Talking Maths in Public Podcast - Episode 2: Blaming it on Bernoulli, definitions and debugging Python code
Full transcript

Welcome to the Talking Maths in Public podcast, a community podcast for members of the Talking Maths in Public network. TMiP is a UK organisation that brings together a range of types of maths communicator. My name's Katie Steckles, and I'm a mathematician, presenter, and a member of the Talking Maths in Public team. In this podcast, we'll be hearing from members of the TMiP community, sharing their maths communication projects and the work they've done, and and talking about their own definitions of maths communication.

In this episode, we'll be hearing from maths author and proofreader Sam Hartburn, who has organised a live music night with a mathematical flavour. We'll also discuss the terms we use to define maths communication, and hear from YouTuber Grant Sanderson about his work on the 3Blue1Brown channel. To see links to the things discussed in this episode, and find more episodes, you can visit talkingmathsinpublic.uk/podcast. 

Okay, so I'm talking to Sam Hartburn, who has recently run a fantastic event at MathsCity in Leeds called the Maths Music Night. So Sam, first of all, tell us about yourself. Who are you?

Okay, I'm Sam Hartburn. Editor, proofreader, author, all sorts of things to do with maths. And I also enjoy maths music, so I like writing maths songs. And so this event that we're talking about was an opportunity to get some people together and, sing some songs together. Both parodies of well known songs that people have rewritten to be about maths and also some original songs that people have written about maths. And it was an opportunity for people to do that - to perform those songs in front of an audience.

Excellent. So we're talking like, you know, we take an existing pop song and we change the words so it's suddenly a song about maths, which I have to say is incredibly fun to do. Um, have you got any examples of that?

It is so much fun. So for example, we had, a version of Jolene, which was called Scalene. (Right.) All about scalene triangles. Yep. Which you just have to do. Um. Somebody wrote blame it on the boogie, but changed it to blame it on Bernoulli. (Excellent.) Which was enormous fun and, yes, we have a whole back catalogue of these from MathsJam Jam.

Yeah, so this has sort of come out of another event, hasn't it?

Yeah, that's right. So the Maths Jam Gathering, which feels strange to be telling you this because obviously you're very involved in it. Yeah, but for the benefit of those who might not know, it's a annual event in November where people get together to talk about maths and there are talks and there are lots of opportunities to play with fun maths things.

There's a baking competition, there's a competition competition and on the Saturday night we have maths jam jam where basically people do what we've just said. They come along and they submit in advance lyrics that they've written to well known songs which are all about maths and we get together on the Saturday night and we sing them and it's all very wonderfully chaotic.

We don't necessarily know what instruments people are bringing in advance, we don't know how many people be there, we've had a rough stab at working out the chords, but generally we haven't had a chance to rehearse together and we just get together and play all the songs and it's enormous fun. So this is what I wanted to do.

Um, yeah, I mean, I guess the whole vibe of the Math Jam gathering is that it is sort of very much a user generated, well, it's a recreational maths conference, I guess. So it's, it's anything that is fun and maths. Uh, but it's also very, it's like the Gathering for Gardner in the U S. But like kind of much less formal, to whatever extent that event is even, even formal, like it's, it's very much about play and about exploration and having fun. So I feel like this kind of thing fits there pretty well. Uh, but yeah, so you wanted to do something that was kind of inspired by that, outside of Maths Jam.

Absolutely, inspired by that. And one of the things, at Maths Jam is we don't start the Maths Jam until about nine o'clock in the evening. And we've had a day of conference and talks before that.

So we're all kind of shattered before we even start. So one of the reasons for doing this in the summer was to make it so we could do it without being really tired before we start. And also because it's once a year and it's nice to get together and do it mid-year as well. And then the other part of it was, we sort of started this community of people who are interested in writing original songs about maths.

So, like, writing their own music as well as writing the lyrics. So, it was also a bit of an opportunity to throw in a few of those types of songs, so that people could hear them and so that the people who had written them had a chance to share them with people.

Yeah, because I guess that's more of a sort of performance than it is a sing along. You know, if it's a song that everyone knows how it goes and you've just changed the words, then anyone can kind of join in and read the lyrics and sing along. But if it's a new, original thing that, you know, no one knows how it goes already, it's, it's very much just more watching somebody do a performance, which is fantastic. Uh, but that- I guess that doesn't quite fit with the vibe of the, the sort of Maths Jam evening thing. So that's much more of a sing along, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. I think at the Maths Jam Gathering, we wouldn't do that kind of thing because it is everyone getting together to join in and that's what people want to do.  So to have this opportunity to share some original stuff as well was really good.

Yeah. So this is, for me, this is one of those really interesting things that sort of is definitely within maths communication in some form because maths is being, you know, people are sharing and enjoying ideas from maths, but I guess this is slightly different to the sort of thing people normally think of as maths communication. This is something we always say about Maths Jam itself, because it's a recreational maths event. But the audience for that event is very much people who are already interested in recreational maths, so it's not about encouraging people to get into maths in the same way as some other things might be.

And I guess the audience for the Maths Jam Jam is, you know, whatever subset of people who are at the Maths Jam Gathering who are interested in doing a music thing. So when you were planning this event, because I guess this is happening outside of that context and in, you know, it's a ticketed thing, anyone can book on and come along, like, how were you picturing the audience for this?

So, I was imagining that it would be quite a lot made up of people who already knew about it from Maths Jam, because one of the purposes was the chance for us to get together mid year and to To have all those people there. So that was part of it. But I was also thinking, I guess, people who have engaged with me or other people on Twitter and social media about maths music and things like that, there are quite a lot of people who seem to show interest in this kind of thing, but don't make it to the Maths Jam gathering. So it was, Maybe those kind of people who are really interested in this kind of stuff, but maybe can't get to a full conference or something like that.

Yeah, and I guess also this, so this was held at MathsCity, which is the, the wonderful Maths Discovery Centre in Leeds, in the shopping centre. Um, and I guess this will have been advertised by them as well, like through their, their website - their normal channels. So did you anticipate getting people who've never heard of Maths Jam before who were just like, oh, maths and music, I'm in.

Yeah, I thought there might be a few people. There were actually a couple of people there who found it on Eventbrite who were just looking for something in Leeds to do on that night on Eventbrite and saw this and thought, 'oh, we must come along', and they weren't mathematicians, they were biologists. So that was really exciting and had a nice little chat with them about how there's maths in biology as well. And, so that was really fun that we got some completely new people. Yeah. It would have been nice to get more people who I didn't already know there.

So one of the challenges really was how to let people know about this sort of thing and how to get that info out there. Well, it sort of feels like you've got really clearly defined aims here, which is firstly sort of to provide an opportunity for people who'd normally access this thing at Maths Jam to kind of have another chance to play with it outside of that context, but then also the, the kind of side benefit of the fact that it is something happening that's advertised that people can see that and think, Oh, people are doing a thing that's fun with maths and music.

You know, that kind of has that side benefit as well. And I guess you've, you know, the goal there is, is sort of a little bit of maths promotion, but kind of still not because it's, it's this sort of pre interested audience as well. Uh, which is, you know, still completely valuable thing to do. And it's part of that idea of, of moving maths to be something that's culturally kind of seen more in that same context as sort of a social evening or a jam night or a, you know, a music show that people would just go to because it's a good thing to do. Like, it doesn't need to be happening because people are learning something.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's been a really nice side of it as well. I mean, personally, like, talking with my kids and people like that, they see me doing this sort of thing and they're like, oh, maths music is a fun thing to do, and maths is a fun thing to do. And I think the more people who just see that kind of thing, the better, really.

Cool. So, logistically, what was it like running a music night in a maths hands on discovery centre? 

There were some challenges, because MathsCity is not a music venue, it's an amazing venue, but it's not set up for music. Um, it's on the top floor of a shopping center with no attached car park. So there was definitely some, interesting logistics around getting the equipment in. Um, we had to work out with the delivery bay that, you were allowed to stay out for 20 minutes. We had to buy a trolley to get everything up and down.

So this is very like homegrown, like people just brought their own amps and equipment. There was no, like, hiring in of-

 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, we were very lucky to have somebody involved who actually had an amazing set of speakers and mixer desk and really all the equipment that we needed. And that's somebody who's been to Maths Jam before. So really lucky to have him, him involved. Um, I guess if he hadn't been there, there would have been even more challenges in hiring stuff in.

But yeah, that was, that made it a lot easier. Um, and Max at MathsCity was amazingly helpful and whenever we had any questions about logistics or anything like that, he found out the answer very quickly. So that was really good. It's a really great place to hold an event.

Yeah, well, it's sort of surreal thing that you kind of, you have this event space and they've got chairs and they've got, you know, a room and, you know, it, it works from that angle, but then, you know, in the, in the breaks in the middle, you've literally just got all these hands on maths activities surrounding you. Um, you know, they're literally having to move exhibits out of the way in order to make a bit of floor space for you. But, yeah, a lot of people seem to just disappear off and play with that stuff in the breaks.

Yeah, that was absolutely lovely to just look around and see people doing all this cool math stuff in the break. It's really nice.

So, like, I'm guessing from the positivity that's coming through here that the event went well?

It went really well. Um, everyone seemed to enjoy it, which was the main thing. Um, I think having this as a separate event rather than MathsJam, there was a bit more pressure because some people travelled a really long way to get there, so I wanted to Whereas at the gathering, they're just there already and if they can come in and go out as they want and if they don't like it, they can go and do something else and that's fine. 

But people had travelled a long way just for this and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. There were lots of smiley, happy faces. I could hear lots of singing coming from the audience. And so yeah, I think it went really well and we've had really nice feedback from people about it. Yeah, I feel like it's also, for me it's a nice sort of mirror of the fact that, you know, some people have this weird impression that in order to be a mathematician you have to be a professional, and that you have to be really good at it and be doing it at a top level and otherwise you can't call yourself a mathematician.

And I think there's a really nice analogy with music that like, you know, if you're not a professional musician that doesn't mean you, absolutely doesn't mean you can't go along to a jam night and just have a play along This was a real mix of people, like, with different levels of experience of playing. But everyone could just sort of join in together and, and have fun with it. And I love that idea as, as the analogy for the way that maths works as well.

Yeah, that's a really good point actually, because we were definitely not professional musicians and most of us hadn't played together before. We live all around the country.

Um, and it just came together and it worked and it was fun and it didn't matter what level of ability you had on your instrument. Um, it. It just worked. And that was one of the really lovely piece of feedback we got from someone was that it's very welcoming and non judgmental and whatever ability you had on your instrument, it was just fine.

So that was, yeah, really nice side of it. Cool.

So practically you've done, I think was it tickets through Eventbrite for this? (Yeah.) And how much were they?

Uh, they were £7.50.

Okay, and did that cover, sort of, rough costs for-

That covered the cost of the venue, and a little bit towards buying the extra bits of equipment we needed for logistics and things like that, yeah.

Yeah, because I guess to have MathsCity open you need to cover the time of the staff that are going to be there.

I'd say it's a wonderful place to do a maths thing, and they've got that sort of promotion engine of their own, sort of putting posters up in the window and, you know, putting messages out on social media; and I've definitely seen some pictures on their Instagram since of, you know, photos from the event celebrating how great it was.

Yeah, and I think they're keen to have events like this. So, and like I said, it's a really nice place to host an event. I, well, I wasn't looking to make money from this. I just wanted it to be a thing that happened because it's a fun thing to do. 

Yeah. So in terms of, either the event or logistics or anything else, is there anything you would do differently if you ran something like this again? Yeah, I think so. Um, I think there was a lot of people who wanted to come who weren't able to, and we were quite I think we got the dates sort of about two months in advance or something like that, and maybe if we'd been a little bit more organised and got stuff going a bit earlier, people might have been able to, people might have been more likely to be able to get there.

The venue is absolutely fantastic, as we've said, but nearly everybody who was there was either from Leeds or from south of Leeds. So it did make me think, should we have had it somewhere a little further south to make it easy for those people who get there? But I don't know. I mean, wherever you have, this sort of thing, there's going to be people traveling a long way.

And I guess the good thing about it is it's very near to a train station that is on quite a lot of major train lines, so, you know, logistically it wasn't completely suboptimal, but yeah, it's always difficult if a lot of people have to travel for something. But I guess it also means that people from further north had the option of coming more easily than it would have been if it was in London. 

Yeah, that is very true. Yeah, so yeah, it's I guess it swings and roundabouts - like you're never gonna get the perfect venue for everybody. So, what else was there? I kept forgetting lots of things that I should have said, all the way through - between every song there is that 'oh, I must remember to tell you this' So that's something a personal note of feedback that I'd write down- write down everything I need to say.

And some of the feedback we had, and I've noticed this as well, there was quite a divide, I think, between the band and the audience. Um, and some of that you have to be, if people are plugging instruments in, then they have to be close enough to, mix desk and everything. But it would have been, I think I could have made it clearer going through the event, how people can join in. I could definitely hear singing from the audience, but there was somebody in the audience who had brought a drum and I think wasn't really sure how to play it. So things like bringing along a load of percussion instruments and telling people they're welcome to use them.

We displayed lyrics so that people could sing along, but we didn't display chords. So perhaps if we had done that, then people could have joined in, from the audience rather than, you know, having to come sit in the band area. Um, so just to try to make it a bit more inclusive from that point of view, I think would have been good.

I guess it's sort of, slightly strange with, if you've got people doing original music as well, that that definitely is a performance with an audience. Um, and I guess just logistically seating wise, you know, you've got people facing other people. Um, you know, if everyone can see, then there is sort of necessarily a kind of audience and a stage, almost. But it wasn't, like, I guess- from what I could tell from being there, it didn't feel like the stage was miles away from the audience.

Like, it was literally, you could just get up and go and stand over there. Um, but I guess in terms of space, and I know when it happens at the Maths Jam gathering, it is, there is one end of the room the performers and then there's a bunch of chairs for people to sit and watch - but you know, whether it's something like a circle layout or something that feels a bit more open but then also people should feel free to come and join in. It is, it's a tough one, I guess, and I suspect there's not many events that work this way.

No, it's quite unusual from that point of view. Yeah, I mean, whether there's, like, existing music jam nights that people are welcome to join in with, like, if you can find out what they do or how they deal with this problem, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. I suppose folk nights and things like that are maybe the kind of things.

Yeah, the best one I've seen is there's a group near us do a thing called Folk Train where they take over a local train service, and they just fill one of the carriages with musicians and audience and just ride the train along the track. Maybe we could do a Maths Folk train or a maths music train. 

That's amazing. Oh, we should do that . I mean that there's an idea.

Fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Sam for, for sharing with us, about your event. And if people want more information, is there anywhere they can find it or, I guess I post about it on social media.

Um, so I'm on Twitter @SamHartburn, and you can email me sam@samhartburn.co.uk. I have a little- I have a mailing list for events like this, and I also have a mailing list for people who are interested in making maths music and talking about songwriting and things like that. So if you want to get involved in either of those things, then drop me a line and I'll add you onto it.

Okay. And if anyone wants to come along to the Maths Jam gathering, if you head to mathsjam.com and look for the word Gathering and click on it, I'm sure you'll find all the information about that there as well. Cool. Thank you very much. Thank you. 

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There are many overlapping terms describing the type of activity we do. Maths Communication, Public Engagement, Outreach, Enrichment, Widening Participation. In another of our Obtuse Angles segments, I talked to Maths Communicator Alison Kiddle about how we can define these terms precisely.

So sometimes I struggle to define, like if someone says, what is your job? I say, well, I say "I'm a mathematician" quite often, but if I want to actually be specific about what I do, I will say that I'm a maths communicator. And I feel like that's sort of a sufficiently broad term that it kind of defines the fact that I communicate maths. And I guess, I mean, in particular for me, it's, it's quite a broad range of things that I do.

So it could be, speaking and presenting, it could be writing, it could be, you know, in person or online or recorded or video or podcasting or whatever. Um, but like communication, I guess, is at the, at the heart of all of this stuff. Um, but then maths communication happens in, as, you know, As I am aware, many different formats, but also in many different places and contexts as well. And people use all these different words, to sort of describe the same thing, right?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting that you've opened this conversation with what it is that we do because when I'm asked that question, I always start by saying, well, I used to be a maths teacher and then explain that I went into maths education and that now I do a mixture of maths education and communication.

And in my head, I have two different hats, if someone approaches me to do maths education work, I'm thinking of it through a slightly different lens than if they're doing what I put in the maths communication bucket.

Yeah. And because a lot of this is going to be education adjacent, right? So necessarily, obviously some of it is not, some of it is very much, you know, not for kids or not for, in the same context as school stuff, but the stuff that is kind of next to education in some sense, often people use the word enrichment, to sort-of mean things that you are talking to people who are currently in education, but you're telling them stuff that is beyond what they are expected to know. Um, as, as Ben Sparks often puts it, "things that are useful to know, even if they're not going to be on the exam" 

Um, but I guess, you know, that, you know, for people that I talk to that don't really understand that maths communication is a thing or that the whole industry exists at all, when I try and describe my job, they say, Oh, so you're a maths teacher. Um, and I'm not a maths teacher, right? I don't have a formal qualification in that, but I do often stand in front of school children in classrooms and tell them about maths, so it, you know, it's, you know, it's a distinction, but it's a very blurred line, I guess, in some sense.

Yeah, I think that's part of the problem when we try and pin definitions down. And of course, as mathematicians, we're all about those clear definitions. But there are blurred lines between these different things. Um, I mean, I used to do a lot of what was badged as enrichment and I saw it very much as something that should be in mainstream school classrooms because everyone should be having the experience of mathematics that makes people decide that they want to be a mathematician.

Um, and if all you're thinking about is passing the exam, then they're not necessarily going to get that. But then when I'm talking to adult audiences at science festivals and things like that, if I were to speak to them the way that I would speak about maths to an audience of school children, whose teacher had given me a clear brief of what to say, they wouldn't have a very good experience of that. So I think a lot of these distinctions come from considering the audiences that we're talking to and the purpose for talking to them.

Yeah, I definitely think purpose comes into it a lot. So for example, universities are one of the places where a lot of maths communication happens. And I guess there's, there's a sense that as the sort of institutions of knowledge, somehow universities have this responsibility to disseminate that knowledge.

But at the same time, the universities have a strong, instinct to recruit students, right? They want more people to come to the university. Um, and I think there's also an aspect of it that they want, not just to to recruit students to the university, but they also have, so I guess universities would call it outreach in some sense that they want to try and get more people to think about doing STEM subjects at university in particular maths.

Um, but then they also have what they call Widening Participation, which is the angle of, we want people from backgrounds that are underrepresented in universities to be able to come to university. So we're going to do specifically targeted outreach that is aimed at kind of widening that, thing and I, as far as I'm aware, some of the current, like, university funding things are contingent on them doing certain amounts of that type of stuff, I guess, so, even if it isn't something that universities have thought about, a lot of them are now doing that as standard because they want to, to sort of broaden the types of people that go to uni, but they have this specific name for that and I guess that will be done with a different purpose, obviously, but it will also be done with a different approach, I suspect.

Yeah, I'm very glad you brought up the issue of funding as well because the people who are paying for something to happen, and in this world nothing happens for free, they have particular goals and aims, and so some of these words like public engagement, outreach, widening participation, and so on, they have specific definitions attached to them.

And this is coming out of the widening participation budget, so, sure, you can come and do a talk about the thing that you're really interested in, but you have to write that talk in such a way that it will meet a particular goal. set of goals, and I think I see this distinction most clearly when I have my maths education hat on because for a lot of people working with school age children, particularly GCSE and then A level, a big part of their goal and Ultimately, the money behind things is we have to get these children through their exams.

Now, I always try to make the point when I'm selling the idea of enrichment to schools and to teachers that if you have the time to explore the concept of being a mathematician rather than just the concepts of topics, you know. If you're learning trigonometry through the medium of thinking mathematically about triangles and circles rather than learning to do the processes that get you through exam questions, you kind of get the exam stuff for free because if you become a mathematician, Then you can answer maths problems. Whereas if you just learn to solve maths problems, you might not necessarily come out of that process, thinking mathematically.

I guess enrichment is a good term for it because there's definitely an implication in there that it's not- You know, if it was called, like, additional maths, or, I mean, that's confusing, because it's not just about adding up, but like, if it was called, you know, extra, or somehow, something that makes it sound more superfluous, that you can, you can imagine you'd meet a lot more resistance in them, like, "oh God no, we don't have time for that, we've just got to get through the curriculum", whereas the idea of enrichment is sort of, I'm going to take the stuff that you're doing already in school and I'm going to make, I'm going to add something to that that makes it richer and makes it more engaging. 

And obviously a lot of people who go in and do enrichment stuff are like, here's a thing you'll never need to know. It's a Mobius band. This is not on the exam, but you're going to love it. Um, and like that, as you say, kind of instils this sort of sense of mathematicalness, and this sort of, you know, potentially the passion for it or the, you know, the interest that will drag them through the horrible grind of, of learning all the things that you need to learn at school. Um, but at the same time, it's fun, right? And if you come out having a nice time, and then you know that you were in a maths lesson, that also helps.

Yeah. And I think, with my maths communication hat on,
- to be clear, for anyone listening to the podcast, that's not a real hat, but I wish it was.
Yes, if I had a hat I would reach behind me and put it on there.

Um, when I have my math, maths communication hat on, I want people who might not feel comfortable and confident about maths to have experiences of. The joy of doing maths and the joy of being mathematical, because for me maths has always been quite a joyful experience. I want to caveat that by saying there are plenty of times when I've sat struggling over a piece of mathematics and felt very very stupid and not able to to work things out, and it's been very very frustrating, but then I've that my general overall feelings towards maths, apart from those specific times, has been very positive, and I think I, I, I'm sad that a lot of people I meet, I tell them I'm a mathematician, and they say, Oh, that was my least favorite subject at school, because I kind of in that moment want to say, well, okay, you know, Could I show you some maths that maybe wasn't like what you did at school, but that you would enjoy? 

And so that, that's the, the difference for me, when I'm not being educational, when I'm not worried about making sure that people, you know, get through an exam. It gives me the freedom to share this is something that humans do because it's neat.

Yeah. So there's one more term, which we haven't mentioned yet, which is public engagement. And I guess this is another thing that people in universities say a lot, and they often have like a public engagement department. Um, and I feel like there's an implication in the name that it is somehow more of a two-way process than a one-way process, because communication is two-way, right?

It can be, or it can be one-way, and obviously we definitely want to avoid the type of maths communication where we pontificate and we're here with our wonderful maths knowledge and we're here to bestow it on these poor unmathematical people. Like, it definitely should still be a conversation and a two way process. Um, I think public engagement is often used more to describe the sort of Maybe like medical communication where you're doing research with, you know, with patients, and that kind of engages them and brings them into the research or, you know, it is possible to do that kind of research with, maths as well.

Like there was a project at Manchester Science Festival several years ago called Turing's Sunflowers, where they got loads of people to grow sunflowers in their gardens over the summer. Um, and then they measured all of that and use the data to investigate the sort of, patterns in the sunflower seeds. And I guess that is a lot more meaningful in terms of engagement because it is that sort of two-way process that people feel like they're actually contributing to it.

But it's something I always try and build into what I'm doing. I will never just stand and talk to people or, I mean, I guess if I'm making a YouTube video to some extent I can't, I can't really avoid just being talking to people, but I'll try and give them something to do or something to think about as part of that.

Yeah, so I think public engagement, again, is something that people like universities have very specific things that they mean by it. Uh, and sometimes it is a box that needs to be ticked. But like you say, when it's done well, it should be about inviting the general public to be part of what you're doing.

And I suppose it's part of democratising mathematics and making it so that maths isn't just something that's done in ivory towers, but it's something that people can be involved with. So, maybe that's not what public engagement always is, but it could be what public engagement should be.

Yeah, I think it's a shame if people use that term to mean I'm going to go and do a talk where I talk for an hour and then leave. But yeah, I think it gives you two things because it gives people a way to get involved and make them feel more involved in it. And as you say, democratize it and get them to feel like they are also mathematicians.

But I think also for people who, for example, do research and then do this kind of outreach or public engagement on the side, it's actually quite nice to have a conversation about it with someone who isn't within the world of what you're doing - like to someone who isn't a researcher in maths, and to actually find out what aspects of it they find interesting and what things about it they think are cool. Cause they may not be the same things that you think are cool or find interesting, but it teaches you so much about the subject and about what you're doing. Um, and I've often come back from doing public engagement stuff more like certainly when I was still doing research, like more inspired to go and. work on these things because it, it opens it up for more people.

Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, I think anything that is getting more people having mathematical conversations and that is helping people get over the trauma of prior experience of mathematics, which we know a lot of people have, then that's a good thing in my book.

Excellent. So if you have also struggled with the definitions of these terms, hopefully we've maybe sorted some of that out for you. But as always with this podcast, we're happy to take contributions from the community. So if you have, your own opinions, or your own obtuse angles, as we call this segment, we will be happy to receive suggestions for future episodes. So if you head to talkingmathsinpublic.uk/podcast, there is a form there that you can fill in. 

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For our final segment today, TMiP team member Ben Sparks spoke to Grant Sanderson who runs the highly successful 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel. In this first part of the interview, Grant talks about his work on the channel and the tools he's developed in the process.

Grant, welcome. How you doing?

The honor's mine to be here. Yeah, it's great to chat. 

I'm going to give you two introductions and you can choose which is the least badly wrong. (Okay, okay.) So: "Grant Sanderson, the person behind the YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown, reaching millions of subscribers and delivering animated mathematical goodness with calming and insightful voiceovers since 2015."

That's flattering. I'll take it. Yeah, all right.

"Grant Sanderson, single handedly responsible for bringing a new generation of mathematicians to the delights of debugging Python code through his mathematical animation library, Manim."

Yeah, maybe there's some honesty there, but 'the non-software engineer who created a piece of software that a strange number of people seem interested in using, forcing them to engage with all the problems therein.'

It's a necessary evil if you want to make things happen, you have to learn to grapple with the tools, right? And that's. That's what happened. And maybe we should backtrack. So I'm going to ask you a bit about the background to both of the introductions that I gave you.

Well, the good news is, yeah, the background to both really lines up well, because basically when I was starting, the channel, it was around when I was finishing my undergrad, and it started as a coding project where I just wanted to, you know, try making a simple tool for math animations, simply as like a hobbyist project.

It seemed like a fun thing to do. There were some more specific thoughts on - graphing software is always about graphing, but I wanted something that would illustrate functions as transformations, things like that. Yeah, but it's, I didn't think "I'm making this because it's a necessary step to making a YouTube channel". It was more like posting a YouTube video as a way of knowing I've done anything with my personal project.

Made a video with it - Not a particularly good video, but it was fun. And then, you know, I made the tool a little better, made another video, made the tool a little better, made another video; I ended up getting in conversations with Khan Academy based on the stuff that I was making; worked there for a little bit doing, educational content - not using the tool per se, but this was just, I was making multivariable calculus content using a variety of different things that were available

And it was that way around, was it? You did the video as a personal project to sort of test this sort of animation library you started to tinker with and Khan Academy got in touch after that.

Correct, yeah, correct. And so I- But there was very few videos on the channel. And actually, I say Khan Academy got in touch - I definitely pinged them. There was this little bit of- I was finishing college, I'm like, "hey, what? What do I want to do exactly here?" And the plan was to go and do a PhD, but I wanted to spend at least a year or two doing something outside of academia.

And I really do care about math communication. And I think this was the end goal, even if I was getting a PhD, it's only insofar as that puts you in a stronger posture to speak publicly about math; but I ended up talking to Khan Academy, the fact that I had some things that I made was what allowed there to be a little bit of a warmer introduction there. Stars aligned such that it made sense to do this year fellowship with them making multivariable calculus content.

On the side, I kept doing things with the channel and on the side, I kept fiddling around with the tool - which was always terrible, I think like it's just like all of the like the scrappy- everything that you expect from like someone's personal scrappy project where there's like no documentation no tests all of that; but it was because I was just, for me like a thing to to play around with so as to express the visuals that I might have in my head when I learn a topic in a more outward way, which I think is the same you do with Geogebra, right? Like you do this all the time. You have some vision in mind and rather than like-

And you find a tool to make it work. And if you can't find a tool to make it work, you sort of jerry rig something together. Uh, what you did that I didn't do is write the software from scratch - to a certain extent, obviously you don't build the entire programming language, but the libraries that you made with Manim are a bit like a programming language in themselves when they get so, so big. And all I'm doing. on Geogebra is using someone else's very nicely made tool so much. But, but like it's, it's the need for something that, that causes the, the invention, isn't it?

Yeah. Although in this case, again, like if, if the end goal was making a YouTube channel and everything was in the service of that need, I probably would have just like done everything in Mathematica or like built some things on top of that or something. But there was a little bit of an itch to just have a 'from scratch' project for myself. And. So it went irrationally deep, I think. It's very fun. And it's actually, there's a lot of advantages to having like your hands just deep into the, into the bones of it as much as you want.

There's at least two advantages aren't there. You can, you have the power to do what you want, even if it's hard, right? Even if you think I'd like it to make, do that. And then three years later you realize, well, that was more trouble than it was worth, but that power is real. And you learn a lot from having- What was the metaphor you just had getting your hands up up to the elbows deep in the innards? You're learning a lot of things you don't expect to learn in my experience And you must be experiencing that way more than I've done.

You must find this Yeah, where you have a bit of math you want to explain; you go to illustrate it in some way that is programmatic - whether that's literally through software or if that's, you know, it's like Desmos, Geogebra, all of that. And a shortcoming in your own understanding is revealed by the act of creating the visuals. Like this happens to me all the time. And usually it's the- It's like a simple little mistake, right? Like, I made an arithmetic mistake when I put it, and I'm like, oh, that doesn't look right. Oh, here's why.

Sometimes it's more conceptual, where it's not necessarily a mistake, but it's like, oh, there's a thing that's much more interesting about this whole domain than I thought there would be. Like, one of the earlier videos on the channel emerged basically because I was playing around with mapping complex functions, and one of the way that it what showed up on the screen, I realized really motivated the idea of something called analytic continuation, which is for example, relevant to like the Zeta function, the Riemann Zeta function that has that famous million dollar prize around it.

And so the whole video just emerged out of like playing with visuals as opposed to saying, Oh, I clearly know what I want to describe. And it's a matter of sitting down and finding the tool to express it. So that maybe follows on from the metaphor, like once, once your hands are deep inside things and you're enjoying the tinkering process, the tinkering can become an end in its own right and causes creative content to emerge almost unbidden, at least that, that's what it seems like you're describing, you find something which you didn't realize you could do and you make it do it and you think, oh, that's pleasing, I, I want to tell other people about it, I want to show the nice things that, that sounds, Well, you can see that happening, actually, in a lot of your videos.

Before I forget to ask, I've been meaning to ask as soon as you said it, is that first video on 3Blue1Brown, is it still there? Yeah, yeah, it certainly is. It's um, it's, well, so it's, it's about e to the pi i, I've made at this point like five or six videos about Euler's formula in some form or another. Like I, two years after the founding of the channel, I did make, I was like, oh, here's what that video should have been, which is like Euler's formula through the lens of group theory, kind of an intuition for what it's trying to get at.

There is actually, I put up, I think, around three videos in, at the same time. There's this one on Euler's formula, but it wasn't a proof, it was more like an intuition, and I was like, if you want to make it a proof using this intuition, here's what you would do as like a second follow on video. And then I had like a poem about it, which is just like a silly thing.

That second one, it was, it was so bad in the sense of pedagogically bad. It was just very rushed and just not clear at all. Later I looked and I thought this does more harm than good. Like, because it it's, it's speaking about something as if it's simple as if it's being made to look simple, but it was actually just very hard to follow such that you could imagine a learner viewer.

So basically losing self confidence, like, well, this is supposed to like, somehow be easier. Yeah. And so that one I did, I did unlist, but the original one is still there. So it's there for you to go and cringe at if you need to, but no one else can see it. If anyone has the link, you know, if they happen to somehow, yeah.

So you know, if you really want to share it, like if you want to put it in the show notes for this podcast, I can give you the link to it. And so it's, you know, someone can land on it, but they would never find it through search. Um, okay. Well, if you want to release that kind of sensitive data, then you are well, people know that this, yeah, there's no, there's no loss of it.

Like they can laugh at how bad I was at making things and that's fine. But like anyone who's listening to this, they're not going to like have their confidence shattered by thinking they're supposed to under, they'll just be like, no, this is a bad explanation. Well, I hope as well that the people listening as well recognize that, teaching is not this sort of cut and dried mathematically precise art, is it?

And recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of what you try and how to make it better next time is a necessary. However frustrating, it's a necessary part of the process. To make anything, you've got to try something, even if you know that it's kind of bad, and then just keep iterating on it. Same deal with the, with the tool Omanum here, like the earlier version of it was like, just truly terrible.

Um, and then I like, slowly would make it better over time. Other people would start using it. And it's like, oh man, they're facing problems, design shortcomings and bugs, and certainly documentation shortcomings that are all on me. But I guess if they're willing to tolerate it these days, I'm like, I'm pretty happy with the workflow I have with it.

I'm a little unhappy with the fact that there's, there's two versions. Well, I'm happy with that. Let me back up. There are two versions because at some point in the history, I was clearly inattentive to contributions on GitHub. It's an open source tool, so in principle people can contribute to it, but I wasn't attentive to that.

It's kind of busy making videos. People understood. They're fine with that. So they, they forked it, which is to say they kind of cloned it and said, we're going to have a version that's by the community for the community, which is great. I love it. And so that is much more attentive to contributions, better documented.

You're more likely to have an easier time getting started with that. Now, in the meantime, I started making a whole bunch of changes to my own, basically making it easier to work with, making it like more performant, making it more flexible, more interactive, things like this. And what I feel a little bit bad about is that I didn't make all those changes pre fork so that they would naturally get baked into the community version rather than being something that lags behind.

So they're on a separate branch that is now. A grant branch rather than a community branch. Basically, and, and these things do, they, there is crossover between like I'll pull in occasional things that I see on the community version and I'm like, well, that's actually a nice feature. I'll take that. Um, or when I make some things, people will pull it in there.

And, you know, this is not the perfect way for open source software to be run. Like the perfect way would be that I'm, you know, Just have like more hours in the day and I'm like a better software engineer and Really tend to it as an open source project rather than just being like a personal scrappy tool for myself The reality of the situation is one where there's a stable equilibrium of two distinct versions one That's by the community for the community one that I'm most attentive to and people do contribute to my version So I won't say that it's like solely by me, but one that I'm more comfortable just pushing ahead in a way that like might break some things.

And yeah, this is a stable equilibrium. That is a weird way for open source software to work, but it seems to work. All right. But that's what's out there. And actually, if people want to go and play with Manim, they obviously can. And there's these, it's open source, both. Both forks are still open source, right?

But the, the community sort of managed one has more documentation. I remember when you said that you're kind of relieved that people have taken it on and sort of have community ownership rather than you having to deal with that. But people can go and tinker if they wish. Do you know what I've been meaning to do Ben?

Is do something to simply like show how I use the tool. Just like post it as like, Hey, here's an example of like making an animation. Here's a workflow. In particular, because that workflow. Like, it's not just that the tool is different, I just have, like, this pile of, like, sublime extensions that I'll use with my text editor to make it such that certain keyboard shortcuts will, like, do things that give it, like, a nice flow.

That are, like, not at all documented, or even, like, these things aren't really shared well, and I've been meaning to But you'd struggle to work without them, right? Yeah, it's, like, it's possible to work without it, but Okay, this is all very difficult to describe in the abstract, but it's basically, it makes it a, it makes it a much, tighter feedback loop creation process where you don't have to wait for something to render, for example, and in like quite the same way.

And I want to just somehow say like, here's how I use it if others want to use it in the same way. Well, let me speak for the TMiP masses. I would love to see that video and therefore everyone else listening must also love to see the video Would you then have any interest in being part of that video?

Like what you and I could get on a call where basically I say hey Um, I'm going to like show you like how we can make a certain thing. And then you were like, ask questions along the way and use that to be what drives it. Well, you and I both know that making videos to a camera is different from making videos to an audience.

And if you can find a proxy version of an audience, then you can sort of fake that. And I remember like, I think that Numberphile does that well. Brady does that proxy audience thing well. But if, if I can be a proxy audience to your workflow demo, I'm very happy to be. And, you heard it here first. Uh, watch, watch the.

Car crash that is coming in Ben asking too many questions about Grant's workflow. No, no, it'll be better because like, I don't really know what are the natural questions. And so rather than just me talking to a blank camera, I think that would be pretty fun. I'd love to see that. And I'd love to help if I can.

And actually I'd encourage listeners as well, if they haven't, well, first of all, we should talk a bit more about the channel before we, before I forget to do that. But if you haven't watched any of Grant's videos, then for goodness sake, Go and get a handle of what we're talking about. We're watching some of the animations that come out of the three blue, one Brown videos, because then you'll understand what we've just been talking about with Manim, which is the tool to make those visualizations happen more easily than the native Python libraries.

That was the, in essence, what happened. Right. Um, and I know for a fact that people. Around the world have seen that style. I think that's what I've been wanting to make things move nicely and easily. And people have been tinkering with Manim ever since because they appreciate it. It wasn't easy to do, and now it's slightly easier because this tool has been made.

So thank you on behalf of the community listening. Can you tell us a bit more about the channel itself though? Because this is, this is a big deal. Our 3Blue1Brown is, is millions of subscribers and you've been a big hitter on YouTube for almost 10 years. Well, I guess it'd be next year will be your, 10 year anniversary.

Exciting. So what's happening now? How, how, how do you cope with being a big hitter? One of the big names on YouTube. I'm not necessarily talking about the fame, but the pressure of creating content when millions of people are waiting for it must be hard. Is this something that you, feel like you can sustain?

Is it something you're going to have to outsource to other people? Where are we at with 3Blue1Brown as a channel? Okay, I'll give you the very raw answer, because, you know, what's, what's comfortable to say is like describe future plans and ambitions and whatnot. I have been much slower in the last, certainly in the last like six months, but I think also if I look at the last like two years than I intended to be, and it's hard to know exactly where that comes from.

I, for the last couple of videos I made, which were about, transformers, which are the T and GPT. So it's kind of the thing underlying the modern wave of AI. I actually tracked the animation time. I was just curious, like, Hey, how much of the time in making these like goes into the animations? And it wasn't actually that much, like it's a lot, but it certainly wasn't what accounts for like why they took so long to make.

I think there's a lot of, you know, in this case, it's a topic that I've studied math, and you know, that these tools are a little bit like newer in the wave of AI. So I had to like learn a lot and I wanted to make sure that I knew what I was talking about. Okay, so that accounts for it. I think I've just, I don't know, there's something about like getting, getting into the rhythm that I used to when I was younger be able to get into right away that I'll like meander a little bit more.

I have a number of projects I'm quite excited about coming up. Um, I do want to do more that's involves working with other people. I can talk about like outsourcing. It's hard to know the ways that that makes sense because I love the animating. I think it would actually be quite hard to become more efficient by outsourcing that because I sometimes don't know exactly what I want it to look like.

Until I just mess around with it and that act of messing around with it is the act of deciding the visual It's not like I can just write an English description send it to an animator and they'll get what I want in mind I don't even know what I want It's for much the same reason that using GitHub co pilot doesn't really work well for like the animation workflows.

It's not a question of, Oh, how do I write the code to do it? I know exactly how to write the code if I know exactly what I want to visualize, but it's, it's the creative process is one that's more iterative. You, you try, you see, you learn. And so I need to figure out like how to. Get back to my old self. I used to be able to just make things faster.

I know in principle. It's possible The animation is not the rate limiter I know if I just sit down to tutor someone like I can I can just sit down and explain something and so I think maybe what you were just pointing out on there being like a larger audience or Praise that comes like I'm very blessed that people will praise the work But sometimes maybe that makes it feel like I've got to make sure this is a good one and there's less Like, you know that first video the fact that it was terrible like that's fine because it's a channel no one knows about there's no Like brand to make and you gotta start somewhere.

Put out a terrible video, who cares? You gotta start somewhere. And like you're only ever gonna learn by by doing. And I think the same applies now, but it just feels a little different. I'm a little less willing to just throw something out that I know might not be good. Like I've, for example, probability I've like meant to have a series on probability for a while.

I once made like five videos for that. I just didn't really like them and then there was like a sixth that came up later as part of like a mini series About it. I just didn't really like it and they're just sort of sitting in this like unpublished territory Which on the one hand I should just have them publicly visible somewhere on the other hand Maybe I should I don't know just say like clean it up a little bit and put it out and it's probably better than you Think it is or like it's okay if it's it's not Not as good as it can be It feels like the musician's dilemma, doesn't it, that you make an album, not that I have a lot of experience of this, but I'm a musician and I know you are too, but like, you do some music that you're really happy with and then suddenly it becomes quite hard to do something which is, isn't quite as good as something where you feel like you are at your peak, even if it's not that cut and dried, like, oh, that was the best moment, it's very hard to then accept stuff that you're not happy with, and I completely understand, like, you made this thing and you put time into it, but you don't really want it to go out there when maybe you can see all the flaws with it.

And creatives, we're always more aware of the flaws than the audience are, like without question, even if, you know that there are going to be flaws in there, but letting it go out and people notice them is, is hard. But it's also honest, as I'm saying it, I'm not entirely sure this is the honest diagnosis for why I've been slow.

It's a very, it's a very self evangelizing one to be like, Oh, I'm, my standards are too high. If only I could like, you know, lower those. It's also just the case that. I don't know, maybe, maybe it has to do with the fact that a lot of the work is a little bit more solo. And even though ostensibly I like that, there's a reality that projects that are collaborative add a certain vibrance, just like an energy that you, you can work from.

And I'm like, there's more of those on deck. This is a long winded way of saying an inconclusive fact, which is that something needs to change. And I'm not entirely sure what, and that's, that's sort of where I am with it.

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In the next episode of the podcast, you can hear the second half of that chat and find out about how Grant is now encouraging the next generation of math communicators.

That's all for this episode of The Talking Maths in Public Podcast. Head to talkingmathsinpublic.uk/podcast for more episodes to suggest your ideas for future segments and to find out more about the TMiP network. See you next time!

Matt Parker: The Talking Maths in Public podcast is presented and edited by Katie Steckles and funded by the International Centre for the Mathematical Sciences. The music is For Her by Lyd Erk on Pixabay.