Testimonials

If you’d like to share a testimonial, email message4brady@gmail.com

The most important thing Numberphile did for me was give me a community. I've faced rejection most of my life over my love of mathematics. I never met someone who felt the way that I did. But, Numberphile showed me that there are a lot of us. Which gave me the bravery to start my own blog about mathematics. I also realized that mathematicians were people like me. Inspiring me to complete an undergraduate degree in mathematics.

Suzza Silver, US

Working with Numberphile was very rewarding -- upon returning home from SLMath, I have had several students in my courses this fall excited to let me know that they saw the video when it was posted over the summer.
Brady also did a great job at pushing me to make a video that would be accessible, so I think they really enjoyed it and got something out of it. The production value of the final product is really amazing, helping to make the whole experience very worthwhile.

Kevin Tucker - Math professor and Numberphile participant at SLMath

I started watching Numberphile with my son when he was little, maybe six or seven. The videos were so approachable and presented so clearly that it never occurred to him that perhaps the subject matter was too hard for a seven year old. He’s a senior in high school today who has ripped through all of the AP math classes his school offers and is thinking about pursuing a degree in mathematics.

Rob Nichols (and son Stephen)

I wanted to say that Numberphile helped push me to earn a Masters in Math Education after watching videos with Dr. James Grimes. Seeing how math could be so complex, yet easy to digest (on brown paper, at that) helped lead me on my own journey in the field.

Jonathan French

Numberphile made me fall in love properly with Maths, when my family couldn't help me nurture that love, Numberphile helped keep the flame a light when I was in my teens. Now I am a Maths teacher and I'm using what I've learnt to help young students understand what they need to to be successful, whilst also hopefully embedding some of the same joy I have for maths. Thank you Numberphile, and thank you Brady.
Luke Green, Birmingham, UK

I had not done well in maths at school, and had never pursued a degree in higher education because of it. After a few years of watching Numberphile and learning to love maths, I went back and got a degree. I'm grateful for the way the presenters showed me a way to embrace maths in my life.

Peggy Youell

Numberphile allowed me to start a program for motivated Grade 5-7 students here in Vancouver, Canada, that I call "Math Club". It's basically like a book club format: students pre-watch a video and then we discuss/reenact/extend/challenge it when we meet. Thank you for what you do and for making this possible!

Mike Gelbart

I hated school, but loved learning. While in high school, I skipped as much class as possible. I would sneak off to empty classrooms. 
In those empty classrooms I would watch Numberphile. Numberphile kept my passion for math alive in a time when school was pushing me away from it.

It’s not just Numberphile, also 3Blue1Brown, the coding train, Smarter Every Eay, etc.

I ended up getting my degree in mathematics, (I even went on a scholarship, despite all of those missed classes). Now I work happily as a programmer. 
The Numberphile Podcast played a special role in allowing me to connect with the story of mathematics, hearing from the biggest names in the field. I listened to the whole series twice over as I walked to and from my classes in college. Listening to and getting advice from those big names would have been reserved for only a very few people, but the Numberphile Podcast shipped it all the way out to me in Flagstaff, Arizona. Thank you for that.

Travis Weber

I was a two time college dropout and had no idea what to do with my life when I stumbled onto Numberphile (and Sixty Symbols) videos back in 2012. I fell down the rabbit hole. I went from working a warehouse job to majoring in physics and now I will have my PhD defense in a couple of months.

Zubair Bhatti

As an undiagnosed dyslexic until college, I failed my maths studies and very nearly failed to get into my desired career. I was fractionally too old to benefit from YouTube and its creators during that time, but have subsequently found the content to be very beneficial as a means of learning later in life. Numberphile is a notable case - bringing me understanding of many topics I bump into working in BioTech. So thank-you - the impact you’ve had is undoubtedly greater than you could possible appreciate.

Matt, UK

I started watching Numberphile in high school, it completely altered my view of mathematics such I started appreciating the smallest details of the mathematics of both what I was taught and what I experienced just day to day, how the trees sprawl out, how large crowds move etc. Now I am knee deep in graph theory, functional programming, and all the weird nooks and crannies of maths thanks to Numberphile.

Mustafa Barodawala

While maths was always an interesting subject to me, Numberphile scales that interesting factor up to 11. It also always teaches me something new yet seemingly manages to explain itself in terms anyone who likes maths will understand. Your questions to the presenters often are exactly what I am thinking at the time which is wonderful. Frequently I'll write some code to search for a number based on your videos such as a friend for 10, the Collatz Conjecture, etc. Unfortunately I've not found any ground breaking new numbers yet.

Paul in Minnesota

I have been watching Numberphile for about as long as it has existed. From my time in middle/high school through a PhD and now to a career designing and building rocket engines Brady and his guests have been teaching me things I would never have seen in school.

Nate

Discovering Numberphile led to me rediscovering my love for mathematics and it has kept that love alive through a career as an opera singer. Now I'm transitioning into being a programmer, and I feel lucky to have kept the maths part of my brain active!

John Kinell

For the longest time I considered maths to be hard and boring. Numberphile changed my opinion and showed me that it can be interesting and even fun. So much so that I started doing it for recreation.

Angela Flierman

Since 2013, Numberphile has been the driving force behind my continued passion for mathematics beyond high school. As an engineer, I do enjoy using math every day, but without Numberphile I wouldn't have anywhere near the appreciation for the depth, history, and beauty of the subject that I do today. Numberphile is such an incredible project, and I have to believe it has and will inspire people to love and pursue mathematics for as long as the videos exist.

Grant Parish

I always remember my first Maths book and how in awe I was at learning that a multiplication was just shorthand for a series of sums. I later made it into University to study Maths but unfortunately had to drop out on financial grounds. Then I discovered Numberphile when it was in its infancy, and it revived my passion for numeric sequences and visual maths. But it also allowed me to extend my knowledge into more complex Maths I never had the chance to learn.

Peter

After these long years following the channel (10+), Numberphile still gives me joy every time a new video comes out. A couple of brown papers, a sharpie and a great guest who is passionate about their field of work - a recipe for a regular reminder that maths is fun, funny, functional and fundamental in our lives.

János

I've been a Numberphile viewer from the very beginning, and it is easily one of the best and most delightful math outreach endeavors I've encountered. It is a gift!

Henry from MinutePhysics

When I briefly met Brady at a Royal Society event I told him, “You are helping save civilization.” Now, perhaps that was a bit of an overstatement coming from a fanboy twice his age, but there is truth to it. 
I was first told of Numberphile by a young student years ago and have been seeing its benefit ever since. I believe there are aspects to Numberphile that set it apart from the many other (often excellent) maths-oriented products.
First, its humanity. While there are plenty of on-line resources to help those struggling with differential equations or channels with singular personalities showing cool maths problems, Numberphile presents a diverse community of real people who make mistakes, laugh at each other with respect, and struggle themselves. A community you really want to be part of. This probably does more to encourage kids to follow an interest in maths than anything else, save the rare lucky student who has an extraordinary personal mentor, but even then the community aspect is something many of us don't find until we're in grad school, which inevitably leaves behind so many who take other paths.

Second, a related unique feature is the Brady-as-Everyman asking questions. Despite my eventual maths/statistics-based life, in early school I was more Brady than mathematician. I wonder how many Bradyesque questions are now asked by students that never would have been before because it was just-not-the-thing. And the remarkable phenomenon for me is when the expert struggles to answer – showing the viewer that no one has all the answers, and often The Struggle is the Thing, and that’s more than okay -- that’s what the beer sessions are for.
Third, I believe the raw viewer or subscriber numbers understate Numberphile's widespread and long-lived benefits. Enlightened teachers show select episodes to their own classes, and many of today’s viewers will not become breakthrough mathematicians themselves but will carry their Numberphile-boosted enthusiasms (and techniques) into their own classrooms for the next several generations of students in nearly every country, and the power of exponential social-networking maths carries on from there. Ramanuja was a great story because he emerged from the far periphery of the maths world; I wonder how many great Ramanujas we will eventually see as a result of Numberphile. Numberphile makes the maths world and the real world the same.

I cannot demonstrate any of this rigorously, but my experience has me believing these benefits are real. The student who first told me about Numberphile – still an avid viewer -- recently received his PhD in physics and still spreads the Numberphile gospel, I have occasionally seen an episode that has me immediately raising my Patreon support, and Brady continues to do his part for civilization.

Brent

My kiddo (Bert) and I have watched all the Numberphile channel as a bedtime treat for a few years now (took a long time to catch up!). We have been having a great time, and even the Parker Square has become a bit of a joke for us! Personally, it's made me conversant enough in maths to hold my own with real graduate level maths folks in casual maths discussions waiting in line for food.  (Today that even happened… I knew enough about topology to ask good questions and learn from a co-worker about the difference between a hollow torus and solid torus)
Rob

I’ve been watching Numberphile since near its inception. Three countries and many years later, I’m still a loyal subscriber. It’s always a great joy to see Numberphile pops up on my subscription list. I have a physics and materials science background, so I’m no stranger to maths. But the way Brady brought up the best out of the Numberphile guests is just phenomenal and elevated Numberphile to one of the must-keep-going-at-all-cost educational channels out there.
Akin Budi

The channel has featured many brilliant mathematicians from all over the world, including many celebrated professors and enthusiastic communicators. I've been watching for over a decade and I'm always intrigued what will come next! Each and every one does a great job introducing new and novel concepts to me.
Kriss Pang

Numberphile is probably the first math-related channel I saw, and it was such a pleasure to get a different perspective than that of my teachers back in the day when I was in university. I remember the day Prof. James Grime visited our university as one of the highlights of my study years. It's not an exaggeration to say that Numberphile played a significant role in my career change. I've worked as both a programmer and researcher in the past and more recently I've switched to being an educator. I even have a YouTube channel which wouldn't have been possible without pioneers like Numberphile showing how educational videos can succeed as well.
Radu Mariescu-Istodor

Numberphile has made me appreciate mathematics like never before. However, one of the larger encouragements was the famed "Parker Square". This inspired me to keep my head up in my math classes, as no one is guaranteed immediate success in understanding maths. I have always loved numbers, but I didn't become a Numberphile until watching these videos. I am now using my love of mathematics to pursue an Electrical Engineering degree. I thank all the people, especially Brady, for the amount of work put into these videos.
Nathan Taylor, US

With no exaggeration, Numberphile was a large part in shaping who I grew up to be. It focused my interests into science and math as a kid, and that never really went away. Now I'm in my second year of physics at Bar Ilan University and I've never been happier. Something like 50% of my class has had a positive experience with math education YouTube channels, namely Numberphile, and I'd be hard pressed to find even one CS student in my year that doesn't know Computerphile. These projects have huge, positive impacts on so many people around the world, and I'll always appreciate the work that goes into them.
Sagi

Numberphile, together with other channels, showed me how interesting STEMs can be, and how much technologies like animation can help in communicating things that were already interesting before, but less accessible. It helped me develop a curiosity that supported me in pursuing my CS degree.
Alessandro Bertulli, Italy

Quick and short, your videos made me study mathematics and man do I feel like that was a good decision, I've learned to actually fight for improvement and to overcome the huge learning hurdles, broaden my horizons and apply rationality to everything in my life, from communication to fashion. To me the image of a mathematician as in your videos was the penultimate goal.
Nima

As a person who barely finished high school due to my own truancy and class clownishness, math skills are not something I generally possess. However my love for art and creativity has kept me having a deep desire to better understand mathematical concepts over the years. Time and time again I have found myself watching one of your videos as these are presented in a way that a mathematically impaired person such as myself can understand. From the Ford circles and Appolonian gaskets to Mandelbrot sets and the basic concepts of topology your videos have led me to understand concepts others could simply not. I think that your videos are fun, informative and leave me wanting to learn more. 
Remco Hollander, The Netherlands

I started watching Numberphile I think high school. Growing up, I thought chemistry was my path in life, but going through college, I felt stuck. What am I supposed to do if I don’t like college chemistry? But I think slowly after thinking about it, and watching your videos. Thinking about my undergraduate courses. And thinking about the job I have now. I decided to switch to applied mathematics. I hoping to be a college professor and maybe my own math Youtube channel.
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