Q&A with Grant, windy walk edition

Thank you for 2^21 subscribers.
↓↓Links to things discussed below ↓↓

The Bit Player

The Idea Factory

The Information, A History, A Theory, A Flood

You can read about Lorenz in "Chaos", also by James Gleick

Anthropocene reviewed

Hardcore history

The Numberphile podcast

Recent Quanta article on the eigenvector discovery

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Animations on this channel are largely made using manim, a scrappy open source python library.

If you want to check it out, I feel compelled to warn you that it's not the most well-documented tool, and it has many other quirks you might expect in a library someone wrote with only their own use in mind.

Music by Vincent Rubinetti.
Download the music on Bandcamp:

Stream the music on Spotify:

If you want to contribute translated subtitles or to help review those that have already been made by others and need approval, you can click the gear icon in the video and go to subtitles/cc, then "add subtitles/cc". I really appreciate those who do this, as it helps make the lessons accessible to more people.

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Various social media stuffs:

[der_bruehl]

So, the voice actualy has a body, it is not a hovering superintelligence with a superb graphical interface?

[bj_]

Given the expression and background, I legit thought this was a Tom Scott video from the thumbnail :)

[Brahmdagh]

My mind is having severe problems matching that face with that voice.

[nickleonardthomas]

Picture this: You're going for a hike and walk past a man talking to his camera about bizarre mathematicians

[johannesh]

You totally earned 2^21 subscribers! A math student who doesn't love your videos probably studies the wrong subject. Much love from Germany! It's true that if someone doesn't seem to know you at least 2 people will shout out "How can you not know 3blue1brown?"

[thistemba]

That moment when you realize the spirit of math itself has a human form

[domtorres]

I didn’t realize I needed Grant saying “oh hunny, he’s not gonna change” until now

[GeoQuag]

Hey 3blue1brown, I recently saw a math problem that I think you could give a neat explanation to. It goes like this:

“Pick x, y uniformly form (0, 1). What is the probability that x/y rounds to an even number?”

I’d love to get a good intuitive argument for why pi shows up in the answer (I trust the math but it comes out of nowhere).

[sonnenhafen]

"no matter what you do, your kids are gonna do things just like you"
remember. be curious, i guess..
that is like a seed to grow a whole forest.
don't teach the content, teach the pattern that unlocks all these different kinds of contents and applications.
everyone who is good at a subject, is passionate about something.
be passionate and your kids will see how to be just that.
it's a metaskill contentwise

[tommorrissette]

First time I've ever felt compelled to comment on anything: thank you for addressing the anxiety/depression/adhd question. It took me off guard to see it come up on your channel (which I subscribe to partially as a treatment for all those conditions). I can't imagine it being answered better. Your calm, modest brilliance is what the world needs right now. Thank you!

[karthik]

You seem too young, I had imagined much mature mid-aged person given the deep voice and domain knowledge. My mind still feels a young man lip-synced to the voice.

[yuvalne]

"Within two hours he found three independent proofs of this thing"
Such a Terry Tau thing to do

[BlueZirnitra]

It's said that by the time he finished recording this vlog, he was somewhere in Venezuela.

[ntesla]

Honestly, I thought this was awesome! Very conversational in style and quite enjoyable.

[pauldacus]

Claude Shannon, a man who loved the pairing of the curiously useless to the absolutely crucial. One of the only people to formulate, substantially develop, and write the seminal paper on one of the most important theories in history.
Simply unbelievable.

[p.as.in.pterodactyl]

I am so glad I discovered your channel. There are many excellent math channels on YouTube that I have grown fond of, and yours is my favorite. You are really great at expressing things in intuitive ways, and you know how to teach such that the person being taught is engaged, rather than simply vomiting out a bunch of information and hoping the listener magically absorbs it like some conceptual sponge.

Your animations are extremely helpful, too. In school, much of what we were taught was done so via spoken sentences, and other linear ways of going about things. While that has its place, it just can't compete with the potential that something like a visual can convey. It also helps make the mathematics alive, artistic, and creative, as opposed to memorizing formulas, for example.

You have videos 10-20 minutes long that have been more effective for me than - in many cases - multiple weeks in school. Even though I always did really well in my math classes, upon watching some of your videos, I can see in hindsight that I didn't have as solid of a grasp on many concepts as would have been suggested by my test scores.

I have subscribed and look forward to many more of your videos!

I really enjoyed getting to hear from you about things not directly related to mathematics. You are clearly very intelligent, but more importantly than that, you have some mysterious quality that I don't often encounter and don't know how to describe... perhaps later I will find the words.

Also, I have discovered some mathematical patterns throughout my life that, as far as I know, have never been discussed before. I would love to describe them to you and see if you can figure out what underlies them. If you're willing, I will reply back with what they are.

[dandymcgee]

Applied math is far superior to theoretical math for introducing people with less experience to new concepts, because learning works by forming connections to things you already understand. However, if you've studied enough math, then you can start doing theoretical math and using your prior math knowledge as the thing you already understand. The only thing to avoid is becoming so engrossed in the theoretical that you can no longer relate fascinating new ideas back to reality in some way.

I believe this applies to essentially all things, not just math. Music theory vs. playing with instruments. Computer science vs. writing code. Color theory vs. pottery. All practices have some theory and some pragmatism, and you can either focus on one side of things, or dive just far enough into both to find a happy middle ground where you can have the best of both worlds.

[varuntulsyan]

Oh look they used the de-aging tech on Tom Scott.

[masonhammers]

I've gotta say, I love your voice. Its very relaxing and there has been times that when I can't sleep I just put Essence of Calculus on autoplay and listen to your voice.

[dimomarkov]

I am into video games, and I'm a self-taught programmer, as well as a (mainly) self-taught mathematician. And I absolutely adore your videos and your explanations! You... are... amazing! You've helped me a lot! You're intuitive and you should keep this going, because MANY people need just that in order to compensate for a bad/insufficient education system. The work and the results you've achieved while popularizing math is just amazing.