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Answer by PrePostFacto30

David Metzler's "Ridiculously Huge Numbers" (YouTube)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/davidmetzler/playlists

Description: A comprehensive review of how mathematicians think about and notate huge numbers. 

Positives: 

  • Metzler starts with concepts and notation that most high school students and even precocious middle school students have seen and works "up" from there.
  • Each video is relatively short and covers a "huge number" topic or two that most mathematically-inclined people can follow.

Negatives:

  • It's a long series, and after the first few videos, the concepts and notation become quite esoteric. 
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Ege Erdil10

Thanks for the post, I'll take a look at the channel when I have the time. It looks interesting in a "recreational maths" kind of way.

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by Ege Erdil
1 min read
A
48

24

Inspired by Yair Halberstadt's similar question about non-textbooks, I'm asking this question to see if people have any videos that they would want to recommend to others.

The criterion is that the videos must be informative or educational. I don't want a playlist of your favorite songs, but one of your favorite math talks would be fine.

Other than that, the answers can take any form: the videos can be recordings of talks, interviews, panel discussions or educational YouTube videos; they can be linked wholesale in a public playlist or listed individually, you can post a single video and give reasons why people should watch it, you can post an entire channel if you think all of their videos are worth watching, et cetera.

As an example of the kind of content I'm looking for, I'll recommend two YouTube channels that I think are quite underrated: Richard Borcherds and Strategy Stuff.

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identity.key

50

I'll mention a few YouTube channels that have quite a large following, but maybe some people aren't aware of them:

  • Kurzgesagt has animated videos on a variety of real-world problems, theories, etc. 
  • Grant Sanderson's 3Blue1Brown describes math concepts and related topics with animations and visualizations from a perspective of how you could "re-derive" / "re-invent" them yourself.
  • Ben Eater explains fundamentals of electronics, computers, CPUs, and other related topics.

There are also many math channels mentioned in A Layman’s Guide to Recreational Mathematics Videos.

Lost Futures

50

Name: Machine Thinking

Type: YouTube channel

Link: https://www.youtube.com/c/machinethinking/

Description: Over a dozen videos analyzing the technology behind the industrial revolution. Loosely speaking it's a channel dedicated to progress studies. The 1751 Machine that Made Everything is a particularly good video.

Positives:

  • Unique; haven't come across any other channels similar
  • Detailed and technical
  • Establishes the importance of industrial technology in building our modern world of abundance (progress mindset)
  • Good narrator voice

Negatives:

  • The subject matter will be dry for some
  • Low production value
[-]Ppau20

Thanks, I watched a few videos and really liked them
Makes you appreciate the importance of common things

Reply

mukashi

50

Name: Fall of civilizations

Type: YouTube channel

Link: https://youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast

Description: There are 14 episodes so far. Each episode describes the collapse of a once flourishing civilization. The authors tries to explain how the people felt when they witnessed their world disappeared in their lifetimes. It is probably the third time I recommend this podcast here in LW

Positives:

  • super high production value
  • full of interesting insights of many different civilizations
  • I personally find them relaxing

Negative:

  • some episodes are really long (this might be a positive)
  • not apt for people looking for quicky-delivered information
[-]Ege Erdil20

Interesting. I'll take a look at this one when I have the time; apparently I've actually watched part of their Bronze Age Collapse video but I don't have any recollection of doing so.

Reply
2Ege Erdil
I wanted to follow up on this after watching some of the videos from the channel. The production quality is quite high & the narration and writing are great. The one problem I had with the content is that I've noticed several mistakes and inaccuracies in the content when the episodes wander into territory that I'm familiar with, and this undermines my confidence in the channel when it comes to subjects I don't know much about. As a crude example that particularly stood out to me, in the first episode about Byzantium the narrator says that the emperor Theodosius II was given the news of the sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths. This is false; Theodosius died in 395 and it was in fact his death that (partly) led to the Visigoths breaking the agreement they had previously entered into with the Roman Empire during his rule. It was one of his sons, Honorius, that was Western Emperor in 410.

PrePostFacto

30

David Metzler's "Ridiculously Huge Numbers" (YouTube)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/user/davidmetzler/playlists

Description: A comprehensive review of how mathematicians think about and notate huge numbers. 

Positives: 

  • Metzler starts with concepts and notation that most high school students and even precocious middle school students have seen and works "up" from there.
  • Each video is relatively short and covers a "huge number" topic or two that most mathematically-inclined people can follow.

Negatives:

  • It's a long series, and after the first few videos, the concepts and notation become quite esoteric. 
[-]Ege Erdil10

Thanks for the post, I'll take a look at the channel when I have the time. It looks interesting in a "recreational maths" kind of way.

Reply
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