Grant Sanderson

3Blue1Brown (3b1b) is primarily a YouTube channel focused on explaining math visually. Some lessons cover foundational topics, especially those a STEM undergraduate would need to learn. Others are playful explorations of puzzles and beautiful problems. In all cases, my goal is to make more people love math , whether for its utility or its beauty, following a philosophy that any such love begins with deep understanding. On this site, you'll find written and interactive versions of many videos, along with other projects closely tied to the channel. My name is Grant Sanderson. These videos, together with Manim , the animation engine behind them, began as side projects as I was wrapping up my time studying math and computer science at Stanford. After graduating, I worked for Khan Academy producing videos, articles and exercises, primarily focussed on multivariable calculus. Since the end of 2016, my primary focus has been on 3Blue1Brown and its associated projects. Almost all animations are made using a custom open-source Python library I've written called Manim . It began as a scrappy playground of code for my own uses cases back when I started the channel, not intended to be a public-facing, professionally maintained tool. Luckily, some folks got together to make an alternate fork that aims to be more stable, documented, and tested. Anyone looking to get started with Manim should probably start with this Community Edition . The version I use and have continued to develop is probably best viewed as a testing ground where I try to quickly put new things together while developing videos. If you're curious to explore making visualizations with manim, here are a few things to keep mind. A good litmus test for whether it's the right tool is whether the idea of writing code to create visuals feels inhibiting or liberating. If you enjoy coding, especially in python, and the visuals you have in mind benefit from precision, loops and abstraction, that's a good sign. If you want a GUI, or a lower friction to getting started, I'd recommend confirming that Desmos, Geogebra or other similar tools don't already serve your needs. Contrasted with other programmatic means of creating visuals, such as Mathematica, matplotlib, processing, shadertoy, etc., the main difference with manim is that it is designed with an intent of creating longer scenes in an object-oriented environment, with an eye towards making smoothness and cleanliness of style the default. Keep in mind that plenty of professional animation tools like Blender and After Effects can be made programmatic too. If your creative goals would also benefit from lots of non-mathematical animations, it may be worth exploring these other tools and workflows before diving in. I worry when I hear people ask things like "How do I sync up narration into manim?". This is just a tool for making individual clips to be edited together later. You should certainly use traditional video-editing software for as much as you can. In the same way that many channels are named after their authors, a younger me thought that a unique genetic signature might be neat. Plus, the channel is all about seeing math in certain ways, so it felt fitting. At that time I was into the idea of something deliberately weird-sounding and unique, and the name is simply a direct reference to the logo. For subtitles , my friend Ben Eater built Criblate , a website to make it easier for communities to contribute translations to YouTube channels they follow. You can review, edit, and add your own translations. Once approved, your contributions are added as the official subtitles for that language on YouTube with attribution to you. For dubs , we already have translators working on that for Spanish, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Arabic and Korean. Our approach is to hire independent contractors who are conversant in math, and know how to narrate effectively. If you're passionate about contributing for ano