Update
Added 2020-07-31 04:48:43 +0000 UTCHey everyone,
It's been a few weeks since the last video, and the one I'm working on now still looks like it might take a while, so I thought I'd pass along a little update.
The current project is on Hamming codes and error correction. Originally I thought this would be a quick follow up to the chessboard puzzle, but I got sucked into reading a lot more about error correction in general. All said and done, this particular video will still stay focussed on Hamming codes, but I did go through an embarrassing number of rewrites toying with a broader approach covering more error correction tactics. At the very least, I will be sure to include a high-level intuition for Reed-Solomon codes, which are the ones used all over the place in practice, but I think the message I'm hoping to convey with this one will be done best if we cover one algorithm very well, rather than hitting too many.
One bit of unexpectedly fun reading that came out of looking into the background of this topic was Hamming's book "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering", which I suspect many of you may enjoy. At the very least, the essay at the end "You and your research" carries a message a lot of people, both in and out of research, would take inspiration from. The whole book is an unusual but wonderful blend of technical exposition with thoughtful reflection on engineering in general.
Of course, I have not forgotten about the next installment of "probabilities of probabilities", but some of my favorite projects from the past, which seem to have resonated with people the most, were the ones where I let myself get sucked into one particular topic even at the risk of delaying certain promises.
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In other news, I was asked to help teach a remote course from MIT this coming semester on "Computational Thinking". It's being organized by Alan Edelman, one of the co-creators of the Julia language. It's unclear exactly what role I'll play, I'll let you know as the course comes together, but it will involve some mixture of lecturing and guidance on the overall explanatory structure of the topics. One thing I wanted to be sure of was that what we make for this course is openly available for anyone in the world the view, so in my mind, I'm viewing almost like an extended collaboration as I might do with another YouTuber.
What exactly is computational thinking, I hear you ask? Again, I'll keep you better up to date as the course approaches, but it will involve a diversity of topics in creating scientific models, say in modeling an epidemic or producing CGI imagery of a black hole.
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For any teachers who were curious about the setup for the live streams we did, I wrote up a short description: https://www.3blue1brown.com/blog/livestream-setup
Also, I'm not sure how many of you follow 3blue1brown on twitter, but occasionally I like to share little interesting mathematical snippets that I come across there, as its infinitely lighter weight than creating a full video. Here are two threads from the last month.
On a surprising "pattern": https://twitter.com/3blue1brown/status/1284941647734640641
On Graham's constant: https://twitter.com/3blue1brown/status/1280559258652696576
For any quantum computing enthusiasts among you, I had fun on this thread trying to think of what visuals could make quantum teleportation more "discoverable", in light of a very clever simplification from Michael Niesen on the topic: https://twitter.com/3blue1brown/status/1282903549639159808
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While I'm here, I do have a quick question for you on behalf of a friend of a friend whose trying to start an alternate platform for sustained community support, MyVIP. One bit of feedback that might be helpful, as people who support some of the creators they follow, would be to know whether any of you have ever thought it would be nice to have an alternative to Patreon? And if so, why?
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Lastly, I thought I'd pass along some pretty great videos from the broader world of math YouTube in this last month. That world is replete with excellent content, so the best I can hope for is to scratch the surface, but I believe you'll thoroughly enjoy these ones.
Stand-up Maths on the intermediate axis theorem: https://youtu.be/l51LcwHOW7s
Mathologer on shrink proofs: https://youtu.be/sDfzCIWpS7Q
And one from a relatively young channel that uses the same animation software I made for 3blue1brown, VCubingX on Lebesgue Integration: https://youtu.be/LDNDTOVnKJk
All the best,
-Grant
Comments
It's awesome that you're getting involved with MIT online training! I was literally just contemplating where I could fit this course into my course schedule next year: Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science (6.0002). It that the one you're doing??? If you help with the "explanatory structure" I would be infinitely more likely to understand and remember it. :)
Karin Rodrigues
2020-08-15 06:01:58 +0000 UTCThanks for the links. FWIW, the 3blue1brown account is grandfathered in to Patreon's older cheaper pricing model.
3blue1brown
2020-08-02 22:38:22 +0000 UTCHaha, groooaan!
3blue1brown
2020-08-02 22:35:15 +0000 UTCThe idea is that Patreon's cut doesn't take into account processing fees, so is less "transparent" in that sense, whereas this one does.
3blue1brown
2020-08-02 22:32:56 +0000 UTCThanks, I didn't realize it was on YouTube as well.
3blue1brown
2020-08-02 22:31:44 +0000 UTCI am sorry about the probability delay. Hopefully to those watching in the future, the discontinuity of production times won't matter too much, but I know how frustrating it can be to those watching during the actual production time. In this case, my hope is that deferring to the topics which are most compelling to write translates into better content for the viewer.
3blue1brown
2020-08-02 22:31:17 +0000 UTCThanks for the notes! Yes, it's such a wonderful topic. Even though I won't get into the more modern versions in this video, what I love is how surprisingly deep math is involved in a lot of these codes, even the very earliest ones like Golay codes have close ties to fundamental ideas in Group theory.
3blue1brown
2020-08-02 22:29:14 +0000 UTCThanks for the update and not just leaving us hamming.
2020-08-01 20:24:29 +0000 UTCAs people already mentioned, there are a number of alternatives to Patreon. I'll mention two: 1. sponsus.com Created in response to some morally questionable decisions Patreon made in the past. Aims to be as inclusive as possible. Also cheaper than Patreon. 2. locals.com Aims to be as open as possible: open source, open communication. Each creator's page feels a bit like a mini-social network. Also cheaper than Patreon.
Anton Molyboha
2020-08-01 05:41:41 +0000 UTCThe βYou and Your Researchβ was a great read. Thanks for sharing!
2020-07-31 16:43:52 +0000 UTCI think exactly the same way about bundling multiple small payments being something really useful.
Vincent Zalzal
2020-07-31 11:50:30 +0000 UTCThanks for such an interesting and detailed update! I had a colleague that worked on a library for decoding 2d barcodes by computer vision, like QR codes, and he was talking sometimes about Reed-Solomon codes and Galois fields. Seems very interesting. Those encodings are quite clever!
Vincent Zalzal
2020-07-31 11:47:35 +0000 UTCOne of the big advantages that Patreon holds for me is that it consolidates a lot of small donations into a single transaction. Donating $1 to 20 different creators would be a nightmare of diminishing returns and transaction fees, but getting to do it in a single $20 payment makes it generally more plausible. Sadly, that does mean they have something of a monopoly and I'd be less attracted to alternatives. I think the only time I've found myself wanting an alternative was when they briefly stopped bundling transactions and botched communication about the decision. In theory, I do like the idea of alternative platforms, but in practice, I doubt I'd use them unless they became fairly ubiquitous.
Rachel
2020-07-31 07:58:43 +0000 UTCThanks for the mention Grant! The Patreon alternative seems promising! I like the tip thing, it's something I don't think Patreon has. I don't know how the economics of something like this works, but the 15% cut compared to the 10% cut on Patreon is kind of a bummer. A small thing I wish Patreon had was the ability to have every patron have a different billing cycle.
2020-07-31 06:56:23 +0000 UTCEqually powerful is watching the actual lecture from the legend himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw
jpchen
2020-07-31 06:15:06 +0000 UTCOh no! I thought "few the COVID related videos are over, we can finally go back to the" probability of probabilities" series. I guess I'll have to wait a bit more. To answer your question about a Patreon alternative : 1. There are some. What we miss is a gathering platform where we can manage all our supporting accounts (Patreon, tipeee, KickStarter, etc.) it's starting to get pretty rough too figured out where I am giving my money to you creators. (then tweak a few parameters to do the same for Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and the others). 2. Maybe I misunderstood, but I think youtube is also launching this kind of platform. Competing against Alphabet Inc. is tough! 3. MAKE A POLL of you want to ask a question π.
Oltarus
2020-07-31 06:01:23 +0000 UTC
