Summer of Math Exposition

Presented by 3Blue1Brown 3blue1brown

Complexity: the Maths of Problem Solving

This is my entry for the Summer of Math Exposition of 2024. This video is about algorithmic complexity, the maths of problem solving. We'll solve a puzzle from the "Advent of Code", a coding challenge. The link of the repository with the code I wrote will be available soon! (when I finish to clean it ^^" ) Timestamps: - Introduction 01:04 - Problem 5 explanation 03:27 - Formalization 08:02 - Python and OOP basics 12:06 - Creating the base objects 20:34 - Part 2 naive approach 28:49 - What is Complexity? 32:01 - Complexity of our algorithm 47:03 - Another perspective 53:09 - Complexity again 1:02:04 - Conclusion & Final words 1:15:11


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4.36 Overall score*
101 Rank
7 Votes
3 Comments

Comments

5.7
This is a good and well-made video, but far too long and multi-focused. It should be split into three separate videos: the introduction to Python programming, the introduction to algorithmic complexity, and the process of solving the Advent of Code puzzle. All of those parts were clearly explained and animated, but they do not belong together in an hour-long video. It would be better to have them as three separate videos, each of which is shorter and clearly focused on a single topic.
4.4
Unfortunately, the coding parts are quite tedious to follow. I think you tried to teach 2 things at ones: basic programming and the notion of complexity, and that seems to be one too many. Nice visuals, though!
8.5
I don't think I am in the target audience for this - I use Python professionally, I'm familiar with big O notation, and I also solved this Advent of Code question at the time. That being said, I really enjoyed this video! It was really interesting to see how somebody else tackled the question. It's a good question to choose to illustrate big O notation, and more original the normal sorting-algorothm approach. Your descriptions were very clear and your illustrations top notch. Every time I took issue with the Python code you addressed it a couple of minutes later 😁 I think I'd have been tempted to have the "introduction to Python" section as a separate video, and say "go and watch this one first". That way you could keep the scope of your video smaller, as well as making it shorter and therefore less intimidating for potential viewers. Otherwise, this was a really fun way to teach this subject.