pattern recognition

Mathologer shows how times table diagrams on a circle produce cardioids and other curves connected to the Mandelbrot set. He explains the patterns and links to a tool for making your own diagrams.

A short CGP Grey explainer about how countries are defined, why recognition by others matters, and the oddities of places like Taiwan and Vatican City. It shows that statehood is partly a matter of diplomacy rather than fact.

Vox explains the Berlin and Kay research showing that languages around the world tend to invent color words in the same order. It walks through the hierarchy and the debate around it.

Numberphile with Daniel Erman on the Josephus problem, where people in a circle are eliminated in turn. It shows how the survivor's position follows a neat pattern tied to powers of two and binary.

3Blue1Brown's first chapter on deep learning explains what neurons and layers are and the math underlying a basic neural network, using handwritten digit recognition with visual animations.

3Blue1Brown explains why plotting primes in polar coordinates produces spiral patterns, using modular arithmetic, Dirichlet's theorem and rational approximations of pi.

Veritasium shows silicone oil droplets bouncing on a vibrating bath, a physical analogue of pilot wave theory that reproduces quantum-like behavior such as double-slit patterns.

Vsauce's explainer on Zipf's law, the pattern in which the frequency of a word is inversely related to its rank. It shows the pattern across many domains and discusses why it remains unexplained.

Veritasium explains X-chromosome inactivation, where different cells in a woman's body switch off different X chromosomes, giving a mosaic pattern. It uses animation from the WEHI institute and connects to calico cat coloring.

A Numberphile video with Dr James Grime on Sloane's Gap, the observation that integers in the OEIS are not evenly represented and some numbers are underrepresented. It explains the clusters of 'interesting' numbers.

Veritasium revisits Thomas Young's original double slit experiment with light, showing how interference supports the wave nature of light. It uses a pond-wave demonstration to explain the pattern.

Tom Scott investigates moire-effect beacons, called Inogon leading marks, a Swedish invention from the 1980s that shows different patterns depending on the viewer's position. He visits one used to mark an undersea cable and tracks down its history.