YouTube isn’t always a stupefaction engine. Curious children and other autodidacts have unrivalled access to knowledge

With highbrow content but defiantly low production values, the Numberphile YouTube channel might be considered the antithesis of the platform’s biggest successes. While stars such as the controversial MrBeast orchestrate elaborate stunts and giveaways, Numberphile videos feature mathematicians talking through complex concepts at length. There are occasional questions or prompts from the unseen cameraman. The props are usually a sheet of brown paper and a marker pen. The closest the episodes get to clickbait are titles such as Tau vs Pi Smackdown or The Lazy Way to Cut Pizza; a typical video is More on Bertrand’s Paradox, or An Amazing Thing About 276.

None of this sounds like catnip for young viewers. Yet since it launched in 2011, the series has become a cult hit. Eleven million people have now watched the physics professor Roger Bowley discuss Kaprekar’s Constant. The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and the London Mathematical Society have just awarded Numberphile’s creator, Brady Haran, the Zeeman medal for the communication of mathematics. As the citation notes, the channel has material for everyone from primary school kids to graduate students. It’s a fair bet that Numberphile – along with similar channels such as Stand-up Maths and 3Blue1Brown – has inspired at least some of the record 100,000-plus children who took maths A-level in England this year.