''Numberphile'' is an educational

YouTube channel YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most vis ...

featuring videos that explore topics from a variety of fields of mathematics. In the early days of the channel, each video focused on a specific number, but the channel has since expanded its scope, featuring videos on more advanced mathematical concepts such as

Fermat's Last Theorem In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been ...

, the

Riemann hypothesis In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part . Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in p ...

and

Kruskal's tree theorem In mathematics, Kruskal's tree theorem states that the set of finite trees over a well-quasi-ordered set of labels is itself well-quasi-ordered under homeomorphic embedding. History The theorem was conjectured by Andrew Vázsonyi and proved b ...

. The videos are produced by

Brady Haran Brady John Haran (born 18 June 1976) is an Australian-British independent filmmaker and video journalist who produces educational videos and documentary films for his YouTube channels, the most notable being ''Periodic Videos'' and '' Numbe ...

, a former BBC video journalist and creator of Periodic Videos, Sixty Symbols, and several other YouTube channels. Videos on the channel feature several university professors, maths communicators and famous mathematicians. In 2018, Haran released a

spin-off Spin-off may refer to: *Spin-off (media), a media work derived from an existing work *Corporate spin-off, a type of corporate action that forms a new company or entity * Government spin-off, civilian goods which are the result of military or gov ...

audio

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

titled ''The Numberphile Podcast''.

YouTube channel

The ''Numberphile'' YouTube channel was started on 15 September 2011. Most videos consist of Haran interviewing an expert on a number,

mathematical theorem In mathematics, a theorem is a statement that has been proved, or can be proved. The ''proof'' of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of the ...

or other mathematical concept. The expert usually draws out their explanation on a large piece of brown paper and attempts to make the concepts understandable to the average, non-mathematician viewer. It is supported by the

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Calif ...

(MSRI) and

Math for America Math for America (MfA) is a nonprofit organization, founded in January 2004 by American billionaire mathematician, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist Jim Simons to promote recruitment and retention of mathematics teachers in New York City seco ...

.Numberphile Nominated in Education
8th Annual Shorty Awards Haran also runs the "Numberphile2" channel, which includes extra footage and further detail than the main channel. The channel was nominated for a

Shorty Award The Shorty Awards (also known as “The Shortys”) honors the most innovative work globally in digital and social media by brands, agencies, nonprofits and creators. The Shortys’ mission is to celebrate, inspire and push the boundaries of exce ...

in Education in 2016. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' has reported, 'At Numberphile, mathematicians discourse, enthusiastically and winningly, on numbers'.

Contributors

The channel has featured mathematicians, computer scientists, scientists and

science writers Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

, including:Guest speakers on Numberphile
MSRI *

Federico Ardila Federico Ardila (born 1977) is a Colombian mathematician and DJ who researches combinatorics and specializes in matroid theory. Ardila graduated from MIT with a B.Sc. in Mathematics in 1998 and obtained a Ph.D in 2003 under the supervision of ...

Johnny Ball Johnny Ball (born Graham Thalben Ball; 23 May 1938) is an English television personality, a populariser of mathematics and the father of BBC Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball. Early life Ball was born in Bristol and attended Kingswood Primary School on th ...

Alex Bellos Alexander Bellos (born 1969) is a British writer, broadcaster and mathematics communicator.Alex Bellos He is the author of books about Brazil and mathematics, as well as having a column in ''The Guardian'' newspaper. Education and early life ...

Elwyn Berlekamp Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp (September 6, 1940 – April 9, 2019) was a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.Contributors, ''IEEE Transactions on Information Theory'' 42, #3 (May 1996), p. 1048. DO1 ...

* Andrew Booker * Steven Bradlow *

Timothy Browning Timothy Browning is a mathematician working in number theory, examining the interface of analytic number theory and Diophantine geometry. Browning is currently a Professor of number theory at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA ...

Brian Butterworth Brian Lewis Butterworth FBA (born 3 January 1944) is emeritus professor of cognitive neuropsychology in the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, England. His research has ranged from speech errors and pauses, sh ...

* John Conway * Ed Copeland * Tom Crawford * Zsuzsanna Dancso *

Persi Diaconis Persi Warren Diaconis (; born January 31, 1945) is an American mathematician of Greek descent and former professional magician. He is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford University. He is particularly kno ...

Marcus Du Sautoy Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy (; born 26 August 1965) is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popu ...

Rob Eastaway Rob Eastaway is an English author. He is active in the popularisation of mathematics and was awarded the Zeeman medal in 2017 for excellence in the promotion of maths. He is best known for his books, including the bestselling ''Why Do Buses Come ...

* Laurence Eaves *

David Eisenbud David Eisenbud (born 8 April 1947 in New York City) is an American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI); he previously serve ...

Edward Frenkel Edward Vladimirovich Frenkel (; born May 2, 1968) is a Russian-American mathematician working in representation theory, algebraic geometry, and mathematical physics. He is a professor of mathematics at University of California, Berkeley, a member ...

Hannah Fry Hannah Fry (born February 1984) is a British mathematician, author, and radio and television presenter. She is Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. She studies the patterns of human behaviour, ...

Lisa Goldberg Lisa Goldberg is a financial economist and statistician who serves at the University of California, Berkeley as director of research at the Center for Risk Management Research and as Adjunct Professor of Statistics. She is also the Co-Director ...

* James Grime * Ron Graham * Edmund Harriss * Gordon Hamilton * Tim Harford *

Don Knuth Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sci ...

* Holly Krieger * James Maynard *

Barry Mazur Barry Charles Mazur (; born December 19, 1937) is an American mathematician and the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. His contributions to mathematics include his contributions to Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem ...

Steve Mould Steve Mould (born 5 October 1978) is a British educational YouTuber, author, and science presenter who is most notable for making science-related educational videos on his YouTube channel. Early life Mould was born on 5 October 1978 in Gatesh ...

Colm Mulcahy Colm Mulcahy (born September 1958) is an Irish mathematician, academic, columnist, book author, public outreach speaker, and amateur magician. He is Professor Emeritus at Spelman College, where he was on the faculty from 1988 to 2020. In addition ...

* Tony Padilla * Simon Pampena * Matt Parker *

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus f ...

Carl Pomerance Carl Bernard Pomerance (born 1944 in Joplin, Missouri) is an American number theorist. He attended college at Brown University and later received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972 with a dissertation proving that any odd perfect number ...

Ken Ribet Kenneth Alan Ribet (; born June 28, 1948) is an American mathematician working in algebraic number theory and algebraic geometry. He is known for the Herbrand–Ribet theorem and Ribet's theorem, which were key ingredients in the proof of Fe ...

* Tom Scott * Henry Segerman * Carlo H. Séquin * Jim Simons *

Simon Singh Simon Lehna Singh, (born 19 September 1964) is a British popular science author, theoretical and particle physicist. His written works include ''Fermat's Last Theorem'' (in the United States titled ''Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve th ...

Neil Sloane __NOTOC__ Neil James Alexander Sloane (born October 10, 1939) is a British-American mathematician. His major contributions are in the fields of combinatorics, error-correcting codes, and sphere packing. Sloane is best known for being the creator ...

* Ben Sparks * Katie Steckles * Zvezdelina Stankova *

Clifford Stoll Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll (born June 4, 1950) is an American astronomer, author and teacher. He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to th ...

Terence Tao Terence Chi-Shen Tao (; born 17 July 1975) is an Australian-American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins chair. His research includes ...

* Tadashi Tokieda * Mariel Vázquez *

Cédric Villani Cédric Patrice Thierry Villani (; born 5 October 1973) is a French politician and mathematician working primarily on partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry and mathematical physics. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 2010, and he w ...

* Zandra Vinegar

''The Numberphile Podcast''

Haran started a podcast titled ''The Numberphile Podcast'' in 2018 as a sister project. The podcast more heavily focuses on the lives and personalities of some of the subjects of the videos.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://www.numberphile.com 2018 podcast debuts Science podcasts Recreational mathematics Mathematics education YouTube channels launched in 2011 Education-related YouTube channels