Here's what it looks like when a popular NFL player explains complicated math

Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel announced on Twitter this week his plan to start his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year.

The 24-year-old, 305-pound lineman has a well-documented aptitude for math. He earned his bachelor's degree in three years at Penn State and spent his senior year working on a master's degree in mathematics while being paid by Penn State to teach Integral Vector Calculus Trigonometry.

Urschel recently paired up with marketing tech company Persado to explain how math concepts are used in marketing. He starts with a relatively simple concept, explaining what an algorithm is. "At its core an algorithm is just a set of steps to try to work toward some goal to obtain some outcome," Urschel says.

"A great example is Google's multi-armed bandit algorithm," he continues.

The multi-armed bandit informs Google about how different ads are performing and rearranges them according to how well they do, he explains.

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