3Blue1Brown is a math

YouTube channel YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San B ...

created and run by Grant Sanderson. The channel focuses on teaching higher mathematics from a visual perspective, and on the process of discovery and

inquiry-based learning Inquiry-based learning (also spelled as enquiry-based learning in British English) is a form of active learning that starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios. It contrasts with traditional education, which generally relies on the teach ...

in mathematics, which Sanderson calls "inventing math".

Grant Sanderson

Early life and education

Sanderson graduated from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 2015 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics. He worked for

Khan Academy Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by Sal Khan. Its goal is to create a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short video lessons. Its website also includes suppl ...

from 2015 to 2016 as part of their content fellowship program, producing videos and articles about

multivariable calculus Multivariable calculus (also known as multivariate calculus) is the extension of calculus in one variable to calculus with functions of several variables: the differentiation and integration of functions involving multiple variables ('' mult ...

, after which he started focusing his full attention on 3Blue1Brown.

Career

In 2020, Grant Sanderson became one of the creators and lecturers of the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

course ''Introduction to Computational Thinking'', together with

Alan Edelman Alan Stuart Edelman (born June 1963) is an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Principal Investigator at the MIT Computer Science and Ar ...

, David Sanders, James Schloss, and Benoit Forget. The course uses the

Julia programming language Julia is a high-level, general-purpose dynamic programming language, designed to be fast and productive, for e.g. data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, modeling and simulation, most commonly used for numerical analysis and c ...

and Grant Sanderson's animations to explain various topics:

convolutions In mathematics (in particular, functional analysis), convolution is a mathematical operation on two functions f and g that produces a third function f*g, as the integral of the product of the two functions after one is reflected about the y-axi ...

image processing An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be displayed through other media, including a pr ...

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating Graphics, graphic or visual Representation (arts), representations of a large amount of complex quantitative and qualitative data and i ...

, epidemic modelling, ray tracing, introduction to

climate modelling Numerical climate models (or climate system models) are mathematical models that can simulate the interactions of important drivers of climate. These drivers are the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. Scientists use climate models to stu ...

, ocean modelling, and the algorithms that lie behind these topics. In February 2022, Sanderson determined that the best starting word in the game ''

Wordle ''Wordle'' is a web-based word game created and developed by the Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle. In the game, players have six attempts to guess a five-letter word, receiving feedback through colored tiles that indicate correct letters a ...

'' was CRANE using

information theory Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...

. 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. In January 2020, Sanderson delivered a talk in ''An Evening with Grant Sanderson'', hosted by the Stanford Speakers Bureau. 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. In August 2021, Sanderson was one of several featured speakers at

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

2021. 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). 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 A graphics library or graphics API is a program library designed to aid in rendering computer graphics to a monitor. This typically involves providing optimized versions of functions that handle common rendering tasks. This can be done purely in ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

, which eventually became the

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

project Manim (Mathematical Animation Engine). 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.

Videos, podcasts and other media

3Blue1Brown videos are themed around visualizing math, including pure math such as

number theory Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers and arithmetic functions. Number theorists study prime numbers as well as the properties of mathematical objects constructed from integers (for example ...

and

topology Topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of a Mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformat ...

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 macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Grapher Grapher is a computer program bundled with macOS since version 10.4 that is able to create 2D and 3D graphs from simple and complex equations. It includes a variety of samples ranging from differential equations to 3D-rendered Toroids and ...

application. The channel's videos have been featured in ''

Popular Mechanics ''Popular Mechanics'' (often abbreviated as ''PM'' or ''PopMech'') is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do it yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation an ...

'', ''

ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to: * ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation * ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company ABC News may a ...

'', and ''

Quanta Magazine ''Quanta Magazine'' is an editorially independent online publication of the Simons Foundation covering developments in physics, mathematics, biology and computer science. History ''Quanta Magazine'' was initially launched as ''Simons Science ...

''. Sanderson has appeared on numerous notable podcasts, including

Numberphile ''Numberphile'' is an Educational entertainment, 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 channe ...

Lex Fridman Alexei "Lex" Fridman (; born 15 August 1983) is an American computer scientist and podcaster. Since 2018, he has hosted the ''Lex Fridman Podcast'', where he interviews notable figures from various fields such as science, technology, sports, and ...

, the

Art of Problem Solving Richard Rusczyk (); born September 21, 1971) is an American mathematician. He was the founder and chief executive officer of Art of Problem Solving Inc. and a co-author of the ''Art of Problem Solving'' textbooks. Rusczyk was a national Mathcou ...

, Siraj Raval, and Showmakers.

Manim

Manim is a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

animation engine released under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

. It was initially developed by Grant Sanderson in early 2015. There is also a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

maintained by the community that differs from Sanderson's version and includes improvements.

References

External links

* * {{GitHub, 3b1b/manim English-language YouTube channels Mathematics popularizers Science-related YouTube channels Education-related YouTube channels