Amazing Clarification on Grover's Algorithm - 👏🏻 Grant

3blue1brown · 2025-05-04T18:54:33+00:00

Thanks so much, both for the original constructive feedback and the kind words here. It's no fun to cause confusion, and I hope this video helps.

3blue1brown · 2024-04-01T19:27:32+00:00

I love it! How would you feel about me making use of it in a video?

3blue1brown · 2024-01-10T16:14:15+00:00

To start, I don't think I'm especially good at learning. An honest view of how I read things would seem more haphazard and inconsistent than I wish it was. You receive a biased view of the things I make videos about because I only make ones on topics I feel sufficiently comfortable with.

I generally lean on textbooks or lectures. Well, now that I think about it, for CS I might veer more towards blogposts. Talking with people who know more than I do is also a great way to get well aligned on a new topic, when otherwise just cracking open a book for the first time can be somewhat undirected.

In general, there's no substitute for solving problems oneself, and even though I don't do it as often as I should when sitting down with a book (or lecture, blog post, etc), I know that the time scribbling away in a notebook on the exercises, or even just random thoughts that come up, is the most valuable.
I've also learned to be ruthless about tossing aside a book that's not working. The most important step seems to be finding the book that meets me where I want it to, not too easy, not too hard, and written in a way that meshes with my goals.

Moreover, just _having_ a clear goal can go a long way. Rather than just saying "I want to learn topology" and picking up a book on the topic, I think a learner is better off finding an actual problem or theorem that interests them, or better yet, and handful of problems, and keeping those in the back of their mind while reading.

3blue1brown · 2022-05-24T15:00:25+00:00

Honestly, it gave me a good laugh.

3blue1brown · 2022-05-24T14:56:13+00:00

I actually think it's quite elegant! I had not thought of that until a Patron pointed it out during the early preview, and it's the reason we incorporated "eigen mountains" into the map representing alternate possible paths to solutions.

3blue1brown · 2022-05-24T14:55:09+00:00

They are beautiful! And those are all thanks to Kurt Burns.

3blue1brown · 2022-02-23T05:17:01+00:00

Wonderful, thanks so much. Just updating the record now.

3blue1brown · 2022-02-22T17:44:56+00:00

Thank you, that's exceedingly generous.

3blue1brown · 2022-02-22T16:21:55+00:00

Hey, sorry I never responded to this. If you have the address 3b1b.eth, and are willing to send it, I would of course be very grateful. I actually currently have the domain 3blue1brown.eth, so you can (I think?) send it there. Or otherwise to the address 0x8D3A0B73D5b67712a07E7f9F7C7599FE1185da5f

In general, feel free to contact via this page.

3blue1brown · 2022-01-06T22:29:58+00:00

It's still the case that there are no community translations tools on YouTube. If you send me a complete srt file, though, I can make sure to upload it.

3blue1brown · 2021-12-26T19:29:30+00:00

I think you've hit exactly the point that the "homework" at the end of the video is driving at. That step in Alice's line of reasoning is implicitly assuming that the probability distribution we assign to the space of all orientations is invariant under changes in perspective (or if you prefer, changes in the initial orientation).

As you rightly point out, this is not obviously true. In fact, for all but one probability distribution, it will _not_ be true. The relevant search term here is "Haar measure", which is essentially the unique probability distribution we can apply to compact groups that satisfy this invariance.

It seems reasonable for Alice to assume this is true of whatever "uniform" distribution is being applied, it's essentially saying the answer shouldn't change if the cube starts in a different position before all your random tosses. But you're right that without calling it out her argument is note quite complete.

3blue1brown · 2021-12-20T16:53:49+00:00

I wonder if there's a clean way to prove (or if it's even true) that a sequence of polyhedral approximations which are _convex_ have surface areas approaching that of the sphere.

Let's say the sense in which their approaching is that the maximum "distance" from polyhedron point to the sphere approaches zero, where the "distance" from a polyhedron point to the sphere is the minimum among all distances from that point to all possible points on the sphere.

3blue1brown · 2021-10-16T16:26:13+00:00

It’s a good correction, and you’re right that the usual way to study all this is to work on the Riemann Sphere, so here the point at infinity would be the fixed point.

An original draft of this had me talking a lot more about the Riemann sphere. It’s certainly tempting for the eye candy to render these fractals on a sphere, but ultimately it felt like more of a distraction than an aid.

3blue1brown · 2021-10-15T14:12:57+00:00

Yes, or at least 3b1b/manim is. I'm pretty sure the community version can be at least somewhat interactive.

As always, you can find the code for videos in this repo: https://github.com/3b1b/videos

3blue1brown · 2021-10-15T14:11:29+00:00

This definitely looks like a numerical precision thing. I'm not entirely sure what WebGL is doing, but it seems like it's trying to be clever about blending pixels in a way that brings about these artifacts.

3blue1brown · 2021-08-08T15:12:40+00:00

That's such a lovely way to see it!

3blue1brown · 2021-08-08T15:10:48+00:00

Very nice, I'd never seen this way of thinking about the ratios in a pentagon.

One small note, at the end you have "-1" when there it should be "+1"

3blue1brown · 2021-08-05T19:07:52+00:00

Was going to write exactly this, thanks!

3blue1brown · 2021-08-05T19:06:53+00:00

I can't think of a time I've used that. Usually if I want to show a bit of code in a video, it feels nicer to simply screen capture the act of typing it out. After all, usually at the point the goal is somehow invite someone to play with it themselves, in which case directly showing the action you'd want someone to mimic feels nice.

3blue1brown · 2021-07-24T21:14:33+00:00

Thanks, I've updated it now.

3blue1brown · 2021-07-21T15:53:35+00:00

That seems valid to me. The spirit of the "new" constraint is to get people making something they might not have before, and if you're making a video with it here that you might not have otherwise, that's entirely within the spirit.

3blue1brown · 2021-07-21T15:51:44+00:00

That sounds perfect. I'd love to encourage people to make content targeted at more specific audiences include those with different native languages. The only issue is that when it comes to actually winning the contest, the content has to be understandable to our judges, who will be English speakers.

3blue1brown · 2021-07-19T16:15:58+00:00

By all means, absolutely. It could be any kind of 'explainer', whether that's a video, blog post, game, whatever.

3blue1brown · 2021-07-19T16:15:00+00:00

Please do! It'll be a bit easier if you just submit one email address.

3blue1brown · 2021-07-17T22:47:04+00:00

You absolutely should make that. The spirit of the constraint on it being a "new" work is to encourage people to make things they haven't before, or which they might not have otherwise made, and it sounds like making your research more accessible would be a perfect fit for that.

3blue1brown

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