Summer of Math Exposition

The video explores the Basel Problem, a classic of YouTube maths explainers. Unfortunately the video really suffers from a lack of audio. The lack of an audio narration makes the motivation for the steps taken unclear, which makes the derivation in the video somewhat hard to follow.

The visual graphing the functions helped to explain what was happening.

This has already been known for a long time, and people can easily find other videos for this on Youtube.

I like the effort, but I think this is not served well at all by the video format. Some narration could go a long way; explaining in more detail what the basel problem is or why we care about it. If this is simply just plots and equations, that could work much better as a web page or document.

Motivation Apart from getting the viewer interested by showing the problem at the very start of the video, no other context is given about the problem and why it would be interesting to learn about it. Maybe giving some historical context/background to why the problem is interesting can get someone hooked?

Clarity The pacing seems way too fast for high-school level, as most students aren’t so familiar with basic calculus, let alone things like Fourier series, for example. I can see undergraduates being interested in the topic, but only if they are already interested in maths and have experience with the used concepts. So, unfortunately, not a very good explainer that can get some person who is looking to get into maths and science hooked.

Novelty Basic manim animations (not to judge), but doesn’t really benefit from the fact it’s an animated video. Mostly just equations and some plots, which can be explained just as easily on a blackboard. In fact, the concept could probably benefit more from being an article as it would be easier to follow along at your own pace, without having to pause. The fact there’s no voice-over also seems to suggest this would work better as an article.

Memorability There’s never a moment to pause and ponder at what the problem is and how it can be solved, which doesn’t really help you remember the topic, unless you’re already interested in it.

Motivation (2) - Motivation is not clearly explained, from what I could tell the problem is to solve 1 + 1/4 +…, but with no audio and too fast pacing it’s very difficult to follow.

Clarity (2) - No audio or explaining text makes it very hard to follow. Also a solution is not presented within this video. As per the rules, entries should be self-contained.

Novelty (4) - Basel problem is pretty well known.

Memorability (2) - Again, no audio is very hard to follow, so it’s difficult to grade how memorable this is.