video thumbnail 5:12
The most unexpected answer to a counting puzzle

2019-01-13

[public] 6.90M views, 308K likes, 2.49K dislikes audio only

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Solution: /youtube/video/jsYwFizhncE

Even prettier solution: /youtube/video/brU5yLm9DZM

Help fund future projects: https://www.patreon.com/3blue1brown

An equally valuable form of support is to simply share some of the videos.

Special thanks to these supporters: http://3b1b.co/clacks-thanks

New to this channel? It's all about teaching math visually. Take a look and see if there's anything you'd like to learn.

NY Times blog post about this problem:

https://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/pi/

The original paper by Gregory Galperin:

https://www.maths.tcd.ie/~lebed/Galperin.%20Playing%20pool%20with%20pi.pdf

Evidently, Numberphile also described this problem (I had not known):

/youtube/video/abv4Fz7oNr0

You'll notice that video has an added factor of 16 throughout, which is not here. That's because they're only counting the collisions between blocks (well, balls in their case), and they're only counting to the point where the big block starts moving the other way.

Thanks to these viewers for their contributions to translations

Bengali: Prayas Sanyal

Hebrew: Omer Tuchfeld

Italian: @Deye27, @hi-anji

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These animations are largely made using manim, a scrappy open source python library: https://github.com/3b1b/manim

If you want to check it out, I feel compelled to warn you that it's not the most well-documented tool, and it has many other quirks you might expect in a library someone wrote with only their own use in mind.

Music by Vincent Rubinetti.

Download the music on Bandcamp:

https://vincerubinetti.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-of-3blue1brown

Stream the music on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/album/1dVyjwS8FBqXhRunaG5W5u

If you want to contribute translated subtitles or to help review those that have already been made by others and need approval, you can click the gear icon in the video and go to subtitles/cc, then "add subtitles/cc". I really appreciate those who do this, as it helps make the lessons accessible to more people.

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3blue1brown is a channel about animating math, in all senses of the word animate. And you know the drill with YouTube, if you want to stay posted on new videos, subscribe: http://3b1b.co/subscribe

Various social media stuffs:

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Why do colliding blocks compute pi? by 3Blue1Brown
/youtube/video/jsYwFizhncE
3Blue1Brown 3Blue1Brown, by Grant Sanderson, is some combination of math and entertainment, depending on your disposition. The goal is for explanations to be driven by animations and for difficult problems to be made simple with changes in perspective. For more information, other projects, FAQs, and inquiries see the website: https://www.3blue1brown.com
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Why do colliding blocks compute pi? 4,625,571 views
/youtube/video/jsYwFizhncE
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