Thinking outside the 10-dimensional box

3Blue1Brown · 3.2M views · 2017-08-11 · 25:13

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Overview

3Blue1Brown visualizes high-dimensional spheres to explain a surprising puzzle about how a sphere fits in a box as dimensions grow. It builds geometric intuition for counterintuitive properties of high-dimensional space.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as the go-to intuitive visualization of high-dimensional geometry, relevant to machine learning, optimization and sphere packing.

Recommended by 6 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2017–2025

Topics

Recreational & visual math Pure mathematics

What people said

kibwen · 2025-07 · Strong recommendation
There's a great 3blue1brown video that demonstrates this unintuitive result in a relatively intuitive way: [VIDEO]
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jedimastert · 2018-07 · Strong recommendation
Don't forget 3Blue1Brown's incredible video about visualizing higher dimensions[1]. He's getting to xkcd levels of "Of course there's a relevant video" [1]: [VIDEO]
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sillysaurus3 · 2017-10 · Strong recommendation
A trick for visualizing higher dimensions: [VIDEO] Only 383k subscribers. Hmm. Remember to subscribe, comment, and smash that like button. Real Engineering is another great channel. And of course Veritasium and Numberphile.
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Sources

Video by 3Blue1Brown, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

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