3Blue1Brown

Last updated

3Blue1Brown
3B1B Logo.svg
The channel name and logo reference the color of Grant's right eye, which has blue-brown sectoral heterochromia. [1] It also symbolizes the channel's visual approach to math. [2]
Personal information
Born
Grant Sanderson
Occupation YouTuber
Website www.3blue1brown.com
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2015–present
Genre(s) Mathematics, Education
Subscribers6.16 million [3]
Total views500 million [3]
Associated acts Matt Parker, MinutePhysics, Numberphile, Smarter Every Day, Mark Rober
YouTube Silver Play Button 2.svg100,000 subscribers2016 [4]
YouTube Gold Play Button 2.svg1,000,000 subscribers2018 [4] [5]

Last updated: May 6, 2024

3Blue1Brown is a math YouTube channel created and run by Grant Sanderson. [6] The channel focuses on teaching higher mathematics from a visual perspective, and on the process of discovery and inquiry-based learning in mathematics, which Sanderson calls "inventing math". [7]

Contents

Grant Sanderson

Early life and education

Sanderson graduated from Stanford University in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. [8] He worked for Khan Academy from 2015 to 2016 as part of their content fellowship program, producing videos and articles about multivariable calculus, after which he started focusing his full attention on 3Blue1Brown. [8]

Career

In 2020, Grant Sanderson became one of the creators and lecturers of the MIT course Introduction to Computational Thinking, together with Alan Edelman, David Sanders, James Schloss, and Benoit Forget. [9] The course uses the Julia programming language and Grant Sanderson's animations to explain various topics: convolutions, image processing, COVID-19 data visualization, epidemic modelling, ray tracing, introduction to climate modelling, ocean modelling, and the algorithms that lie behind these topics. [10]

In February 2022, Sanderson determined that the best starting word in the game Wordle was CRANE using information theory. [11] Later, he stated that the code he wrote to determine the best starting word had a bug in it, and the actual best starting word that gives the lowest average score is SALET. [12]

In January 2020, Sanderson delivered a talk in An Evening with Grant Sanderson, hosted by the Stanford Speakers Bureau. [13] Sanderson offered his perspective on engaging with math: instead of prioritizing usefulness, he emphasizes emotion, wonder and imagination. He aims to "bring life to math" with visuals, graphics, and animations. [14] In August 2021, Sanderson was one of several featured speakers at SIGGRAPH 2021. [15]

In November 2022, Sanderson delivered a keynote speech, "What can algorithms teach us about education?", at the 17th Dutch National Informatics Congress CelerIT hosted by Stichting Nationaal Informatica Congres (SNiC). [16] Sanderson offered his perspective on how mathematics education should evolve in the future and related his findings with the way neural networks learn, he emphasizes the need for students to grasp concepts and understand them.

Origin

3Blue1Brown started as a personal programming project in early 2015. In an episode of the podcast Showmakers, Sanderson explained that he wanted to practice his coding skills and decided to make a graphics library in Python, which eventually became the open-source project Manim (Mathematical Animation Engine). [17] To have a goal for the project, he decided to create a video with the library and upload it to YouTube. On March 4, 2015, he uploaded his first video. He started publishing more videos and improving the graphics tool. [18]

Videos, podcasts and other media

3Blue1Brown videos are themed around visualizing math, including pure math such as number theory and topology as well as more applied topics in computer science and physics, The visuals are predominantly generated by Manim, a Python animation library written by Sanderson, though occasionally visuals are drawn from other software such as macOS's Grapher application. [17]

The channel's videos have been featured in Popular Mechanics , [19] [20] [21] ABC News , [22] and Quanta Magazine . [23] Sanderson has appeared on numerous notable podcasts, including Numberphile, [24] Lex Fridman, the Art of Problem Solving, [25] Siraj Raval, [26] and Showmakers. [27] [28]

Manim

Manim
Original author(s) Grant Sanderson
Repository github.com/3b1b/manim
Written in Python
Operating system Linux, macOS, Windows
Type Animation engine
License MIT License
Website www.3blue1brown.com   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Manim is a cross-platform, free and open-source animation engine released under the MIT License. It was initially developed by Grant Sanderson in early 2015.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Sims</span> Computer graphics artist

Karl Sims is a computer graphics artist and researcher, who is best known for using particle systems and artificial life in computer animation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Non-photorealistic rendering</span> Style of rendering

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other artistic modes such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of cel-shaded animation as well as in scientific visualization, architectural illustration and experimental animation.

The Mechanical Universe...And Beyond is a 52-part telecourse, filmed at the California Institute of Technology, that introduces university level physics, covering topics from Copernicus to quantum mechanics. The 1985-86 series was produced by Caltech and INTELECOM, a nonprofit consortium of California community colleges now known as Intelecom Learning, with financial support from Annenberg/CPB. The series, which aired on PBS affiliate stations before being distributed on LaserDisc and eventually YouTube, is known for its use of computer animation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pat Hanrahan</span> American computer graphics researcher

Patrick M. Hanrahan is an American computer graphics researcher, the Canon USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research focuses on rendering algorithms, graphics processing units, as well as scientific illustration and visualization. He has received numerous awards, including the 2019 Turing Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence J. Rosenblum</span> American mathematician

Lawrence Jay Rosenblum is an American mathematician, and Program Director for Graphics and Visualization at the National Science Foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer graphics (computer science)</span> Sub-field of computer science

Computer graphics is a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Although the term often refers to the study of three-dimensional computer graphics, it also encompasses two-dimensional graphics and image processing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer graphics</span> Graphics created using computers

Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal of specialized hardware and software has been developed, with the displays of most devices being driven by computer graphics hardware. It is a vast and recently developed area of computer science. The phrase was coined in 1960 by computer graphics researchers Verne Hudson and William Fetter of Boeing. It is often abbreviated as CG, or typically in the context of film as computer generated imagery (CGI). The non-artistic aspects of computer graphics are the subject of computer science research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CGP Grey</span> Irish-American educational YouTuber

CGP Grey is an American educational YouTuber, podcaster, and live streamer based in the United Kingdom who creates explanatory videos on subjects including politics, geography, economics, sociology, history, philosophy, and culture. In addition to video production, he is known for creating and hosting the podcasts Hello Internet with Brady Haran and Cortex with Myke Hurley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MinutePhysics</span> Educational YouTube channel

MinutePhysics is an educational YouTube channel created by Henry Reich in 2011. The channel's videos use whiteboard animation to explain physics-related topics. Early videos on the channel were approximately one minute long. As of March 2024, the channel has over 5.7 million subscribers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brady Haran</span> Australian-British YouTuber and journalist (born 1976)

Brady John Haran is an Australian-British independent filmmaker and video journalist who produces educational videos and documentary films for his YouTube channels, the most notable being Computerphile and Numberphile. Haran is also the co-host of the Hello Internet podcast along with fellow educational YouTuber CGP Grey. On 22 August 2017, Haran launched his second podcast, called The Unmade Podcast, and on 11 November 2018, he launched his third podcast, The Numberphile Podcast, based on his mathematics-centered channel of the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Urschel</span> Canadian-American mathematician, football player and chess player (born in 1991)

John Cameron Urschel is a Canadian-American mathematician and former professional football guard. He played college football at Penn State and was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in the fifth round of the 2014 NFL draft. Urschel played his entire NFL career with Baltimore before announcing his retirement on July 27, 2017, at 26 years old.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Parker</span> Australian comedian and mathematician (born 1980)

Matthew Thomas Parker is an Australian recreational mathematician, author, comedian, YouTube personality and science communicator based in the United Kingdom. His book Humble Pi was the first mathematics book in the UK to be a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller. Parker was the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He is a former teacher and has helped popularise mathematics via his tours and videos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tadashi Tokieda</span> Japanese mathematician

Tadashi Tokieda is a Japanese mathematician, working in mathematics and physics. He is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University; previously he was a fellow and Director of Studies of Mathematics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is also very active in inventing, collecting, and studying toys that uniquely reveal and explore real-world surprises of mathematics and physics. In comparison with most mathematicians, he had an unusual path in life: he started as a painter, and then became a classical philologist, before switching to mathematics. Tokieda is considered a creative and fun person, giving excellent talks and explanations where he shows and teaches mathematical concepts in a simple, entertaining and beautiful way.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Fry</span> British academic and TV and radio presenter (born 1984)

Hannah Fry is a British academic, author and radio and television presenter. She is Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. In January 2024, Fry was appointed to be the new president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. Her work has included studies of patterns of human behaviour, such as interpersonal relationships and dating, and how mathematics can apply to them. Fry delivered the 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and has presented several programmes for the BBC, including The Secret Genius of Modern Life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dianna Cowern</span> American science educator and YouTuber

Dianna Leilani Cowern is an American science communicator. She is a YouTuber; she uploads videos to her YouTube channel Physics Girl explaining various physical phenomena. She worked in partnership with the PBS Digital Studios from 2015 until 2020, when she discontinued her partnership. She has collaborations with other YouTube personalities, including fellow science communicator Derek Muller of the channel Veritasium, maker Simone Giertz, and mathematics animator Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown.

Numberphile is an educational YouTube channel featuring videos that explore topics from a variety of fields of mathematics. In the early days of the channel, each video focused on a specific number, but the channel has since expanded its scope, featuring videos on more advanced mathematical concepts such as Fermat's Last Theorem, the Riemann hypothesis and Kruskal's tree theorem. The videos are produced by Brady Haran, a former BBC video journalist and creator of Periodic Videos, Sixty Symbols, and several other YouTube channels. Videos on the channel feature several university professors, maths communicators and famous mathematicians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Booker (mathematician)</span> British mathematician

Andrew Richard Booker is a British mathematician who is currently Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Bristol. He is an analytic number theorist known for his work on L-functions of automorphic forms and his contributions to the sums of three cubes problem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federico Ardila</span> Colombian mathematician

Federico Ardila is a Colombian mathematician and DJ who researches combinatorics and specializes in matroid theory. Ardila graduated from MIT with a B.Sc. in mathematics in 1998 and obtained a Ph.D. in 2003 under the supervision of Richard P. Stanley in the same institution. Ardila is currently a professor at the San Francisco State University and additionally holds an adjunct position at the University of Los Andes in Colombia.

Edmund Orme Harriss is a British mathematician, writer and artist. Since 2010 he has been at the Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences at The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas where he is an Assistant Professor of Arts & Sciences (ARSC) and Mathematical Sciences (MASC). He does research in the Geometry of Tilings and Patterns, a branch of Convex and Discrete Geometry. He is the discoverer of the spiral that bears his name.

Fredo Durand is a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where he helps lead CSAIL's Computer Graphics Group.

References

  1. Grant Sanderson The Hope Diamond
  2. "FAQ/Contact". 3Blue1Brown. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  3. 1 2 "About 3Blue1Brown". YouTube.
  4. 1 2 "3Blue1Brown Monthly YouTube Statistics - Socialblade.com". socialblade.com. Retrieved September 28, 2018.
  5. "Grant Sanderson on Twitter". Twitter. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  6. "About". 3Blue1Brown. Retrieved October 8, 2023.
  7. 3blue1brown (August 13, 2015), "What does it feel like to invent math?", YouTube, retrieved November 28, 2022
  8. 1 2 "About the author". 3Blue1Brown. Archived from the original on May 26, 2020. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
  9. "18.S191 Introduction to Computational Thinking". MIT. Fall 2020. Archived from the original on February 28, 2024.
  10. "Course Materials | Introduction to Computational Thinking | Mathematics". MIT OpenCourseWare. Archived from the original on October 12, 2023. Retrieved September 17, 2023.
  11. Goslin, Austen (February 7, 2022). "Wordle's best starting word found by YouTuber using math". Polygon . Archived from the original on October 12, 2023.
  12. Molina, Brett (February 8, 2022). "These are the best starting words to use to play Wordle, according to a math expert". USA Today . Archived from the original on April 18, 2023.
  13. Wei, Patricia (January 24, 2020), "3Blue1Brown creator Grant Sanderson '15 talks engaging with math using stories and visuals", The Stanford Daily, archived from the original on March 12, 2024
  14. Kapadia, Huzefa (April 23, 2018), "EP 159: 3Blue1Brown on How to Show the Natural Beauty of Mathematics", Scalar Learning, archived from the original on September 22, 2020, retrieved February 7, 2020
  15. "Featured Speakers". SIGGRAPH 2021. Retrieved October 15, 2021.
  16. "What can algorithms teach us about education?". celerit.nl. November 30, 2022. Archived from the original on December 1, 2022.
  17. 1 2 "FAQ/Contact". 3Blue1Brown. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  18. "Grant Sanderson - 3Blue1Brown - Math Education & Programming Animation Software". Showmaker's. January 12, 2018. Archived from the original on July 12, 2019. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
  19. "How Cryptocurrencies Really Work". Popular Mechanics. July 10, 2017. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  20. "A Nitty-Gritty Explanation of How Neural Networks Really Work". Popular Mechanics. October 6, 2017. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  21. Weiner, Sophie (August 13, 2017). "Here's a Cool Way to Visualize Higher Dimensions". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  22. "Mathematicians say preventative measures could have huge impact on coronavirus spread". ABC News. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  23. Sanderson, Grant. "How Pi Connects Colliding Blocks to a Quantum Search Algorithm". Quanta Magazine. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  24. "The Hope Diamond (with 3blue1brown)", Numberphile Podcast, retrieved August 22, 2019 via YouTube
  25. "Becoming a Renowned YouTube Educator, with Grant Sanderson" (podcast). AfterMath. Art of Problem Solving. Retrieved February 7, 2020.
  26. "3Blue1Brown & Mathematics". Siraj Raval Podcast #3. Retrieved August 22, 2019 via YouTube.
  27. "Episode 14: 3Blue1Brown - Math Education & Programming Animation Software" (podcast). Showmakers. January 12, 2018 via YouTube.
  28. "3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics", Artificial Intelligence: AI Podcast, retrieved January 19, 2020 via YouTube

Further reading