PickVidsBest Recreational & visual math Videos
The 141 Recreational & visual math videos here were recommended by different people across different months. Choose by who it is for: 35 introductory, 22 intermediate, 84 for a general viewer, and 0 for someone who wants the harder derivation. Most of them are an explainer. What they share is that one picture or analogy is used to supply a missing concept. Channels you will keep seeing include 3Blue1Brown, Numberphile, Stand-up Maths.
Sloane's Gap - Numberphile
A Numberphile video with Dr James Grime on Sloane's Gap, the observation that integers in the OEIS are not evenly represented and some numbers are underrepresented.
Do these scatter plots reveal fraudulent vote-switching in Michigan?
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths examines scatter plots that were claimed to show fraudulent vote-switching in Michigan's 2020 election.
How We Should Vote (Range Voting)
A six-minute explainer from Undefined Behavior on range (score) voting.
Why do Biden's votes not follow Benford's Law?
Matt Parker examines claims that Biden's 2020 vote counts violate Benford's Law, explaining the law and why it often does not apply to precinct-level election data.
Strange Spheres in Higher Dimensions - Numberphile
Matt Parker on Numberphile explains the strange properties of spheres in higher dimensions, such as how they poke out of their bounding boxes.
Clutching at Random Straws, Matt Parker | LMS Popular Lectures 2010
Matt Parker's LMS popular lecture on how seemingly incredible results can be meaningless random patterns.
Backpropagation calculus | Deep Learning Chapter 4
3Blue1Brown's chapter 4 on deep learning gives a more formal, symbol-based account of backpropagation calculus, connecting the intuition from the previous chapter to the math found in textbooks and code.
Pentagons Are Terrible at One Thing
A CGP Grey video about why pentagons are bad at tiling and why hexagons are so special, in his usual playful style.
The Josephus Problem - Numberphile
Numberphile with Daniel Erman on the Josephus problem, where people in a circle are eliminated in turn.
Solving Wordle using information theory
3Blue1Brown uses Wordle as an excuse to teach information theory and entropy, building a solver that picks guesses by expected information and incorporating word frequencies.
An astonishing old calculator - Numberphile
Cliff Stoll shows and explains his two Friden EC-132 electronic calculators for Numberphile.
5040 and other Anti-Prime Numbers - Numberphile
Numberphile's James Grime discusses highly composite numbers, nicknamed anti-primes, which have more factors than any smaller number, using 5040 as the central example.
Klein Bottles - Numberphile
Numberphile interviews Cliff Stoll about Klein bottles, the one-sided surfaces with no inside or outside.
Exponential growth and epidemics
A short 3Blue1Brown primer on exponential and logistic growth, using early COVID-19 case data to show how epidemics grow and eventually level off.
Some light quantum mechanics (with minutephysics)
3Blue1Brown, in collaboration with minutephysics, introduces the math of superposition and quantum states using polarized light.
How An Infinite Hotel Ran Out Of Room
Veritasium shows how Hilbert's infinite hotel can still run out of room, using infinite buses of guests.
What is Euler's formula actually saying? | Ep. 4 Lockdown live math
A 3Blue1Brown live lockdown math episode asking what Euler's formula e^(pi i) is actually saying.
The Trinity Hall Prime - Numberphile
Numberphile with Tadashi Tokieda on the Trinity Hall Prime, a prime number whose digits form a picture of the college's coat of arms, left as a gift by a departing mathematician.
Group theory, abstraction, and the 196,883-dimensional monster
3Blue1Brown introduces group theory and abstract groups, then builds toward classification of finite simple groups and the enormous Monster group with its 196,883 dimensions.
Deepest Mandelbrot Set Zoom Animation ever - a New Record! 10^275 (2.1E275 or 2^915)
A Mandelbrot set zoom animation reaching a magnification of about 2.1x10^275, claimed as the deepest at the time (January 2010).
Why is there no equation for the perimeter of an ellipse‽
Stand-up Maths explains why the perimeter of an ellipse has no simple closed-form equation, showing the infinite series and presenting approximation formulas.
Darts in Higher Dimensions (with 3blue1brown) - Numberphile
Numberphile talks with Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown about a darts puzzle with a shrinking bullseye.
Why do people keep getting this wrong‽
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths explains why people keep making the same mistake with millions and billions, using a Bloomberg cash calculator example.
The Unbeatable Game from the 60s: Dr NIM
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths explains single-pile Nim and the trick that wins it, using Dr NIM, a 1960s mechanical plastic computer that plays perfectly.