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Comment by woojoo666 | Hacker News Reader

It's really sad that PBS ended their sister series on math, Infinite Series[1]. Those videos were just as deep, informative, and accessible as PBS Spacetime. Some of my favorites are the one on the mathematical "hydra"[2] and the ones on voting systems [3][4]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs4aHmggTfFrpkPcWSaBN9g

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWwUpEY4c8o

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoAnYQZrNrQ

[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhVR7gFMKNg

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I had never even heard of this, and I've watched dozens and dozens of episodes of Spacetime!

I'm shocked YouTube didn't steer me to this sister channel. Thank you!

Are you suggesting that the YT recommendation algorithm is some how flawed? I hope you're doing that on a throwaway account ;P

Is it possible that it doesn’t serve YTs interests to have a recommendation engine that works best for the end user?

I honestly think they just experiment with it a lot. The variety of videos that are recommended for me don’t seem to follow a pattern.

Maybe they know my brain better than I do.

>Is it possible that it doesn’t serve YTs interests to have a recommendation engine that works best for the end user?

100% absolutely it is similar to Goog's search

>I honestly think they just experiment with it a lot. The variety of videos that are recommended for me don’t seem to follow a pattern.

Possibly, but I'd posit that it's not a good system if the experiment is causing a lack of consistency. I'm sure there's a lot of people that would opt-in for a exeperimental reco system if just asked.

> Maybe they know my brain better than I do.

Now you're just being silly.

Is this a jab at dang?

dang was not a thought in my mind when I replied, so if there's any inference to dang by you in my comment, it is solely within your reading of the comment.

however, out of curiosity, what in my comment makes you think that?

You were criticising the moderation of this site

I see. No, that was more so of the swarming vs staff management, but I can see how it wasn't so out of left field now.

They said YT, not YC.

This makes even more sense at the confusion.

It's not recommended because it hasn't been updated in years.. the algorithm promotes channels with updated content higher

I watch an _absurd_ amount of PBS content on YouTube and other science channels. Not as many math channels but certainly a few. I am so angry this was never recommended to me earlier, and full of joy that my weekend is set!

It is astounding that so many people (me included) have this complain. I also watch numberphile, computerphile, 3B1B and the likes and yet I had never heard of the channel before.

Same for me.

I find the YouTube algorithm pretty useless. I have lots of subscriptions, but it only links narrowly to channels I’ve recently watched. It also keeps stupidly linking to particular vids I’ve already watched.

It was good with Kelsey, but after she had to leave and was replaced, it somehow became really bad.

I'll second that, it died only because the new host couldn't fill her shoes. Conversely Matt on SpaceTime has done a great job taking over from Gabe.

Numberphile fills the void.

Gets too mainstream though.

Try Mathologer instead

3blue1brown is also excellent

Numberphile lost me with their doubling down on their “sum of natural numbers is -1/12” video.

Me to, however I forgave them after a great response video by Mathologer.

The analytic continuation of the Riemann zeta function that gets you to -1/12 is such nuanced mathematical trickery, I'm not even sure why so many people incessantly argue it one way or another.

They did some great vids with Cliff Stoll, including this one about his Klein Bottles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU

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