can someone make an ongoing thread for the latest conference/workshop talks? IPCO, ICALP, STOC, FOCS etc that are available online? — Hao S, May 24 '22 at 17:25

score 56 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 14 '10 at 13:29

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Timothy Gowers has a set of videos on Computational Complexity and Quantum Computation online.

answered Sep 14 '10 at 13:29

Mikhail Glushenkov

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I watched the first lecture in this series and find his explanation of Turing machines very awkward. Furthermore, he seems to suggest that circuits are somehow equal in power to TMs, which is not the case (unless there is more to them than he tells). He himself says he does not want to talk about "strange computation models" but rather about "familiar combinatorics" so I'd say these are rather maths, not TCS lectures. – Raphael Oct 20 '10 at 09:27
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combinatorics is also part of TCS. – Kaveh Apr 23 '12 at 03:16
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Is TCS not part of mathematics, broadly defined for sure? – kodlu Apr 21 '15 at 00:12
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The sound quality is pathetic, amateur hour. – William Hird Mar 23 '20 at 07:31

score 41 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 19 '11 at 02:52

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Richard Feynman's Messenger Lectures restored, with annotations, by Microsoft's Tuva Project. Full disclosure: I've only watched two so far; they were awesome. (Not really TCS, but I had to start with these.)

edited Oct 19 '11 at 02:52

Mark Eichenlaub

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answered Sep 12 '10 at 17:08

Aaron Sterling

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The Vega Science Trust (http://vega.org.uk/) also has some excellent Feynman talks on video, as well as talks from a bunch of other scientists. – Joe Fitzsimons Oct 19 '10 at 15:39
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I get told that my browser won't support the format (Silverlight). Sigh. – Jim Hefferon Jun 21 '12 at 21:20
@JimHefferon Does http://www.ubuntugeek.com/pipelight-using-silverlight-in-linux-browsers.html work for you? – Simd Jun 08 '14 at 08:26
While I admire what looks like a heroic effort to get it to go, no, I have never tried it. Thanks. – Jim Hefferon Jun 08 '14 at 14:15

didest · Answer 3 · 2015-04-20T22:34:28.607

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Don Knuth's musings are great, always describing some amazing thing unknown to me before.

edited Apr 20 '15 at 22:34

answered Oct 21 '10 at 05:26

didest

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Can this videos be downloaded or do they have to be streamed using sliver light? – Tyson Williams Sep 10 '11 at 18:08
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I feel like Knuth himself would disapprove of having them locked up in a proprietary format, and it sure is inconvenient for me. – Max Oct 22 '11 at 20:12
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@Max not anymore :-) (I updated the link). – didest Apr 20 '15 at 22:35

Kaveh · Answer 4 · 2015-10-23T13:18:56.610

Institutes with online talk videos:

Theory groups with online talk videos:

Theory Group in University of Chicago

Also see this blog post by Lance Fortnow.

score 25 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 12 '10 at 22:20

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Stephen Boyd has his entire Stanford class on Convex Optimization online.

Some interesting comments and asides, covers same material as in his book.

answered Sep 12 '10 at 22:20

Mugizi Rwebangira

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score 23 · Answer 6 · edited Jan 29 '17 at 00:00

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Dan Spielman's Nevanlinna Prize lecture at Hyderabad 2010. I got this link from a blog post by Timothy Gowers; the post contains several more video and text links to the 2010 ICM.

edited Jan 29 '17 at 00:00

Richard Cox

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answered Sep 12 '10 at 17:14

Aaron Sterling

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score 21 · Answer 7 · edited May 28 '11 at 11:44

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There's a really interesting talk, given by Yuri Gurevich, on the Church-Turing thesis here.

edited May 28 '11 at 11:44

Community

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answered Oct 19 '10 at 11:57

score 20 · Answer 8 · answered Sep 12 '10 at 20:03

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The video section of IAS is also a great source of online courses. One of my favorite is:
Ketan Mulmuley. On P vs NP, Geometric Complexity Theory, and the Riemann Hypothesis.

answered Sep 12 '10 at 20:03

Michaël Cadilhac

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score 19 · Answer 9 · edited Aug 12 '11 at 17:12

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FOCS (IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science)

The FOCS 2010 videos are now online. Glencora Borradille mentions her favorites in this blog post.

edited Aug 12 '11 at 17:12

Kaveh

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answered Nov 09 '10 at 20:14

Aaron Sterling

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@Diego de Estrada the site is down is there anywhere else I can find these videos? – Hao S Apr 22 '21 at 00:34

Akash Kumar · Answer 10 · 2011-11-12T22:10:31.893

I do not know if this is a video lecture that everyone should watch, but I have decided on watching these to learn some Algebraic Topology. Seems pretty good to me so far.

Algebraic Topology Lectures

EDIT (Added Later). Another nice set of video lectures

Here is another wonderful set of lectures by Erik Demaine. The course is called Planar Graph Algorithms and Beyond and is being taught by Erik Demaine, Shay Mozes, Christian Sommer and Siamak Tazari. They are also using some sections of Phil Kliens draft on Planar Graphs. I feel certain that it will make a great book after having seen the first two lectures.

The course of Demaine et al. is amazing! – didest Dec 02 '11 at 01:00 — didest, Dec 02 '11 at 01:00

score 15 · Answer 11 · answered Oct 20 '10 at 15:16

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For people interested in quantum computation, the talks of QIP 2010 are available here: http://www.qip2010.ethz.ch/programme

answered Oct 20 '10 at 15:16

Anthony Leverrier

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score 14 · Answer 12 · answered Sep 13 '10 at 17:44

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This might seem pretty preliminary to most people here, but I have greatly benefited from these since I am essentially self-taught. http://aduni.org/courses/theory/index.php?view=cw

answered Sep 13 '10 at 17:44

dhruvbird

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score 13 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 22 '10 at 04:14

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A completely hilarious video (and also very educational) is Serre's now-famous video on how to write mathematics badly.

answered Oct 22 '10 at 04:14

Suresh Venkat

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«We are sorry but sevenload doesn't offer its service in your country». Sad… – Artem Pelenitsyn Jun 01 '11 at 17:36
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@Artem: Maybe this link works for those outside the US? It works for me. – Robin Kothari Jul 28 '11 at 20:00

score 13 · Answer 14 · answered Nov 10 '10 at 21:13

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I suggest the Channel 9 lectures: http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/c9+lectures

I like specially the lectures from Erik Meijer on functional programming.

answered Nov 10 '10 at 21:13

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Ralf Lämmel's lectures are also nice. He also put videos for his course on Programming Paradigms and Formal Semantics online. – Mikhail Glushenkov Feb 11 '11 at 09:49

score 13 · Answer 15 · answered Feb 28 '11 at 01:20

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I enjoyed Scott Aaronson's lecture at Caltech titled "Quantum Computing and the Limits of the Efficiently Computable." This lecture, which was in honor of Feynman, rehashes what's common knowledge to users of this site but in a very clear and funny way.

answered Feb 28 '11 at 01:20

Huck Bennett

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score 12 · Answer 16 · answered Oct 19 '10 at 15:56

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Quantiki has a nice video abstract site, where people are free to post a short video (3-6 minutes) describing their recent papers/preprints. As it is part of Quantiki, it largely focuses on quantum information/computation.

answered Oct 19 '10 at 15:56

Joe Fitzsimons

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Kaveh · Answer 17 · 2011-08-12T17:36:24.443

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STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing)

The STOC 2011 videos are now online on ACM DL.

edited Aug 12 '11 at 17:36

answered Aug 12 '11 at 17:08

Kaveh

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They're behind a paywall unfortunately... – Anthony Leverrier Aug 12 '11 at 21:04
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This is probably an old news, but the videos are now available for free (but you have to register (again, for free)) http://t.co/LtTmi32 – Danu Oct 23 '11 at 21:39
@Danu how do I access the videos? I only see articles no videos – Hao S May 28 '21 at 01:43

score 12 · Answer 18 · answered Aug 14 '11 at 06:26

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CCC (IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity)

The CCC 2010 videos

answered Aug 14 '11 at 06:26

Kaveh

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score 11 · Answer 19 · answered Sep 12 '10 at 17:10

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Erik Winfree describes DNA self-assembly and molecular programming at a plenary talk at ASPLOS 2008. Probably the best rigorous introduction to the theory of self-assembly currently online.

answered Sep 12 '10 at 17:10

Aaron Sterling

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score 11 · Answer 20 · answered Mar 02 '11 at 00:17

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Quantum Information, Computation and Complexity

answered Mar 02 '11 at 00:17

Tegiri Nenashi

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awesome! how was i waiting for watching video lectures on this topic...to think about watching lectures of Charles Bennet! A rare treat! Thanks again – Akash Kumar Mar 02 '11 at 01:44

Per Vognsen · Answer 21 · 2011-04-12T14:34:37.913

Erik Demaine has the video lectures up from his Fall 2010 course on geometric folding algorithms that follows the textbook he coauthored with Joseph O'Rourke:

http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.849/fall10/lectures/

The lectures are great as you'd expect. But what really stands out to me is the production values: Each lecture's web page has embedded slides and lecture notes that play along in synchrony with the video. It uses high-definition HTML5 video with all the synchronization of slides and lecture notes done in JavaScript. Hopefully this will set a new standard of excellence.

score 9 · Answer 22 · edited Apr 11 '11 at 17:50

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MIT's Youtube channel might be useful as well.

edited Apr 11 '11 at 17:50

Sadeq Dousti

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answered Apr 11 '11 at 10:58

Dharmit Shah

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The link is already mentioned in the question itself! – Sadeq Dousti Apr 11 '11 at 16:52
technically, only Stanford's youtube channel is mentioned – Suresh Venkat Apr 11 '11 at 16:56

score 8 · Answer 23 · answered Apr 10 '11 at 10:26

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Just found the following two websites. They were recommended by some folks, but I have not evaluated them yet:

VideoLectures.net: http://videolectures.net/Top/Computer_Science/
AacademicEarth.org: http://academicearth.org/subjects/computer-science/

answered Apr 10 '11 at 10:26

Sadeq Dousti

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score 7 · Answer 24 · answered Mar 19 '20 at 00:00

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CS Theory Toolkit by Prof. Ryan O'Donnell.
Great for newbies, and includes interesting viewing angle on various topics:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3J0oaFux3ZYpFLwwrlv_EHH9wtH6pnX

answered Mar 19 '20 at 00:00

Avi Tal

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score 7 · Answer 25 · answered Dec 02 '11 at 01:03

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I'm late to answer,but find Cristian Calude's lecture on Incompleteness excellent.

answered Dec 02 '11 at 01:03

Ganesh

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Kaveh · Answer 26 · 2013-02-07T08:00:34.563

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General audience talk by Michael Sipser about $\mathsf{P}$ vs. $\mathsf{NP}$:

Michael Sipser, "Beyond Computation: The P vs NP Problem", CMI Public Lecture, 2006.

Also available on youtube.

edited Feb 07 '13 at 08:00

answered Feb 07 '13 at 07:51

Kaveh

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11D Reality Hacker · Answer 27 · 2012-02-02T15:41:42.950

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These are a lectures series about Quantum Computation by professor David Deutsch

http://www.quiprocone.org/Protected/DD_lectures.htm

Another great series on Quantum Computation by Michael Nielsen aimed at the average Joe who wants to learn about Quantum Computation

https://m.youtube.com/#/playlist?gl=US&hl=en&client=mv-google&list=PL1826E60FD05B44E4

edited Feb 02 '12 at 15:41

answered Feb 01 '12 at 21:45

11D Reality Hacker

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Martin Berger · Answer 28 · 2012-09-12T18:49:38.400

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If you are interested in concurrency theory, programming languages or interactive theorem proving, I warmly recommend the videos of the recent Milner Symposium. For example J. Parrow's talk The pi-calculus: Origin and recent developments tells the beautiful story of the early development of $\pi$-calculus, and B. Pierce's talk Types à la Milner is a lucid overview of work on types for process calculi.

edited Sep 12 '12 at 18:49

answered Sep 12 '12 at 18:43

Martin Berger

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score 5 · Answer 29 · answered Apr 02 '13 at 22:29

Following resources are very helpful: http://www.aduni.org/courses/ (Discrete Math, Algorithms, theory of computation and many others) and http://erikdemaine.org/classes/ (I particularly like the algorithms on planar graphs lecture and advanced data structure lec here)

score 5 · Answer 30 · answered Oct 24 '15 at 22:39

TCS+ (an online biweekly seminar series, using Google Hangouts as medium), has a YouTube Channel, as well as a listing of previous lectures:

https://sites.google.com/site/plustcs/past-talks

(This listing also includes the slides of the talks).

The topics are quite diverse, and meant to cover all areas of TCS.

score 5 · Answer 31 · answered Dec 01 '11 at 18:43

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Videos from Banff events: this one is from the ongoing workshop on approximations.

answered Dec 01 '11 at 18:43

Suresh Venkat

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score 4 · Answer 32 · answered Mar 06 '12 at 10:40

Original - Structure and Implementaion of Computer Programs (SICP) by Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/

If you have trouble with downloading all of the videos - you can dowload them from archive.org (on archive.org some links are not show up). http://jcubic.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/abelson-sussman/

score 4 · Answer 33 · answered Sep 29 '13 at 21:01

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Videos of talks by several Abel, Fields and Turing laureates at Heidelberg Laureate Forum.

answered Sep 29 '13 at 21:01

Kaveh

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score 4 · Answer 34 · answered Oct 24 '15 at 22:36

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The set of lectures by Ryan O'Donnell on Analysis of Boolean Functions, taught in 2012 at CMU, is really nice: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/aobf12/ The page includes the video recording of each lecture.

answered Oct 24 '15 at 22:36

Clement C.

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These are also excellent: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/complexity17/, and the series that starts with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxhpiYKFQd8 – Avi Tal Aug 09 '18 at 00:31

score 4 · Answer 35 · answered Oct 25 '11 at 16:54

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General CS videos, found some good ones on here: http://lecturefox.com/computerscience/

Not restricted to Computing but good nonetheless: http://mitworld.mit.edu/

answered Oct 25 '11 at 16:54

Aaron Robson

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That's a great link for videos, however a better link would be to say which of these videos are worth the watch (or maybe they are all?) – Gopi Oct 26 '11 at 10:56
I liked the Donald Knuth's lectures linked to on the lecturefox site (he created TeX amongst his other achievements) http://scpd.stanford.edu/knuth/index.jsp and on the mitworld site I liked I liked the "Computing for Everyone" lecture though I suspect they are all pretty good. – Aaron Robson Nov 07 '11 at 12:42

score 3 · Answer 36 · answered Mar 05 '12 at 14:28

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Sipser gave a nice Clay Public Lecture on P vs. NP entitled "Beyond Computation"

http://www.claymath.org/public_lectures/sipser.php

and there is another one by Vijaya Ramachandra

http://claymath.msri.org/pversusnp.mov

answered Mar 05 '12 at 14:28

Marcus Ritt

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Juan Bermejo Vega · Answer 37 · 2012-03-05T16:12:47.607

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The archive of recorded seminars of the Perimeter Institute is both useful and entertaining.

The Qubit Lab is a Youtube channel that explains advanced topics on quantum information and computation at children level, but it's also very enjoyable if you are an adult.

edited Mar 05 '12 at 16:12

answered Mar 05 '12 at 15:01

Juan Bermejo Vega

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This is also a nice basic Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_Riqjdh2oM – Avi Tal Aug 10 '18 at 02:01

score 0 · Answer 38 · answered Mar 23 '20 at 06:20

The Richard Feynman YouTube video on magnets. Revealing how one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century cannot explain the force of magnetism (action at a distance) in terms of a simple mechanical procedure. "Yes Richard, I know there is a field there, but how does the field physically move the magnet "?

score 0 · Answer 39 · answered Apr 05 '20 at 01:36

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This is not a TCS playlist, but it does have some interesting parts where they try to formalize some concepts. And I believe that it can be intercepted with natural computing, information theory and learning theory.

Complexity Explorer: Origins of Life

answered Apr 05 '20 at 01:36

Raphael Augusto

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What videos should everybody watch?

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