The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything

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How a feud in Russia led to modern prediction algorithms. 👉 To try everything Brilliant has to offer for free for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/veritasium. You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription. If you’re looking for a molecular modeling kit, try Snatoms, a kit I invented where the atoms snap together magnetically - https://ve42.co/SnatomsV Sign up to the Veritasium newsletter for weekly science updates - https://ve42.co/Newsletter ▀▀▀ A huge thank you to Brian Hayes, David Aldous, Geoff Engelstein, Jeffrey Rosenthal, Jimmy He, Mark Priestley, Michael Choi, Peter Norvig, Sam Power, and Thomas Haigh for their invaluable expertise and contributions to this video. And a special thank you to Madeline Johnson for her excellent fact-checking. ▀▀▀ 0:00 The Law of Large Numbers 4:37 What is a Markov Chain? 9:43 Ulam and Solitaire 12:21 Nuclear Fission 15:46 The Monte Carlo Method 16:32 The first search engines 19:07 Google is born 25:16 How does predictive text work? 27:10 Are Markov chains memoryless? 29:41 How to perfectly shuffle a deck of cards ▀▀▀ References: https://ve42.co/RefsMarkov Images & Video: https://ve42.co/7Z ▀▀▀ Special thanks to our Patreon supporters: Adam Foreman, Albert Wenger, Alex Porter, Alexander Tamas, Anton Ragin, armedtoe, Balkrishna Heroor, Bertrand Serlet, Blake Byers, Bruce, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, David Tseng, Evgeny Skvortsov, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, gpoly, Ibby Hadeed, JT, Jeromy Johnson, Jon Jamiso

Published 2025-07-25 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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