3Blue1Brown
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2017–2024
18:18 · 2.4M views · Jul 21, 2017
3Blue1Brown explains space-filling curves and the Hilbert curve, and how infinite mathematical constructions connect to finite, practical approximations. It touches on mapping between dimensions and sensory ideas.
Recommended as the best visual introduction to Hilbert curves, which come up in indexing, image layout and dimensionality mapping.
6 comments from Hacker News
I am not sure if you have heard of them, but space-filling curves are a way to demonstrate this. This is a great video on the Hilbert curve this video
There's a command-line utility called pixd [1] that generates similar data visualizations on the command line. That said, it only shows static representations of binary data and is not nearly as cool as buredoranna's animated gifs showing filesystem changes over time. It can be helpful to plot these sorts of pixel arrangements on a Hilbert curve, rather than plotting pixels line by line. I learned this trick from a Ghidra plugin called cantordust [2]. 3blue1brown offers some mathematical intuition for the effectiveness of a Hilbert curve pixel arrangement [3]. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] this video
This is actually exactly the topic of the 3Blue1Brown video on Hilbert Curves: this video Space-filling curves are a sort of optimal mapping strategy for compressing two dimensions down into one.
Hilbert's curve: Is infinite math useful? by 3blue1brown this video or skip directly to the conclusion; this video
On a related note, does anyone know of a good reference of applying space filling curves as a method of dimensionality reduction? It seems like an intuitive idea since Hilbert curves [1] map points from a higher to a lower dim space but tries to preserve distance as well. [1] 3Blue1Brown video on Hilbert curves: this video