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.
Euler's formula with introductory group theory
3Blue1Brown builds intuition for Euler's formula, e^(pi i) = -1, using the core ideas of group theory.
How I animate 3Blue1Brown | A Manim demo with Ben Sparks
Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown shows his workflow for animating math videos with Manim, with Ben Sparks.
Why It's Impossible to Tune a Piano
A minutephysics video explaining why a piano cannot be perfectly tuned, comparing equal temperament with just intonation and the math of harmonics.
A Million Dollars vs A Billion Dollars, Visualized: A Road Trip
Tom Scott makes the difference between a million and a billion dollars tangible by using distance on a road trip instead of volume.
The Best (and Worst) Ways to Shuffle Cards - Numberphile
Persi Diaconis explains on Numberphile the mathematics of card shuffling, including why seven riffle shuffles are needed to randomize a deck and how different shuffles compare.
Infinite fractions and the most irrational number
Mathologer uses continued fractions to show why the golden ratio is the most irrational number, comparing it with root 2, e and pi and pointing to where this shows up in nature.
Does "land area" assume a country is perfectly flat?
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths asks whether a country's reported land area accounts for hills and mountains, working through how surface area depends on the resolution of elevation data.
Ptolemy and Homer (Simpson)
A short animation reconstructing a planet's looping orbit using Ptolemy's epicycles and deferents, with the epicycles tracing out the face of Homer Simpson.
Terence Tao on the cosmic distance ladder
Terence Tao and Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown walk through the cosmic distance ladder, showing how humans measured distances from the Earth to the Moon, Sun, planets and beyond.
How Many Holes Does a Human Have?
Vsauce asks how many holes a human has and uses topology to show the answer depends on what counts as a hole, with animations and expert input.
Category Theory in Life - Eugenia Cheng
Eugenia Cheng gives the opening keynote at Lambda World 2017, presenting category theory as very abstract algebra whose abstraction gives it broad applicability.
A4 Paper Is Too Perfect
CGP Grey explains the elegant ratio of A4 and the metric paper sizes, then zooms out across scales from the Planck length to the observable universe.
Reynolds Number - Numberphile
Numberphile with Tom Crawford of Oxford explains the Reynolds number, the second of three videos on Navier-Stokes and fluid flow, with demonstrations of laminar versus turbulent behavior.
Spherical Geometry Is Stranger Than Hyperbolic - Hyperbolica Devlog #2
CodeParade's short devlog on how spherical geometry looks in 2D and 3D and why it feels so unusual, part of the Hyperbolica series on a non-Euclidean game.
Bayes theorem, the geometry of changing beliefs
3Blue1Brown presents Bayes' theorem through a geometric diagram, showing how evidence should update beliefs.
Why is this number everywhere?
Veritasium explores why the number 37 turns up so often, drawing on Tom Magliery's collection of 37 sightings and a poll of about 200,000 people asked to pick a random number.
Surreal Numbers (writing the first book) - Numberphile
A Numberphile interview with Donald Knuth about how he came to write the first book on surreal numbers after a lunch with John Conway.
Extremely Large Numbers 1 - Introduction
The first video in a series on extremely large numbers, introducing the topic with examples.
ASTOUNDING: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + ... = -1/12
A Numberphile video in which physicists Tony Padilla and Ed Copeland show a seemingly astounding result that 1+2+3+4+...
A simple trick to design your own solutions for Rubik's cubes
Mathologer shows a simple idea, the commutator, that lets anyone who can solve the first layer design their own full Rubik's cube solution.
What Happens When Maths Goes Wrong? - with Matt Parker
Matt Parker's Royal Institution talk based on his book Humble Pi, covering everyday mathematical mistakes and spurious patterns that went wrong in engineering and software.
Math Magic
Vsauce explores math through card tricks and big numbers, including an animation of how enormous 52 factorial, the number of deck orderings, really is.
MENACE: the pile of matchboxes which can learn
Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths demonstrates MENACE, Donald Michie's 1961 machine made of matchboxes that learns to play noughts and crosses through reinforcement.
Stand-up comedy routine about Spreadsheets
Matt Parker's stand-up routine about spreadsheets, taken from the Festival of the Spoken Nerd DVD Full Frontal Nerdity.