NFL Player Turned MIT Math Professor Urschel Visits Bowdoin Campus

In Urschel's public lecture, "Gaussian Elimination: Old Algorithm, New World," he talked about numerical analysis and the study of algorithms for problems in continuous mathematics.

Although algorithms have been around for thousands of years, he told the audience, the advent of the computer age in the 1940s enabled numerical calculations on a scale that was previously unimaginable. But, he added, it has also led to concerns about the stability of these algorithms and what kind of errors might creep in as accuracy is sacrificed for speed.

"When we do even basic operations, errors build up, and these errors can become quite large and accumulate in strange and unexpected ways," Urschel said. These considerations grow increasingly important today, we are told, with unprecedented volumes of data and computing power embedded in every corner of science, engineering, and business.

In response to a question from the audience, Urschel also discussed the issue of artificial intelligence in the classroom, its benefits and drawbacks. "I don't ban it," he explained. "I actually don't even explicitly refer to it, but I strongly suggest to students that if they're doing homework in collaboration with others, whether they be human or machine, that you really understand everything yourself, independently.

"It is perhaps a little heartwarming that I tend to find that students who really try to interact organically with the material do well on exams, even if they have slightly lower homework scores than other students who, when I see them in office hours and ask 'Why did you do that?' they say 'ChatGPT told me.'"

Math major and prospective graduate scholar Graham Lucas '26 attended Urschel's lecture specifically for math students, titled Matrices, Moments, and Quadrature. Lucas said he was interested in how Urschel shed light on the historical development of a mathematical idea-in this case a quandary called a "moment problem," explored over a century ago by scholars who laid the groundwork for the modern computational techniques used in numerical analysis and linear algebra. "In math classes, you tend to be more concerned with presenting a lot of information in concise, neat ways, rather than thinking about the history," said Lucas.

"The department was delighted to host Professor Urschel, whose visit sparked a dialogue on both the technical and the social landscapes of mathematics," remarked Associate Professor of Mathematics Thomas Pietraho, who is also department chair.

"As a researcher at the intersection of matrix algebra and machine learning and a former NFL player, he offered a rare perspective on discipline and discovery. He was a rich source of inspiration, challenging us to see the 'scholar' as someone whose influence transcends the classroom."

John Urschel's visit was to Bowdoin was supported by the Cecil T. and Marion C. Holmes Mathematics Lectureship Fund and the Bowdoin College Athletics Department.