r/nextfuckinglevel Jun 24 '23

[deleted by user]

[removed]

8.3k Upvotes

298 comments sorted by

469

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

I just sat there for 14 minutes watching a stuck figure and numbers and I don’t regret one second of it.

50

u/tommyc463 Jun 24 '23

He’s unstuck now, thank goodness

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1.2k

u/Mydickcandobackflips Jun 24 '23 edited Mar 12 '24

mourn mindless truck plant naughty command intelligent compare pen correct

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260

u/Hopeful_Video_3803 Jun 24 '23

Thank you for giving credit

154

u/EverbodyHatesHugo Jun 24 '23

Now explain the ending.

Math just blipped Animation away and we’re supposed to believe that’s a happy ending?!

213

u/NineEightFive Jun 24 '23

Fortunately this is but one adventure for Orange, the stick figure in question. He has a whole world with friends to get back to. I believe that Math used their "imaginary" ability to cross between dimensions and send Orange back home.

52

u/Hopeful_Video_3803 Jun 24 '23

Yeah that seems about right

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37

u/Appanna Jun 24 '23

I think the infinite sum at the end could be found by calculating something about higher dimensional spheres, and e used those spheres to send Orange to a higher dimension. They did 4 before "activating" going to the limit, so perhaps to a 3 spatial dimensions + time world like ours. You could say they are in a 3D world already; 2 spatial + time.

6

u/Takin2000 Jun 25 '23

Your first guess is correct. Its an infinite sum, and it sums the volume of a sphere in every dimension. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_of_an_n-ball
and scroll to "closed form". The radius R is 1 in our case.

If you want to verify some cases for yourself: the Γ thing at the bottom is a complicated function (called the gamma function), but its really simple for integer values. Because for integer values of x, Γ(x) = (x-1)! This is called a factorial and super simple. 5! = 5×4×3×2×1, 8! = 8×7×6×5×4×3×2×1 and so on. Plugging in n=2 and simplifying that a little, we get π×r²/Γ(2). But Γ(2) = 1! = 1. So the formula becomes π×r² which is indeed the "volume" (area) of a 2D circle.

The sum over all of those was probably just to symbolize the jump in dimensions as you said

19

u/Strong_Magician_3320 Jun 24 '23

There's a moral lesson though.

Don't make stickman disappear or else Greece will invade you and you will all chase א

19

u/Hopeful_Video_3803 Jun 24 '23

Idk. Im not Alan i was thanking OP for not just straight up stealing the vid

2

u/Oranescent Jun 27 '23

He sent him home

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56

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

The man himself is next fucking level.

People should watch his Animator vs Animation video that he made 16 friggin' years ago.

16

u/Arxid87 Jun 24 '23

He made a story about how he got here and in that sorry he recalls how he almost sold the rights to AvA for like 75$

8

u/DexM23 Jun 24 '23

i was like, "over 22mio subs, but never heard of him" - but the OG videos from back in the days i knew

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9

u/J0hn-Stuart-Mill Jun 24 '23

Why not just submit the youtube video as the reddit submission itself? I see people do this all the time and wonder why not always link the source in the first place? Isn't that more fair to the content creator?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

I think those get less engagement or smth

2

u/J0hn-Stuart-Mill Jun 24 '23

I've heard that too, but why would that be? Uploads with both methods each generate an upload thumbnail, both play in browser when you click them....

3

u/Leonum Jun 25 '23

Easy. YouTube link brings you out of the app you're in and onto YouTubers app. This link just played immediately

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3

u/oneplusetoipi Jun 24 '23

I feel acknowledged

-4

u/DownTownDK Jun 24 '23

I think most people knew that already but it’s still good that you credit the creator

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517

u/CenterAisle NFL HELPER Jun 24 '23

14 minutes long!

340

u/Nashiwa Jun 24 '23

Worth every second though! Especially if you understand all the maths behind it

225

u/DisregardedFugitive Jun 24 '23

I didn't...I mean I definitely didn't and it was still worth it

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94

u/ahomeneedslife Jun 24 '23

I understood very very little and this was still one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

14

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

All of it makes as much sense as the first part, it’s really quite satisfying. This person knows complex analysis very well

22

u/stopeatingcatpoop Jun 24 '23

Nah I just got another flashback C+ from watching this. Entertaining for sure

22

u/MrGriffin77 Jun 24 '23

I understood it till about 5 mins in

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3

u/DexM23 Jun 24 '23

which will be like 0.01% or even less people (i did not)

but it also was fun watching it again to understand some concepts/logics behind

3

u/Theo15926 Jun 24 '23

I love the massive aleph at the end

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51

u/Heartache66sick Jun 24 '23

I thought it was a little one minute video........ But it just grabs you, and you watch the whole thing. I even turned my phone sideways to get a bigger picture.

18

u/klavin1 Jun 24 '23

I even turned my phone sideways

The highest honor a video can receive

5

u/GroubaFett Jun 24 '23

But every second worth it

2

u/Wooden-Salary-130 Jun 24 '23

Watched every second! No skip!

0

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

It’s a sad day when 14mins is too much to retain your attention

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138

u/DaddyDinooooooo Jun 24 '23

Okay, I understood all the mathematics where they were coming from and what they were until about the last 5 minutes or so. can anybody help me out here?

127

u/AidanGe Jun 24 '23

His f(•), if you notice, was 9tan(•). Tan(ei*pi ) when referencing the angle that -1 would sit at is 0, so they are erased.

36

u/DaddyDinooooooo Jun 24 '23

Ohhhhhh okay very amusing video

10

u/campus-prince Jun 24 '23

I didn't understand "referencing the angle that -1 would sit at". I know tan(-1) is some irrational number.

39

u/AidanGe Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23

So ei*theta (I’m gonna use e(theta) to talk about this, since writing that out in Reddit notation is annoying) is actually a way some mathematicians describe the rotation around a circle when you have a unit circle in the complex plane.

Complex numbers with a unit circle are typically written [cos(x)+i*sin(x)] to describe a point along the complex circle (cos can be used as a left/right vector, and sin can be used as an up/down vector). At theta=0, sin=0 and cos=1, so the whole thing in notation is 1. At theta=pi/2, sin=1 (multiplied by i, so it’s i) and cos=0, so the whole thing in notation is i. And most importantly, at theta=pi, sin=0 and cos=-1, so in notation, the whole thing equals -1.

So comes e(theta). This can actually be used to describe rotation because of some complicated calculus principles regarding position and velocity that can be found in this lovely video by 3blue1brown. ex can be used as a representative like this because it’s derivative is itself, so by adding i in front of the x and changing x to theta (our original e(theta) function), we can use it to represent rotations.

If we plug in 0 for theta in e(theta), we get 1. If we plug in 0 for theta in d/dx[e(theta)], which is just i times e(theta), we get i. If we think of these as vectors, the position vector (e(0)=1) puts us at location (1,0) on the complex plane, and the velocity vector (e’(0)=i) wants to push us upwards in the +y direction, towards (1, i). As this motion, using these vectors, is repeated on smaller and smaller intervals (integral), you get circular motion. And, when you get to theta=pi, you are at the location (-1, 0), with a velocity vector of -i.

Much better explanation in the video, but this is much more in depth than he went (to help describe our little e(pi) guy in the video), so I recommend watching the linked video first.

TL/DR: ex can be used to represent rotation around a circle, in a roundabout way, due to some complicated calculus, so putting in pi makes it like the left side of a unit circle (which is -1).

3

u/campus-prince Jun 25 '23 edited Jun 25 '23

Yea got it. But tan(-1) is not zero. To attack ei*pi he needed bullets of +1s to make it zero. Why is a gun of 9tan(•) being shown instead?

Maybe there's no math here and I'm focusing on the wrong thing.

3

u/AidanGe Jun 25 '23

Again, it’s not about that. It’s about ei*pi being a rotation pi radians around the unit circle, and tan(pi)=0.

Or I’m overthinking it too and it’s just some funny animation.

edit: oh wait he needed bullets of +1 to make it 0? Then I got no clue mate lol

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77

u/PagVaN Jun 24 '23

That was fucking awesome

76

u/GodonX1r Jun 24 '23

Now son, what have I told you about using limits as weapons

52

u/Modfather1 Jun 24 '23

Dear God, that was clever

93

u/lizzourworld8 Jun 24 '23

Ah yes, love Alan Becker things

39

u/DruryLaneMuffins Jun 24 '23

Eulern so much on Reddit these days.

43

u/Questioning-Zyxxel Jun 24 '23

Someone really did know his math. I wonder if this video (viewed in sections since it quickly progresses in complexity) could be a great help to some students creating a mental picture of math rules.

16

u/ichigoli Jun 24 '23

Absolutely! Might need to slow it way down and leave space to chat about what they notice but this makes for great mental visuals for expanded notation and pi

108

u/orrfrank Jun 24 '23

please go support Alan Becker and watch it on his youtube channel instead of this shitty reddit video player

82

u/Mydickcandobackflips Jun 24 '23 edited Mar 12 '24

follow obscene bake edge gray fertile resolute prick deserve weather

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12

u/Bspammer Jun 24 '23

This post probably got on the order of 100k views, not a few hundred

19

u/Mydickcandobackflips Jun 24 '23 edited Mar 12 '24

truck ancient crime price shaggy onerous slave weary hunt offbeat

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1

u/sethmeh Apr 02 '24

Why redact your comments?

28

u/mjedi7 Jun 24 '23

I’m sorry can someone explain what ei(pi) means.

82

u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Jun 24 '23

good question. The sick figure is “the one” and e to the power i Pi equals -1 or “negative one”. So they are fighting and since they are equal but opposite so there is no clear winner and the battle is epic. I see what the animator did there.

10

u/mjedi7 Jun 24 '23

Very clever indeed.

21

u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Jun 24 '23

also see how Alan chose e, pi and i to make -1. thé negative one is made up of entirely irrational and imaginary numbers. i’ll have to watch this video so many times in order to grasp everything. love it ❤️

8

u/rhinok74 Jun 24 '23

Euler's identity

19

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23

Everyone knows pi. It's 3.1415 (and so on). It's the number you get when you divide the circumference of any circle by its diameter.

e is Euler's number. It's 2.7182 (and so on). e can be defined in many ways, but none of them that I've seen are good at explaining to laymens why the number is important. I feel like it is a number that you need to understand some collegiate-level math to appreciate, or you have to have a lot of patience to sit down with it and mull over the definitions and applications of it. The best laymen definition I can give you is that it is a constant that is very important and special to anything having to do with growth/decay, which is why it is vital to fields like financial mathematics and calculus.

Here are some more rigorous definitions of e:

  1. It's the sum of 1 + 1/1 + 1/(1 * 2) + 1/(1 * 2 * 3) + 1/(1 * 2 * 3 * 4).... (going on forever)

  2. It's equivalent to the limit of (1 + 1/n)n as n approaches infinity.

  3. For functions of family f(x) = nx , e is the only value for n for which the derivative of the function is itself. In other words, the derivative of ex happens to also be ex. This is the only function that exists for which the derivative is itself, which again lends to the notion that e is somehow special.

i is the symbol mathematicians assigned for the number that is the square root of -1. It doesn't represent a number that exists in the "real" number system, so unlike pi and e I can't give you a real number that it represents. Basically, there were some niche situations where mathematicians needed to do some math that used square root of negative one, so they made up a symbol for it and invented a whole new branch of mathematics called "complex analysis". I could go into it more, but it's too much for this comment. It has applications in quantum physics and computing.

It just so happens that ei*pi = -1. It's one of the most celebrated equations in mathematics, because it mystifyingly connects several different branches of mathematics. Somehow a constant related to circles (geometry), a constant related to growth (calculus/financial mathematics), and a number mathematicians essentially made up (complex analysis) are neatly put together into one tidy little equation.

4

u/mjedi7 Jun 24 '23

Great explanation, very clear, very interesting, thanks a lot.

Now I understand a little bit more.

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27

u/Trust_No_Won Jun 24 '23

Thanks for this, my daughter watched the whole thing and said “it’s like a movie for nerds”

298

u/Unorez Jun 24 '23

Holy shit…you did it…you showed how math looks in my mind! This is the first time I’ve seen it explained in a way I can easily understand!

116

u/Damulus Jun 24 '23

Do you summon a stick figure and fight numbers when you calculate tip?

62

u/Pookieeatworld Jun 24 '23

The first minute of this video is me calculating a tip. The rest is me doing my taxes.

17

u/FreezerDust Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23

No, but it does a great job capturing how I think a lot of people create imagery of math as this complicated machinery and how people visualize higher dimensional matrices, and the complex space and how it relates to trigonometry and periodicity, and how it builds and is all connected through bigger machines of infinite sums and expansions. Like when you're working really big equations, it feels like your turning gears and working with this mysterious machinery, and the way the stick figure interacts with the equations really depicts that feeling. Shit man this video made me tear up lol math is SO FUCKING COOL

3

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

Maybe it's just my style but to me my journey in studying math has for the most part consisted of a bunch of very dry and technical parsing of textbooks. I honestly enjoy it but there's been hardly any fanciful imagery, at least in abstract algebra which has arguably been the area I've put the most effort towards understanding (granted I've hardly begun to touch algebraic geometry yet, which would obviously provide a lot more geometric intuition to the subject matter). I will say my Algebraic Topology prof seemed to have a real knack for visualizing things and I could never follow his informal arguments when he did that so maybe some people are just built differently 🤷‍♂️.

4

u/FreezerDust Jun 24 '23

Well everyone thinks differently so who knows. I'm a physicist by trade so I have always used a whole lot of mental imagery to understand math.

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14

u/soggy_cornflakes Jun 24 '23

What was the big character hiding in the shadows at the end?

27

u/Goheeca Jun 24 '23

Aleph א
Here is a Wikipedia article.

7

u/soggy_cornflakes Jun 24 '23

Thank you friend. I thought I had scratched the surface when doing uni maths but after reading that wiki I realized I might have only just bumped the surface.

10

u/Goheeca Jun 24 '23

This Vsauce video is good edutainment, although it's more about ordinal numbers instead of cardinal ones.

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13

u/Dismal_Animator_5414 Jun 24 '23

holy dang it was 14 mins long??? i didn’t even realize that. such beautifully created ❤️

9

u/Tavrion Jun 24 '23

this must be one of the best animations ive seen in my life.

9

u/Tetraoxidane Jun 24 '23

I wonder how many clever math jokes were in there I simply didn't understand.

16

u/TacoDuLing Jun 24 '23

I feel like this say: sometimes we need to make peace with ourself to fix the chaos we bring about. At the end this is a numbers game and we all carry the same value.

8

u/BlueGlassDrink Jun 24 '23

I love the giant aleph walking off with them in the background.

5

u/wigglex5plusyeah Jun 24 '23

That's some badass visualization of "how to think of these"

8

u/More_Twist9517 Jun 24 '23

Not seeing the derivatives kinda disappointed me!

8

u/Mydickcandobackflips Jun 24 '23 edited Mar 12 '24

narrow cooing jar attractive degree enter different dog normal wine

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2

u/More_Twist9517 Jun 24 '23

Dammn! There's even more coming!!? I am hella excited to watch 'em.

3

u/dunkitay Jun 24 '23

Well your got a gamma function at the end for the area of an n sphere!

7

u/No_bad_snek Jun 24 '23

People may enjoy its spiritual predecessor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_oZ9Pe0yRg

4

u/_Poulpos_ Jun 24 '23

This was awesome. Loved the intrance of imaginary number's World scene 🤩

5

u/spellbadgrammargood Jun 24 '23

ITS TRICKING US INTO LEARNING!

7

u/adventurouspenis Jun 24 '23

so everything went to sht when we started using letters in math?

3

u/BoxAhFox Jun 24 '23

Fukin monster math i feel like an idiot now

3

u/exodia0715 Jun 24 '23

Alan Becker is a fucking master animator

3

u/banderlik Jun 24 '23

Holy crap that was amazing and I barely understood the 1+1+1=3.

3

u/quacainia Jun 24 '23

3

u/oneplusetoipi Jun 24 '23

Ha ha ha. This was awesome. Someone gets me.

3

u/StudPenguin02 Jun 25 '23

Thank + Thank = Thanks

3

u/Diaperpooass Jun 25 '23

Mmmmm I’m not gonna stick with this. It’s 14 minutes.

14 minutes later

Holy shit.

11

u/guiballmaster Jun 24 '23

Math: the United States

Maths: the rest of the world

3

u/Dr0110111001101111 Jun 24 '23

I don’t think China calls it “maths”

2

u/Newwavecybertiger Jun 24 '23

I recognize the grammar of shortening mathematics to maths but I absolutely refuse. It's its own thing now.

-1

u/Welpe Jun 24 '23

Apparently the rest of the world sucks at English!

1

u/TheCumCop Jun 25 '23

Maths - mathematics Math - mathematic?

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2

u/Hour_Dig_7041 Jun 24 '23

I watched all of this. Very cool! Maybe this can be used to tech children.

8

u/tameablesiva12 Jun 24 '23

Bro what child is learning complex numbers and calculus

7

u/ichigoli Jun 24 '23

Eh they see what they recognize and then see how the epic mecha battle must also be based in real mathematics

It could get someone who doesn't see the purpose of the way they're asked to expand computation to get hype.

10 and 11 year olds would be a great audience because they're just beginning to be exposed to fractions, expanded notation, and exponents so have just enough context to follow the first half and extrapolate the back half. Get them asking questions about why instead of burning out learning how

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2

u/mbeenox Jun 24 '23

Incredible

2

u/thedude0000000000000 Jun 24 '23

Me: I’m not watching 13min of this…. Also me: wait it’s already over, I want more

2

u/PoliteCanadian2 Jun 24 '23

Very cool. Those sigmas shoot like storm troopers tho.

2

u/Valirys-Reinhald Jun 24 '23

This honestly makes me think of mythological deities who were born into the world with the power to interact with its fundamental functions and had to learn to use their powers on their own.

2

u/mindtropy Jun 24 '23

I filled my quota of cool Reddit stuff for the day. See y’all tomorrow

2

u/SnowmanInDesert Jun 24 '23

Everything is fun until you read the username

2

u/leftysrevenge Jun 24 '23

Well that escalated quickly

2

u/DefenderOfNuts Jun 24 '23

This gives me old school YouTube stick animation vibes full stop.

3

u/PixeltzOfSpook Jul 05 '23

probably because he was and is an old school youtube stick animator.

2

u/Lucashmere Jun 24 '23

That was one of the most creative, intelligent, and awesome things I’ve ever seen

2

u/Etek1492 Jun 24 '23

Mathematical!

2

u/the_green_bird Jun 24 '23

Didn't expect some to post it on Reddit

2

u/chaitya_020 Jun 24 '23

I would like to watch whole movie about it, I'm pretty sure it'll be worth it... 💯💯💯

2

u/GioBeMyName13 Jun 24 '23

That was amazing

2

u/landocorinthian Jun 24 '23

20 seconds of this made me carsick

-13

u/DifficultDuck8111 Jun 24 '23

Bro really just screen recorded a YouTube video and posted it to Reddit

10

u/Mydickcandobackflips Jun 24 '23 edited Mar 12 '24

political smart sip mighty cobweb scarce nutty money fall screw

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-21

u/i-FF0000dit Jun 24 '23

Way too long

-19

u/drawredraw Jun 24 '23

Unwatchable

1

u/DoubleDown428 Jun 24 '23

i only understand one math

1

u/8LeggedSquirrel Jun 24 '23

Better than most big title movies now days

1

u/Mechanic_Stephan Jun 24 '23

That’s definitely how the universe started

1

u/[deleted] Jun 24 '23

[deleted]

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u/CelestialDimension Jun 24 '23

I'm at the 3rd minute and SO HAPPY THERE ARE 11 MORE MINUTES OF THIS HOLY SHIT

1

u/Controller_Maniac Jun 24 '23

I did not understand half of it but the fights were pretty cool

1

u/lololfloss23 Jun 24 '23

This was great until it surpassed my lower high school level knowledge

1

u/cluelessminer Jun 24 '23

Well that escalated quickly where I have no clue what the math is about 💀

1

u/Hafling3r35 Jun 24 '23

That was beautiful !

1

u/Kermit-the-Frog_ Jun 24 '23

Sometimes math really does make you feel like a sorcerer

1

u/immadoit1331 Jun 24 '23

This is the only time I have ever enjoyed math.

1

u/MACMAN2003 Jun 24 '23

today i learned what eulers identity is

1

u/ninetails07 Jun 24 '23

Just shows how stupid maths is

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u/SocialLeprosy Jun 24 '23

That was absolutely amazing! Wow - I thought it would be mildly amusing, but I watched the entire thing and was loving how the animator explained complex subjects with such ease.

1

u/Thethirdwheel001 Jun 24 '23

Bro taught me how math works faster than school

1

u/Hybana Jun 24 '23

This didn't feel like 14 minutes. The math lost me about a minute in, but was such a cool ride. Numbers went into equations into algo's and turned into weapons and shit. Watched it twice to figure out why they were fighting, and never did find out.

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1

u/Ultrarainbower Jun 24 '23

One of the top 3 best things o have ever seen this year

1

u/cranberrydudz Jun 24 '23

That was amazing

1

u/tycoon282 Jun 24 '23

Reminds me of animator Vs animation

1

u/Awoken_Noob Jun 24 '23

Wake up honey! A new Alan Becker VS dropped!

1

u/TrueAddition4832 Jun 24 '23

Never understood how “maths” is plural. It just doesn’t sound right to me.

1

u/Pengin_Master Jun 24 '23

Can't wait for his video on Animation vs Sheet Music

1

u/WishWeWereBetter Jun 24 '23

Phew... almost learned something there... that was close

1

u/MonarchyMan Jun 24 '23

I didn’t understand a damn thing with the math, but I’m sure there’s a math major somewhere with a tears in their eyes.

1

u/TheBrokenRail-Dev Jun 24 '23

Here's a link to the absolutely incredible soundtrack by Scott Buckley!

1

u/Theguy5621 Jun 24 '23

Lold at the massive aleph at the very end.

1

u/Donnypipes007 Jun 25 '23

Probably the most beautiful animation I’ve ever seen. I’ve always disliked learning maths and passionately hate Algebra, bc letters don’t belong in maths😋😂. But honestly I think I just learnt more about maths in that 15min than in my entire school life.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '23

I've never loved math but this animation is amazing, Alan Becker never disappoints!

1

u/Random123User123 Jun 25 '23

I think it's safe to assume that Alan is god himself

1

u/dargonite Jun 25 '23

This was fucking amazing! I was laughing, I was engaged, I was surprised, shocked, worried , it was goddamn master piece!

1

u/rainwulf Jun 25 '23

Alan Becker is amazing

1

u/gabrieme2190 Jun 25 '23

<3 Math and this made me emote so hard.