YouTuber Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown) Gives Unexpectedly Fun Topology Lesson at Assembly

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

By SAM ALTMAN, JINMIN LEE, MARVIN SHIM and FORREST ZENG

On April 30, the Academy hosted the popular content creator Grant Sanderson, known online as 3Blue1Brown (3B1B). During the assembly, Sanderson shared his work creating educational videos and the joy of exploring mathematics.

With over 6.1 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, Sanderson breaks down complex math ideas into understandable and engaging animations. The videos on his channel range from calculus to visualizing the complexity of artificial intelligence networks. In his assembly presentation, Sanderson captured the audience’s attention with the “inscribed-rectangle problem,” presenting the solution with smooth and simple animations. At a packed Elting Room Q&A session, Sanderson invited students to a discussion ranging from specific math concepts to advice about pursuing a career in mathematics. In the evening, he attended a Math Club meeting, signing notebooks and taking pictures with enthusiastic Exonians.

Sanderson has affected countless Exonians with his simple and approachable content. Lower Benny Wang expressed how 3B1B has inspired him: “I’m really glad I watched Sanderson’s videos because he fundamentally changed the way I learned. Even when I’m learning completely different concepts, 3B1B’s learning method bleeds into all subjects.”

“He’s influential because he makes me look at things with more creativity and room for imagination,” said senior Edward Liu. “A lso, it’s not just math; he expands my curiosity from math and computer science to any pattern or game or phenomenon in life, looking for these satisfying connections.

Austin DeSisto / The Exonian

Prep Grant Blitz continued, “You don’t really need that much background understanding. You just need to go into it with an open mind and be excited for what he’s going to talk about. W hether it’s in math or anything else, I want to take inspiration from him.”

Upper Byran Huang commented, “I do a fair bit of 3D design graphics myself, and a lot of it actually comes from 3B1B’s types of animation: the fading in and out, the piecing together of different elements in front of your eyes, that type of thing. His way of animating and his consistent theme throughout the video make it easy to follow.”

Students were excited to attend assembly and meet Sanderson. “Seeing someone that I had viewed as an internet identity on stage talking and giving a real life presentation was so fascinating,” upper Masaki Muneyoshi said. “It was amazing.”

Upper Derrick Chu agreed. “Sanderson’s assembly was much more interesting than we were expecting because he went into a lot of detail about the math itself.”

“He inflated the assembly attendance by something like three times,” upper Shiqiao Zhang commented.

Sanderson used his assembly presentation to illustrate a specific field of math: topolog y. A lthough many students found the topic difficult to understand, they still found Sanderson’s presentation engaging and interesting.

“I didn’t quite understand every bit of math that was going on,” Huang said. “But, it was an incredibly in-depth and engaging assembly. Probably better than any other one this year so far.”

At the end of the assembly, Sanderson took questions from the audience, and commented on the beauty of doing mathematics in a relaxed environment. “Math done outside of a school environment just feels different to a student than when it’s done inside the school environment. The best chance to expose someone to the beauty of it is to have something that’s extracurricular,” he said.

“3B1B boosted my interest in math through his simple, yet powerful visualizations of abstract math topics,” said Michael Yang. “I also love his casual, laid back approach to math because it’s unlike normal math lectures. I like his animated style too because it’s rela xing to see the shapes move so f lawlessly.”

Muneyoshi noted a video that he appreciated. “I really liked his Fourier Series video. The Fourier Series process is used to break down not only sounds, but also complex physics problems,” he said. “Sound is something that you are experiencing all the time, but seeing it visually and having it in a form that’s actually tangible is so empowering in my opinion.”

Huang echoed this sentiment: “I really enjoyed his video about Fourier transforms. He does this thing where he rotates the graph in three dimensions and spans the graphs out into infinity to represent an infinite Fourier transform. And I had never thought about it like that. Now that I’ve learned it in actual math classes, it’s a really useful tool to be able to refer back to that visualization.”

Sanderson described the process of choosing appropriate topics for his videos. “It’s difficult to find topics that essentially have a low f loor and high ceiling — in other words, topics that are interesting to a large number of people, but at the same time, not boring to someone that is already an expert,” he said. “The solution to that is to try and have an inf lux of as many ideas as possible.”

He continued, offering a specific example. “One of my favorite topics that feels approachable and interesting no matter what level you’re at is the bouncing block problem. In a certain situation with two bouncing blocks, the number of bounces between the blocks is actually the digits of pi! The actual problem is so interesting, and you don’t need a lot of math background to understand.”

Huang commented, “I think it really resonates with me how he has created this community full of people who want to freely share all of these interactive STEM videos. It’s very admirable, and seeing someone who does it for a living and is very successful is a huge inspiration.”

Sanderson implored future mathematicians to consider the impacts of their work. “I want more of the people who are interested in going down the path of pure math to take a step back and be quite positive they are doing it for the right reasons,” he said. “I really hope people are doing it for the love of math, and not simply for the unnatural sake of being good at something.”

Sanderson’s love for mathematics and teaching it to others continues to inspire students, and his inf luence among Exonians is undeniable. “I try to resist the urge to dive into things that are esoteric and nerdy to me, but I’ll never fully resist,” Sanderson concluded. “In the end, what you do is always about how it impacts others, and how you can use it to make other people’s lives better.”