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I know of two good mathematics videos available online, namely:

  1. Sphere inside out (part I and part II)
  2. Moebius transformation revealed

Do you know of any other good math videos? Share.

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    $\begingroup$ The sphere eversion video is available in one part on Google Videos: bit.ly/2Bmj3Z $\endgroup$ Oct 21, 2009 at 20:33
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    $\begingroup$ The sphere eversion video is great, and it seems like a really good way to explain topology and the idea of an invariant to a non-mathematician. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect someone to sit for 20 minutes just to find out what I care about. Does anyone have recommendations of shorter videos that achieve similar goals? $\endgroup$ Oct 22, 2009 at 6:26
  • $\begingroup$ I protected this one as it seems a clear candidate for this and as it just got reactivated and thus I noticed it. If you see a problem with this please let me know, or bring it up on meta. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Dec 7, 2013 at 12:58
  • $\begingroup$ You missed to specify for which group / level of knowledge you are searching the "best mathematics videos". This makes it hard to answer. If you have 10 to 18 years old, you find great video material here (in German, all Youtube videos are with subtitles, thus translatable to English): matheretter.de/mathe-videos $\endgroup$
    – Avatar
    Oct 7, 2015 at 7:32
  • $\begingroup$ @HarrisonBrown: The link you give appears to be broken in the meantime. Probably you mean youtube.com/watch?v=R_w4HYXuo9M. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl
    Oct 25, 2015 at 18:06

80 Answers 80

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I have compiled a list (1500+) of math videos at http://pinterest.com/mathematicsprof/ . If anyone is aware of others, please send them to me.

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    $\begingroup$ Did you go through the all the videos in this question? $\endgroup$
    – Randomblue
    Aug 24, 2012 at 4:19
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77 instructional videos on category theory:

https://www.youtube.com/TheCatsters

I know you said "only one video per post", but I'm not posting 77 times...

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    $\begingroup$ Gosh! Are they up to 77 now? $\endgroup$ Oct 22, 2009 at 7:54
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Most of the talks at MSRI are videotaped and placed on the web here:

http://www.msri.org/communications/vmath/index_html

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My personal all-time favorite is the Klein Four with their song "Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)"... it has lots of puns on topology in it, but I guess it doesn't teach anything.

Here's the link to the "Finite Simple Group" song

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    $\begingroup$ The song may not teach anything, but I think it's contributed positively to my education! Listening to it every once in a while gives me evidence that I'm actually learning stuff, because the song keeps getting funnier. ^_^ $\endgroup$
    – Vectornaut
    Apr 19, 2010 at 4:55
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I believe this was mentioned elsewhere, but for completeness, here's Serre on writing.

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  • $\begingroup$ My favorite quote from this video (among many great quotes): "I'm sure that if this happened with Bourbaki, some member of Bourbaki, he would tell the other one, "It is because you are stupide and you have not found the correct statement, which would give both of them!"" $\endgroup$ Apr 23, 2010 at 14:56
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Dimensions

Möbius Transformations Revealed

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    $\begingroup$ Dimensions is great! $\endgroup$ Apr 23, 2010 at 21:35
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This video about Andrew Wiles and the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is the only time I've seen the real excitement of mathematics presented accurately.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! I just watched the video! I can't even imagine the pressure Wiles got when the proof was Almost there, but just almost, after having announced the result! $\endgroup$
    – user11618
    Feb 20, 2011 at 23:38
  • $\begingroup$ I am unable to watch the video, please help. $\endgroup$
    – random
    Jun 10, 2021 at 5:32
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'Not Knot' is also a nice vid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGLPbSMxSUM

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    $\begingroup$ It's not only nice: it's great! $\endgroup$ Mar 4, 2013 at 23:23
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The Newton institute in Cambridge tapes alot (all?) of it's lectures, and they can be found on the Institutes webpage. High quality for videos of lectures.

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At the accessible end of the scale, Vi Hart's "doodling in math class" series and subsequent videos are a delight.

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MIT's OpenCourseWare has a few math courses up:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/index.htm#Mathematics

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GRASP is a new lecture series at the University of Texas at Austin, which is aimed at bringing some of the fundamental concepts and big picture of the GRASP areas (Geometry, Representation, and Some Physics) to a wider audience (the intended target audience are beginning graduate students).

http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/benzvi/GRASP.html

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  • $\begingroup$ they have videos of G. Segal and lurie, it is pretty cool $\endgroup$ Apr 17, 2010 at 23:09
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The Institute for Advanced Study tapes some of its lectures. They tend to be very good.

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  • $\begingroup$ I just found this link a couple of days ago. It is cool indeed :) $\endgroup$ May 29, 2012 at 21:44
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You probably won't learn much actual math from it, but One Geometry is funnier and catchier than a Snoop Dogg parody about 3-manifolds has any right to be.

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  • $\begingroup$ Funnier and catchier... yes. And I did learn a bit of Math :) $\endgroup$ Dec 15, 2012 at 5:23
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Along the sphere eversion lines, there is also the energy-minimizing sphere eversion constructed by Rob Kusner. I think there is a video of it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6cgca4Mmcc, though it isn't labelled as such.

Rob also has written a paper about the history of the minimax eversion.

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My personal favorite in Dimensions, that was mentioned before by Gerald Edgar. For a neat and clear exposition the Geom.of 3 manifolds, Poincaré conjecture, etc I recommend this lecture by C.McMullen. Or Das Schöne denken (hosted at the HIM in Bonn), for a good "glimpse in the world of the mathematician". Jos Leys' mathematical imagery contains some (interesting) videos and (a lot of beautiful) images.

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There are Stephen Boyd's lecture videos on convex optimization:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee364a/videos.html

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I guess all of John Conway's lectures are great. Some of those can be found here : http://www.math.princeton.edu/facultypapers/Conway/

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The series of videos from IAS School of Mathematics

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The IHES also has a lot of on-line videos. In particular, I like very much the ones from the "Colloque Grothendieck".

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Dror Bar-Natan has begin putting many of his lectures and talks online in video format. I'm not claiming that these are the 'best' online maths videos, but they're certainly interesting, and in particular he's come up with some neat tricks to associate publicly editable annotations with particular moments in the video.

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I am surprised that nobody mentioned the four-week workshop at Göttingen on arithmetic geometry in 2006 summer. Almost all of the videos are still available. Wonderful videos.

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Videos recorded at IMPA:

http://video.impa.br/index.php?page=download

(some in English, some in Portuguese)

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Stoney Brook math videos:

http://www.math.sunysb.edu/Videos/dfest/

http://www.math.sunysb.edu/html/videos.shtml

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  • $\begingroup$ This is impressive!! $\endgroup$ Jul 20, 2011 at 10:15
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This is an old thread, but this video was recently posted to the Don Davis topology list, and I have to share it. It was created by Niles Johnson at UGA and it illustrates the Hopf fibration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKotMPGFJYk

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Not lecture videos or anything, but the stuff from Oliver Labs is very good for just illustrating geometric stuff, like blowups and dual curves.

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This one is quite old but it was fun when I watched a few years ago. It's about Fermat's Last theorem.

http://www.archive.org/details/fermats_last_theorem

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This isn't purely a math video, it's an interview with Peter Woit and it is something of a summary of the main issues discussed on his blog and in his book. He talks about math vs. physics culture, especially the string theory community.

edit: the link appears to have changed.

https://bigthink.com/u/peterwoit

Discussion here:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2670

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John Stillwell - ET Math: How different could it be? A nice talk given at the SETI Institute.

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