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PROFESSOR: You know,
applications to technology--

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a lot of the things--

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a lot of the technology
that we take for granted,

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these days, it depends
very much on nothing

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more than algorithms, ideas
about how things might work.

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Take your iPod--
you know, an iPod

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that could only hold 30 songs
on it wouldn't be that useful,

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but you can fit a
thousand songs on there.

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How is that possible?

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It should be impossible.

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Whether you're talking about
cell phones, the internet, how

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power Google search
engine works,

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or communications
technology-- you know,

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a 10 megabit internet
connection is a lot more useful

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than 64 kilobit connection.

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All of these
technologies are really

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enabled by
combinatorial algorithms

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to a much greater extent
than the hardware.

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You know, the software that in
[? relies ?] these technologies

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is really built out of
ideas that people come up

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with in their heads,
and a lot of those ideas

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involve combinatorics.

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So that's one of the reasons
that I got interested in

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and I think a lot
of the students

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find it interesting
for the same reason.