3blue1brown

Bonus Dimensional Puzzles

I just uploaded a finalized version of the latest video, "Why 4d geometry makes me sad". There were a couple of other puzzles on my list that could have followed this theme, and I thought I'd throw together a quick and casual bonus video showing two more for everyone here, as a thanks for the support. Enjoy!

New video early view

The next video includes a few truly delightful geometry puzzles, and I wanted to share an early cut with you now. There are some blank spots for animations, including the entirety of the last three minutes or so, but the core content is there.

Let me know what you think, and I'll factor it in during final edits in the next few days.

A 7-minute LLM explainer (part of a Computer History Museum exhibit)

Earlier this year, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View asked if I could help put together a short visual explainer for how large language models work. At that time, I was planning to cover LLMs and transformers on 3blue1brown anyway, and I love the museum, so this was an easy yes.

The target audience is a bit different from the usual 3b1b project, in that we want to assume no tec...

Manim Demo (early view)

The most common question about 3blue1brown is how I animate the videos, so I thought I'd finally put together some kind of video to post on the main channel about it. Here's an early view.

Repo with all the videos: https://github.com/3b1b/videos 
Repo for manim: 2024-10-09 18:21:39 +0000 UTC View Post

On StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Recently I had the joy of joining Neil deGrasse Tyson's podcast. We talk about what math is, information theory, fractals, and more. Enjoy!

Holograms! (Early view)

This is one of the most fun projects I've worked on. This early draft I'm sharing is already one of the longest pieces I've posted, but there's still more to do.

As always with these early releases, let me know what errors you catch, and which parts of the lesson could be clearer. For this particular project, I also have a more targeted question. I'm debating whether to add the final piec...

A cute probability fact

On a recent UK trip, Matt Parker shared this little fact with me. He was making a video about it, so I made an animation to help explain it, which I figured would make for a nice short video.

This is an early view for patrons, I'll likely put it up on various social media sites when Matt posts whatever he's working on.

Next transformer chapter (final version)

Here's the final version of Chapter 7 of the neural net series, about the multilayer perception blocks in transformers, as motivated by the question of how LLMs may store facts. The plan is to make it public tomorrow, let me know if you catch any little errors in the meantime.

No Patron charge for July

Hey folks,

July was a busy month for me, but unfortunately not in a way that translates very directly to new 3blue1brown content. Since progress was also a big slow in June, I’m pausing the subscriptions on the page such that Patrons won’t be charged for July. I want supporters here to feel confident their funds go toward new lessons on the channel, and the most honest reflection of t...

Half draft of the next transformer video

Hey folks, above is an early view for the first half of the next chapter on transformers.

This project has been taking much longer than I'd like, which is ironic given that this topic is in principle much simpler than the others. I've gone through several drafts here, but am narrowing in on a final one, and wanted to share the animated first half that I have so far.

The main goal is...

Harvey Mudd Commencement Speech 2024

I had the joy and the honor of being invited to give Harvey Mudd’s commencement address this year. In it, I explore a 5-dimension subspace of the vector space of all advice orthogonal to the “Follow your dreams” vector.

Ain't No Twin Primes

Hey folks,

First, I want to say a very warm hello and thanks to those of you who recently joined this Patreon after the first LLM videos. I'm grateful to have you here and look forward to hearing your input on new early releases. More of that series will be coming soon!

In the meantime, here's something completely different. This weekend I joined Matt Parker in New York for an event...

Attention in transformers (early view)

Hey folks, here's a draft of the next chapter about Transformers focussed on the attention mechanism. (Note, I've now updated it based on many comments below, thanks for the feedback!)

Also, the first chapter is now public, so feel free to share that with anyone you think might like it, thanks again for all the feedback...

First chapter for transformers (draft)

Hey folks,

This is a draft for the first of three chapters I'll add to the miniseries on deep learning, about transformers. I imagine the title for this first part to be something like "But what is a GPT?", where the goal is to offer a starting point for someone with minimal background knowledge, but who is curious to see the details.

As always, let me know if there are things you'd...

February update

Hey everyone,

I'm always disappointed if the end of a month rolls around and I don't have a video for you. I've been chugging along at the animations for the transformers project I mentioned in the last post. It's a big one, and in my current plans, I have it split up into three separate videos...

Translations, Transformers, and Tilings

Hey everyone,

There have been three main projects on deck for the last month: Two new videos, and an effort to get videos into different languages.

Translations

The video above shows some of what I have in mind here. If any of you are multilingual and want to help out, here are a few ways you can do so:

• Take a look at the files in 2024-02-01 21:20:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Anyone at the JMM?

Happy New Year!

I'll be at the JMM in San Francisco this week. In case any of you happen to be there and would like to meet up, please do feel free to drop me a line at grant@3blue1brown.com

Also, and I suppose relatedly, for one of the planned projects in 2024 I'm curious to learn more about the history of elliptic curves through the 19th and 20th centuries. If this happens to fall...

Written versions of Calculus, YouTube shorts, and other lesson supplements

Hey everyone,

I wanted to pass along a few quick updates on a few projects that supplement the core lessons. My main focus continues to be researching/animating the main videos, these are all projects that can be cleanly outsourced, thanks predominantly to the contributions of Patrons like you.

Written version of the Calculus series

Thanks to the contributions of Kurt Bruns,...

X-rays "faster" than the speed of light, and more refractive index questions

Hey folks, here's an early view for the follow-up video about the refractive index, which essentially goes through a few of the questions folks asked here on Patreon.

The prism video is live!

Finally, after two months, it's out. If there's anyone you know who you think may enjoy this lesson, do consider sharing it with them.

Based on Patron comments, I ended up adding a bit more to the explanation, and pulling out the section about other questions on the index of refraction into a separate video, which should be out fairly shortly.

Next video, early view

Hey folks, here's an early look at the upcoming video on the index of refraction.

A few sections, especially towards the end, don't have graphics yet. I know several things I'd like to change about the progression and framing, and since I'm planning to just do another recording of the narration, certain sections don't make sense to put graphics to until I know if/how they'll exist in the ...

Index of refraction is on its way, just later than estimated

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the thoughtful questions related to the index of refraction. When I solicited them in a previous post, I had naively thought I'd be done with a draft to share within a week. I just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know things are coming along nicely, but there...

If you happen to be in London November 20th

There's a nerd comedy event I'll be joining while I'm in London later this month, An Evening of Unnecessary Detail, run by Helen Arney, Matt Parker, and Steve Mould. You can read more about it here, it's the same event where I did the "How they fool ya'" song a few years ago.

For an...

Any questions related to the index of refraction?

I'm aiming to get a draft of the next video to you within the next week. It digs into the math behind why light slows down as it passes through certain media, like water or glass. In particular, it aims to give a solid intuition for why the amount it slows down depends on the color of the light, which when I was a student was just sort of handed down as a fact from on high. This, in tu...

Finishing up SoME3

Hey folks,

This year we ran the third iteration of the Summer of Math Exposition. For any unfamiliar, see the winner announcements in 2021 and 2022. Above you'll find a draft for the announcement this year, and pl...

Fundamentals of light, barber pole part 2 (early view)

Hey folks,

As promised, here's the follow-up to the last post, beginning to explain the diagonal stripes of color we see by beginning from the fundamentals of what light is. There's one to-do stub for an animation left in there, but I wanted to get it uploaded to you for feedback by tonight, with the ai...

The barber pole (early view)

Hi everyone,

Here's an early view for the next video, it's part 1 of 3 for a description of what happens when you shine polarized light through sugar water.

I'll be sending out a draft for part 2 as well very shortly.

--

Edit Thanks for the comments, the final version is now up to the public, feel free to share it if you think others would enjoy it!

A draft video on proving the central limit theorem (which I don't particularly love)

Hey folks,

Last month I thought I'd put together a "quick" video offering a sketch for a proof of the central limit theorem. I edited it together most of the way, with several to-do stubs for animations I could throw in to help clarify. When I stepped back, though, I felt like the underlying structure could use some improvement beyond a few clarifying animations.

I'm sharing this pa...

Why the "central limit" is a normal distribution

Here's an early view for the next video, capping off the mini-series about normal distributions. I have just one to-do stub left in there for myself, but let me know if you catch anything else that should change before the final release.

Revisiting Moser's circle problem

One of the earliest videos on this channel was about Moser's circle problem, a famous puzzle where the answers seem to follow a certain pattern, but one which turns out to be misleading.

I thought it might be nice to re-record the video, since the sound quality and pacing of early videos were really not great, and the problem has so many nice lessons within it. Also, posting the "How they...