About the Channel

3blue1brown, or 3b1b for those who prefer less of a tongue-twister, centers around presenting math with a visuals-first approach. Rather than first deciding on a lesson then putting illustrations to it for the sake of having a video, almost all projects start with a particular visualization, with the narrative and storyline then revolving around this image.

Topics themselves tend to fall into one of two categories:

• Lessons on topics people might be seeking out, like linear algebra, neural networks, calculus, Fourier transforms, the math of bitcoin, quantum mechanics, etc.
• Problems in math which many people may not have heard of, and which seem really hard at first, but where some shift in perspective makes it both doable and beautiful. I try to keep track of these here.

Loosely speaking, the first category motivates math by its usefulness, and the second motivates math as an art form. But of course, the line dividing these two is easily blurred.

About the Author

My name is Grant Sanderson. This may come as a surprise, but I'm pretty into math. More specifically, though, I've always been fascinated by the way shifting perspectives on a single topic can make difficult ideas more graspable, and reveal connections between seemingly disparate ideas. A lot of attention is given to discovering new math, or to teaching known perspectives, but not enough emphasis is placed on finding new perspectives on known math.

While I'm no software engineer these days, much of this passion for math translated to a love for programming and computer science as well; a common side effect of mathophila. In my case, the affliction began when I started at Stanford as an undergrad. On the one hand, this is natural since CS is an application of math, but more deeply than that, it's a way to turn math into physical reality, in much the same way that the study of physics does the reverse. This makes it an unparalleled medium for actually communicating the kinds of perspectives that excite me the most, which brings us to 3b1b.

3blue1brown, and the animation engine manim behind it, began as side projects as I was finishing up my studies in math and CS at Stanford in 2015. From there, I was fortunate enough to be able to start forging a less traditional path into math outreach thanks to Khan Academy's talent search, which led me to make videos and write articles about multivariable calculus for them until the end of 2016. Since then, my full attention has been on 3b1b.

While the vast majority of my work since then has been on the main videos, along the way I've had the pleasure of contributing to numerous other outlets in education and outreach including Quanta, Manning, Udacity, Itempool, and most recently I've helped teach a course with the Julia Lab at MIT. Even on YouTube, some of my favorite projects in the past years have been the ones done outside my own channel in collaboration with others, including videos with Numberphile, Stand-up Maths, MinutePhysics, Physics Girl, Ben Eater, Smarter Every Day, and others.

If you're curious to hear more about my background and thoughts surrounding these projects, podcasts feel like a warmer medium than about pages, so I might point you to this one I did with Brady Haran, or this one with Lex Fridman.

Contributors

James Schloss

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Josh Pullen

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River Way

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Kurt Bruns

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