2b1b does a video on how you raise e to a matrix (hint: raising something to e is converted into another function where it's not nonsensical to do such a thing.)
In about 10 minutes he explains something my math methods instructor struggled with over two weeks (4 classes). I was resistant to the view that YouTube could host "decent" instructional content for a long time. That video was one of the first that was CLEARLY superior to the instruction I received at a tier 1 research institution.
> CLEARLY superior to the instruction I received at a tier 1 research institution.
It was pretty clear at the R1 institution I attended (MIT) that it is really a huge research lab with a small school attached, and that the educational part, for undergrads at least, was definitely not a priority. The continuing stream of advertising (err, alumni updates) that I’ve received over the subsequent decades don’t seem to contradict this either.
Still glad I went and learned a ton, but it’s not for everyone.
ETA: don’t mean to imply that it might have been good or bad for you, dingosity (how would I know?); just responding in a general way to a singular anecdote/observation in your comment.
I've had math instruction at the undergraduate and graduate level at top universities, with good instructors that I liked, and I can say without question YouTube is superior. There are many channels with outstanding content. This video is not an outlier.
> I was resistant to the view that YouTube could host "decent" instructional content for a long time.
There is SO much good content on there though. I can only guess "the algorithm" was hiding it from you. Sadly we often have to rely on sites like reddit or HN to find these creators.
What 2b1b, as well as other science YouTubers do is that they give you insight that more conventional teaching may lack. What YouTubers don't offer however is training, as in, the sometimes boring part where you do exercises.
They are complementary, an entertaining YouTube video may first give you motivation to get into a seemingly boring subject. It may also help you after you took your classes, to help make elements fall into place, but it only works if you have learned the elements beforehand.
As educative these videos are, they are entertainment, and they are driven by the rules of entertainment, they wouldn't get much views otherwise. So it leans heavily on accessible and clever explanations, surprising results and relatively short form, the boring stuff is often left out, and unfortunately, some of it is necessary to progress. Most science YouTubers admit it, and urge everyone to take school seriously.
I have never learned a field just from YouTube videos. It either left me with superficial knowledge (which is better than nothing) or acted as a way to consolidate knowledge I already had.
perhaps we should remodel our educational system towards content that had a great deal of time spent creating it rather than a slideshow created last night. if only there was this medium that allowed information to be duplicated all over the world instantly so that every professor doesn't need to create their own content
Much the same experience for me, although sans tier-1 lol. He's clearly gifted, for a long time I think wrongly assumed everyone who makes content is not.
true for most of calc and a lot of electrical. Institutions failed to discuss why you need to do things. so much of it is here is Taylor Series or integration by parts. but nobody really knew what the application for this stuff was. just follow some rules and plug in some numbers.
I feel like the Manim[1] library Grant created to make these videos is becoming some sort of "video matplotlib". I've seen it used in so many maths videos up to this point. There seems like a good amount of value in creating a simple, structured and clear way to represent these concepts in videos.
I never knew he made a whole open source project for it, nor that it was even a library doing the animation. I thought he hand-animated his videos. Brilliant.
I would love it if some of these educational YouTube videos came with exercises.
I watch a lot of educational YouTube videos. But I've come to see them as more entertainment than education. Not in terms of the quality of the videos (which is often excellent), but in terms of what I retain. Sometimes I come across YouTube videos that YouTube claims I have watched, and I don't remember the first thing about them.
I think it's difficult to learn while being just a passive listener. You have to get your hands dirty playing around with the concepts. It would be so cool if these high-quality "lecture" videos were accompanied with high quality exercises.
It would be awesome, but there’s a surfeit of material out there and these guys are doing it pro bono. Better to look at it as an entry point.
One thing I do is try to connect the concepts into textbooks I do have. Say I have an elementary proof about a cross product: try and tie that into the stuff about wedge products and exterior calculus I just learned about. Line integrals? Perfect opportunity to practice working with one-forms.
Another option for the mathematically inclined is to pause and prove everything if you feel you aren’t getting it good enough, or to build up your own visual picture from first principles as much as possible rather than memorizing the video’s presentation.
This is task for paid educators and not free youtube channels. The problem here is that educators do not make their content available for free online.
I don't blame them. Educators are in a perpetual cat-and-mouse game with their students to avoid cheating. However, in an era with Chat-GPT (and even before), cheaters can always cheat if they want to cheat. If a teacher decides to teach calculus using 3B1B's videos as reference, then they should make associated assignments available for other educators to use.
There is no field better suited for opensource than education, yet tribal knowledge remains either inaccessible or under-utilized. It's a shame. And no, "online courses" are not a substitute for real coursework. Watered-down wish-fulfillment QTEs is all they are most of the time. There are some excellent online courses (MIT OCW, NPTEL), but they're the exception. And even then, online courses have yet to replicate the essential support of a human educator or peers in learning.
I look forward to seeing schools that fully construct a curriculum around curating the best internet resources, with the teacher being there more so 'conduct / direct' rather than getting their hands dirty figuring out how to optimally teach the same thing every teacher has taught for the last 100 years. It has the advantage of reducing teacher overhead and improving the quality of teaching. win-win.
Grant Sanderson (the author) has repeatedly mentioned in his videos that he is very much _for_ active learning and doesn’t think passive viewing offers more than some insights and entertainment. He tirelessly asks his viewers to explore actively. If he weren’t the kindest and most earnest person on the internet, it would be jarring to hear him criticize so plainly what are admittedly the best videos out there.
I’m convinced that he would welcome and likely support any effort. I’m assuming he has something in mind or underworks, either building something himself or working with Brillant (the de-facto leader in active learning and a sponsor for all science education channels, including 3b1b).
There was an effort in that direction with last years’ _Summer of math_, where he asked students to make their own video.
Sabine Hossenfelder (physicist, of Science News fame) has made content for Brillant, branded under her name, so it could be an option to host it there. I suspect Grant having a website is a precursor to a homegrown option.
Either way, I’m assuming he has all the encouragement and the unlimited support of anyone here —— he certainly has mine.
Although I find instructional videos helpful in understanding concepts, the knowledge is fleeting. Exercises would be helpful, but IMHO, sometimes you need the support of a cohort or TA to solve problems in a different way.
MOOCs are pretty good. They have instructional videos, exercises and a cohort. Still, they seem to be missing something. AI will push online learning to 2.0.
Let me preface what I'm saying by just expressing gratitude to 3b1b for making an amazing math animation library, getting tons of people excited about math(Including me), and producing some really great videos to give people intuition.
All that being said, I've found that 3b1b videos tend to bound the intiution you can get on a topic. Most of his videos tend to reframe an idea in some sort of interesting way that can be easier to grasp without rigirous definitions and theorems. If your goal is to just understand the ground level of the idea, then this intutition is really great.
I've found that this "visual" intuition becomes unhelpful as soon as you try to grapple with a more advanced version of the topic. Your understanding of the topic is often completely limited to the way he frames it, and becomes quite useless when you leave that limited framing. He doesn't teach you "fourier transform", he teaches you a very specific context of the fourier transform which doesn't generalize well.
Again, this is still super valuable if you just want a broad understanding, but not particularly helpful for a comprehensive education of a topic.
> Your understanding of the topic is often completely limited to the way he frames it, and becomes quite useless when you leave that limited framing.
I don't think the limited understanding is useless once you leave the simplified framing. As an example, linear algebra is far more than just 2/3D continuous space that he covers in "Essence of Linear Algebra", but I think having the solid visual intuition for those simple cases gives you a foundation to learn the less visualizable versions of linear algebra.
I think this is just another manifestation of the "office hours phenomenon":
1. You don't understand a concept
2. You go to your professor's office hours with a question and ask them to explain.
3. They draw some squiggles on the board and walk you through the issue
4. You say "Aha! I get it! Thank you for explaining!"
5. Two steps out the door you've completely lost the idea and need help again.
You haven't internalized the idea, you're still just attached to someone else's idea. To understand something fully, you have to really take it in and play with it; find the holes and the limitations of the model.
> Your understanding of the topic is often completely limited to the way he frames it, and becomes quite useless when you leave that limited framing.
Completely limited?
My framing of human learning goes roughly like this:
1. When we are motivated to solve a particular problem, we can draw upon a multitude of “frames” (one example being metaphor, another being an equation, another being a visualization) to help us.
2. People sometimes cannot shift frames of reference effectively (i.e. perhaps fixating on only an few approaches). This is not the fault of the particular frame(s); this is a limitation in how people use them.
3. To our brains, almost everything is a “model” … a way of conceptualizing, deciding what to pay attention, what to ignore, what questions to ask, and when to recognize we aren’t getting anywhere.
4. Some models / metaphors are better than others for certain people and contexts.
- Some are better connected to other models, allowing more fluid thinking.
This reminds of Richard Feyman's observation how some people count visually while others do it by sound.
You might be one of those people that can do math purely symbolically, by parsing and manipulating expressions, a bit like regular language and you don't need your brain to build a mental image for the things you work with.
I am intuition-first kind of person, and let me tell you, intuition is not a crutch, it can do things where symbol manipulations would take orders of magnitude more effort.
It is actually possible to imagine and manipulate highly-complex, multi-dimensional things that don't have equivalents in nature.
Imagination is a muscle used a lot when thinking intuitively, some of us have it developed to a ridiculous degree.
> I've found that this "visual" intuition becomes unhelpful as soon as you try to grapple with a more advanced version of the topic. Your understanding of the topic is often completely limited to the way he frames it, and becomes quite useless when you leave that limited framing.
3b1b is doing everyone a huge favor with these lessons.
Teaching is certainly a lot different today. Decreased attention spans, underfunded schools, and ChatGPT make it a lot harder, but online modules and tutorials like these make it a lot easier.
The problem is that you can learn many things, but time is limited. Learning and understanding abstract concepts won't make you more successful, increase your SMV and give you access to better mating opportunities.
What's the use of arcane knowledge about prime numbers if you are not mathematician, and even then, one should question its importance?
Time is often better spent learning about crucial factors of success such as goal-setting and self-discipline. Additionally I would say that learning about social skills like human interaction, power dynamics, and body language is a more productive use of time.
And what about focusing on the tasks that you really need to or want to do?
Note: I often watch those kinds of videos, but I feel bad about it because I know it's procrastination. In my daily life, I almost never use this kind of knowledge.
A really strong point is how Grant manages to explain the basic concepts, that most viewers already know in some way, in such a way that it doesn't sound like repeated general knowledge. Every time he adds in lesser known facts. A concept gets defined, but in that definition starts a roller coaster of related facts. Sometimes a little history gets mixed in, and almost magically an entertaining story is created.
3blue1brown gives me hope that there are a few Michael Jordan level teachers out there, and youtube/the internet will allow us to find those people and reward them appropriately
> 3blue1brown gives me hope that there are a few Michael Jordan level teachers out there…
The basketball player (Michael Jeffrey Jordan) or machine learning professor (Michael Irwin Jordan at Cal Berkeley)?
If the former, surely we have better role models for teaching than a basketball player. Apologies for the prodding, but cross-domain idolatry gets me riled up.
For me and thousands of others, Grant Sanderson, creator of 3b1b, is the archetype of an internet-era world class educator. Thanks Grant.
> … and youtube/the internet will allow us to find those people and reward them appropriately
Yes, there are many others across various fields. While profits can be a useful motivator, we don’t want that to be the only mechanism. Education isn’t only about the most profitable topics or the students already best situated to learn.
I'm likely in the minority, but I found 3blue1brown videos difficult to understand and they usually give me a worse intuition about a concept than I previously had. I wonder why that is. Seems like most people I know swear by his videos.
Learning is all about using your current knowledge and understanding to refine and augment those mental models.
Be aware that many people don't watch videos to learn, they watch to be entertained. They think that they are learning, but really they are just watching animations. In the end, they can't actually do any of the math. They haven't actually learned anything. In the same vein, that's why TED talks are so popular. It's like eating dessert... all sugar and no nutrients.
I'm not saying that 3b1b videos aren't instructional, but rather that they are so well put together that they can satisfy the entertainment-seekers while still offering meaningful content.
The question is, then, why don't you get anything out of the videos? That brings us back to the problem of mental models of understanding.
If someone teaches a subject from a completely different perspective, it may be that it confuses you as your brain tries to harmonize the two conflicting mental models, and the video moves along too quickly for you to be able to benefit from the realignment.
This is not an attack on you, btw. In fact, I believe that this realization helped me a lot as an educator to be patient when teaching. Furthermore, it does not mean that your initial understanding is wrong, but that it is a different perspective than that which is being presented by the instructor.
Alternatively, it may be that the videos move through a particular concept too quickly. I find this is an issue, too. Once I understand something new, I like to almost daydream about the concept, exploring it mentally so that I understand it from a lot of different angles. I think of it in different situations and to see if my intuitions make sense, and if they don't I ask for clarifications. You can't do that when watching a video because it doesn't stop to answer your questions.
I like 3b1b videos. Some of them I can binge on all day simply because they "click" and make sense. Others I have had to spend days (or weeks) thinking about in order to digest and understand the perspective that Grant is trying to convey. They are definitely high value and I greatly appreciate Grant's work, but I definitely have to work, too, in order to benefit from some of them.
For me it's the visual component, especially the animated transitions that very neatly highlight the relation between various concepts or values.
I learned most of the topics in those videos well enough to pass highschool/university exams, but very often the real "aha!" moment came after seeing lines transform from one into another, planes deforming, or boxes being subdivided in 3blue1brown video.
That's the first time I've heard that. Curious what about it makes it harder for you. That's a shame, but it seems like 3b1b doesn't cater to your learning style!
When I took a "presentation skills" course at Uni, they taught us that humans are very bad at reading and listening at the same time. Something about the brain regions utilized by these two activities overlap, and cannot be simultaneously be processing two different things. For this reason the visual portion of a presentation (slides) should be kept minimal and act as immediate support for the vocal portion of the presentation. If the two are not "in sync" the audience is unable to follow the presentation fully.
I think 3b1b videos constantly break this rule; there is a LOT of going on visually, while the narrator is talking non-stop about some loosely related things or trivia. More often than not I have to re-watch segments multiple times because I cannot understand what the hell am I supposed to be paying attention to.
Mostly I've been a huge fan and think I learn a lot, but occasionally his explanation doesn't click with me. One example is his Fourier series where I want to think about a change of basis and multiplying an input signal by "reference" functions, but his explanation is more about circles spinning on circles.
I agree. Besides the Neural Network video, I watch his other ones for entertainment, because I can't follow after a few minutes. I imagine I could follow if I stopped the vid to think and rewind as necessary.
I think 3blue1brown gives you great starting intuition. When you work more deeply with a subject, you develop intuition that is more general and precise, and you understand the relationship between the simple model you started with and the more complex and nuanced understanding you developed over time. A different starting intuition than the one you started with won't be as good as your experienced intuition, and it won't be integrated with it, either, so it would feel like a step back.
No shame in that, I love his videos but I think it's well established that there are different kinds of learners out there. His content matches what works for me, and it's worth reminding people like me that one size doesn't fit all. But for those he does speak to, he is a fantastic teacher worthy of the praise he gets.
I actually believe a lot of people feel the same way but watch anyway because of the entertainment value the animations provide. But it really has made me realise that good animations alone really aren't enough and have found dry pieces of text from wikipedia to be better at times.
Yeah me too. Some of his videos are really helps me understanding about math (particularly on linear algebra) but some of his (recent-ish) videos are way above my head. Maybe because I don't have any background on the subject.
What usually happens to me is 2/3rds of the way through he rushes through seem keep points and it goes from feeling like a clear explanation to feeling like a magic trick.
I second that. 3b1b is fantastic for developing a more intuitive understanding of mathematics. In my experience, having that intuition makes all the difference.
3Blue1Brown videos really transformed my view on math. If only I had something like this while learning the basics! I've been supporting him on Patreon because I believe he's making a big difference for students all over the world.
>> I wish we put more resources into educational materials of this level (and with this kind of universal access) as a country.
I'm not sure that's possible. He is free to create videos on his own time, when he has a compelling idea how to present a topic. "put more resources" on a project sounds like funding with a specific agenda and plan - a committee-determined set of topics to cover and then push on creators with a timeline. You can certainly get good results doing that with the right approach and people, but I don't think it will turn out as good as this. For example, 3B1B gut used to work at Khan academy. Not saying Khan is bad, just that 3B1B is better if less prolific.
dingosity|2 years ago
In about 10 minutes he explains something my math methods instructor struggled with over two weeks (4 classes). I was resistant to the view that YouTube could host "decent" instructional content for a long time. That video was one of the first that was CLEARLY superior to the instruction I received at a tier 1 research institution.
gumby|2 years ago
It was pretty clear at the R1 institution I attended (MIT) that it is really a huge research lab with a small school attached, and that the educational part, for undergrads at least, was definitely not a priority. The continuing stream of advertising (err, alumni updates) that I’ve received over the subsequent decades don’t seem to contradict this either.
Still glad I went and learned a ton, but it’s not for everyone.
ETA: don’t mean to imply that it might have been good or bad for you, dingosity (how would I know?); just responding in a general way to a singular anecdote/observation in your comment.
jonahx|2 years ago
pdpi|2 years ago
rjh29|2 years ago
There is SO much good content on there though. I can only guess "the algorithm" was hiding it from you. Sadly we often have to rely on sites like reddit or HN to find these creators.
codetrotter|2 years ago
Video link https://youtu.be/O85OWBJ2ayo
gowld|2 years ago
raising e to something
> is converted into another function where it's not nonsensical to do such a thing.)
That function is the power series expansion, taught in your calculus class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_exponential
> CLEARLY superior to the instruction I received at a tier 1 research institution.
3B1B is a tier 1 educational institution.
But also, videos often feel better than classes, because videos don't have homework, so you don't actually have your feeling of understanding tested.
GuB-42|2 years ago
They are complementary, an entertaining YouTube video may first give you motivation to get into a seemingly boring subject. It may also help you after you took your classes, to help make elements fall into place, but it only works if you have learned the elements beforehand.
As educative these videos are, they are entertainment, and they are driven by the rules of entertainment, they wouldn't get much views otherwise. So it leans heavily on accessible and clever explanations, surprising results and relatively short form, the boring stuff is often left out, and unfortunately, some of it is necessary to progress. Most science YouTubers admit it, and urge everyone to take school seriously.
I have never learned a field just from YouTube videos. It either left me with superficial knowledge (which is better than nothing) or acted as a way to consolidate knowledge I already had.
jackphilson|2 years ago
frankfrank13|2 years ago
Juicyy|2 years ago
RichieAHB|2 years ago
[1] https://www.manim.community/
seanw444|2 years ago
haberman|2 years ago
I watch a lot of educational YouTube videos. But I've come to see them as more entertainment than education. Not in terms of the quality of the videos (which is often excellent), but in terms of what I retain. Sometimes I come across YouTube videos that YouTube claims I have watched, and I don't remember the first thing about them.
I think it's difficult to learn while being just a passive listener. You have to get your hands dirty playing around with the concepts. It would be so cool if these high-quality "lecture" videos were accompanied with high quality exercises.
AprilPhoenix|2 years ago
One thing I do is try to connect the concepts into textbooks I do have. Say I have an elementary proof about a cross product: try and tie that into the stuff about wedge products and exterior calculus I just learned about. Line integrals? Perfect opportunity to practice working with one-forms.
Another option for the mathematically inclined is to pause and prove everything if you feel you aren’t getting it good enough, or to build up your own visual picture from first principles as much as possible rather than memorizing the video’s presentation.
screye|2 years ago
I don't blame them. Educators are in a perpetual cat-and-mouse game with their students to avoid cheating. However, in an era with Chat-GPT (and even before), cheaters can always cheat if they want to cheat. If a teacher decides to teach calculus using 3B1B's videos as reference, then they should make associated assignments available for other educators to use.
There is no field better suited for opensource than education, yet tribal knowledge remains either inaccessible or under-utilized. It's a shame. And no, "online courses" are not a substitute for real coursework. Watered-down wish-fulfillment QTEs is all they are most of the time. There are some excellent online courses (MIT OCW, NPTEL), but they're the exception. And even then, online courses have yet to replicate the essential support of a human educator or peers in learning.
I look forward to seeing schools that fully construct a curriculum around curating the best internet resources, with the teacher being there more so 'conduct / direct' rather than getting their hands dirty figuring out how to optimally teach the same thing every teacher has taught for the last 100 years. It has the advantage of reducing teacher overhead and improving the quality of teaching. win-win.
bertil|2 years ago
I’m convinced that he would welcome and likely support any effort. I’m assuming he has something in mind or underworks, either building something himself or working with Brillant (the de-facto leader in active learning and a sponsor for all science education channels, including 3b1b).
There was an effort in that direction with last years’ _Summer of math_, where he asked students to make their own video.
Sabine Hossenfelder (physicist, of Science News fame) has made content for Brillant, branded under her name, so it could be an option to host it there. I suspect Grant having a website is a precursor to a homegrown option.
Either way, I’m assuming he has all the encouragement and the unlimited support of anyone here —— he certainly has mine.
TRiG_Ireland|2 years ago
spallas|2 years ago
GrqP|2 years ago
Although I find instructional videos helpful in understanding concepts, the knowledge is fleeting. Exercises would be helpful, but IMHO, sometimes you need the support of a cohort or TA to solve problems in a different way.
MOOCs are pretty good. They have instructional videos, exercises and a cohort. Still, they seem to be missing something. AI will push online learning to 2.0.
eru|2 years ago
Nifty3929|2 years ago
jmartrican|2 years ago
liorben-david|2 years ago
All that being said, I've found that 3b1b videos tend to bound the intiution you can get on a topic. Most of his videos tend to reframe an idea in some sort of interesting way that can be easier to grasp without rigirous definitions and theorems. If your goal is to just understand the ground level of the idea, then this intutition is really great.
I've found that this "visual" intuition becomes unhelpful as soon as you try to grapple with a more advanced version of the topic. Your understanding of the topic is often completely limited to the way he frames it, and becomes quite useless when you leave that limited framing. He doesn't teach you "fourier transform", he teaches you a very specific context of the fourier transform which doesn't generalize well.
Again, this is still super valuable if you just want a broad understanding, but not particularly helpful for a comprehensive education of a topic.
thethirdone|2 years ago
I don't think the limited understanding is useless once you leave the simplified framing. As an example, linear algebra is far more than just 2/3D continuous space that he covers in "Essence of Linear Algebra", but I think having the solid visual intuition for those simple cases gives you a foundation to learn the less visualizable versions of linear algebra.
Rayhem|2 years ago
1. You don't understand a concept 2. You go to your professor's office hours with a question and ask them to explain. 3. They draw some squiggles on the board and walk you through the issue 4. You say "Aha! I get it! Thank you for explaining!" 5. Two steps out the door you've completely lost the idea and need help again.
You haven't internalized the idea, you're still just attached to someone else's idea. To understand something fully, you have to really take it in and play with it; find the holes and the limitations of the model.
xpe|2 years ago
Completely limited?
My framing of human learning goes roughly like this:
1. When we are motivated to solve a particular problem, we can draw upon a multitude of “frames” (one example being metaphor, another being an equation, another being a visualization) to help us.
2. People sometimes cannot shift frames of reference effectively (i.e. perhaps fixating on only an few approaches). This is not the fault of the particular frame(s); this is a limitation in how people use them.
3. To our brains, almost everything is a “model” … a way of conceptualizing, deciding what to pay attention, what to ignore, what questions to ask, and when to recognize we aren’t getting anywhere.
4. Some models / metaphors are better than others for certain people and contexts.
- Some are better connected to other models, allowing more fluid thinking.
- Some are more rigorous.
- Some are simpler.
It depends on so many things.
udev|2 years ago
You might be one of those people that can do math purely symbolically, by parsing and manipulating expressions, a bit like regular language and you don't need your brain to build a mental image for the things you work with.
I am intuition-first kind of person, and let me tell you, intuition is not a crutch, it can do things where symbol manipulations would take orders of magnitude more effort.
It is actually possible to imagine and manipulate highly-complex, multi-dimensional things that don't have equivalents in nature.
Imagination is a muscle used a lot when thinking intuitively, some of us have it developed to a ridiculous degree.
xpe|2 years ago
Can you give a specific example?
armchairhacker|2 years ago
Teaching is certainly a lot different today. Decreased attention spans, underfunded schools, and ChatGPT make it a lot harder, but online modules and tutorials like these make it a lot easier.
Silverback_VII|2 years ago
What's the use of arcane knowledge about prime numbers if you are not mathematician, and even then, one should question its importance?
Time is often better spent learning about crucial factors of success such as goal-setting and self-discipline. Additionally I would say that learning about social skills like human interaction, power dynamics, and body language is a more productive use of time.
And what about focusing on the tasks that you really need to or want to do?
Note: I often watch those kinds of videos, but I feel bad about it because I know it's procrastination. In my daily life, I almost never use this kind of knowledge.
jhncls|2 years ago
ylhert|2 years ago
xpe|2 years ago
The basketball player (Michael Jeffrey Jordan) or machine learning professor (Michael Irwin Jordan at Cal Berkeley)?
If the former, surely we have better role models for teaching than a basketball player. Apologies for the prodding, but cross-domain idolatry gets me riled up.
For me and thousands of others, Grant Sanderson, creator of 3b1b, is the archetype of an internet-era world class educator. Thanks Grant.
> … and youtube/the internet will allow us to find those people and reward them appropriately
Yes, there are many others across various fields. While profits can be a useful motivator, we don’t want that to be the only mechanism. Education isn’t only about the most profitable topics or the students already best situated to learn.
jackling|2 years ago
coreyp_1|2 years ago
Be aware that many people don't watch videos to learn, they watch to be entertained. They think that they are learning, but really they are just watching animations. In the end, they can't actually do any of the math. They haven't actually learned anything. In the same vein, that's why TED talks are so popular. It's like eating dessert... all sugar and no nutrients.
I'm not saying that 3b1b videos aren't instructional, but rather that they are so well put together that they can satisfy the entertainment-seekers while still offering meaningful content.
The question is, then, why don't you get anything out of the videos? That brings us back to the problem of mental models of understanding.
If someone teaches a subject from a completely different perspective, it may be that it confuses you as your brain tries to harmonize the two conflicting mental models, and the video moves along too quickly for you to be able to benefit from the realignment.
This is not an attack on you, btw. In fact, I believe that this realization helped me a lot as an educator to be patient when teaching. Furthermore, it does not mean that your initial understanding is wrong, but that it is a different perspective than that which is being presented by the instructor.
Alternatively, it may be that the videos move through a particular concept too quickly. I find this is an issue, too. Once I understand something new, I like to almost daydream about the concept, exploring it mentally so that I understand it from a lot of different angles. I think of it in different situations and to see if my intuitions make sense, and if they don't I ask for clarifications. You can't do that when watching a video because it doesn't stop to answer your questions.
I like 3b1b videos. Some of them I can binge on all day simply because they "click" and make sense. Others I have had to spend days (or weeks) thinking about in order to digest and understand the perspective that Grant is trying to convey. They are definitely high value and I greatly appreciate Grant's work, but I definitely have to work, too, in order to benefit from some of them.
silversmith|2 years ago
I learned most of the topics in those videos well enough to pass highschool/university exams, but very often the real "aha!" moment came after seeing lines transform from one into another, planes deforming, or boxes being subdivided in 3blue1brown video.
C-x_C-f|2 years ago
seydor|2 years ago
- un-abstracting abstract concepts by creating concrete examples, which end up taking the focus away from the abstract version
- serial timeline, that is like a blackboard being constanty erased instead of adding to one big construction
dingosity|2 years ago
mliker|2 years ago
MawKKe|2 years ago
I think 3b1b videos constantly break this rule; there is a LOT of going on visually, while the narrator is talking non-stop about some loosely related things or trivia. More often than not I have to re-watch segments multiple times because I cannot understand what the hell am I supposed to be paying attention to.
Tarrosion|2 years ago
jmartrican|2 years ago
dkarl|2 years ago
veltas|2 years ago
password54321|2 years ago
cloogshicer|2 years ago
ahmadmijot|2 years ago
viburnum|2 years ago
chrsig|2 years ago
postsantum|2 years ago
mkw5053|2 years ago
djcooley|2 years ago
hwestiii|2 years ago
aaur0|2 years ago
luxuryballs|2 years ago
adamc|2 years ago
I wish we put more resources into educational materials of this level (and with this kind of universal access) as a country.
phkahler|2 years ago
I'm not sure that's possible. He is free to create videos on his own time, when he has a compelling idea how to present a topic. "put more resources" on a project sounds like funding with a specific agenda and plan - a committee-determined set of topics to cover and then push on creators with a timeline. You can certainly get good results doing that with the right approach and people, but I don't think it will turn out as good as this. For example, 3B1B gut used to work at Khan academy. Not saying Khan is bad, just that 3B1B is better if less prolific.
jmartrican|2 years ago
29athrowaway|2 years ago