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Update & "Next Explainer" Survey Results (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-05 21:55:59
Imported:
2026-06

Content

(4 minutes reading time)

Hi all!

You may have noticed you were NOT charged on Nov 1st.  I paused this Patreon again for 1 more month, because I'm still behind on my catgirl project.  I got sunk-cost faith at this point.

Two fun updates, though:

1) 3Blue1Brown's Summer of Math results are out!

Here's the results page, with a video showcasing the 5 "winning" math explainers & dozens of honorable mentions!  The page also links to all the other submissions, including some really good interactives!

I was one of the judges that Grant offloaded the gigantic submission-pile to.  Thank you Grant for letting me be part of this, give feedback to new creators, and fuel my deep-seated inadequacy coz dear god the bar for educational content is SO damn high these days what am I even doing with my life

Speaking of which:

2) "Nicky's Next Series" Survey results!

A few weeks ago I gave y'all 13 pitches for my next explainer series, which will use Nutshell and Orbit.  Here's what you voted, from top to bottom!  (Again: this doesn't determine my next project, it's just to "read the room".)

  • ( 4.10 / 5.00 )  Causal Inference
  • ( 3.84 / 5.00 )  Statistics
  • ( 3.80 / 5.00 )  Bayes/Decision Theory
  • ( 3.74 / 5.00 )  Game Theory
  • ( 3.74 / 5.00 )  Virtue Ethics
  • ( 3.68 / 5.00 )  Control Theory
  • ( 3.58 / 5.00 )  Systems Biology
  • ( 3.44 / 5.00 )  Artificial Neural Networks
  • ( 3.42 / 5.00 )  Computational Neuroscience
  • ( 3.27 / 5.00 )  Differential Equations
  • ( 3.12 / 5.00 )  Special Relativity
  • ( 2.93 / 5.00 )  High-School Algebra
  • ( 2.80 / 5.00 )  Web Programming

(I gave the same survey to my Twitter, and the rankings were about the same.)

Here's what surprised me most:

  • Causal Inference & Statistics were the top-rated?! Those are dry topics, not even "sexy" like Artificial Neural Networks, which ranked middle. Maybe it was the frame of my pitches, "How To Get Causation From Correlation" and "Statistics Without The Sadistics". Still, I was surprised! (Also surprised that something ancient like Virtue Ethics rivalled Game Theory.)
  • On the flip side, weird that Special Relativity & Web Programming were at the bottom. I thought they were both cool, especially with the frames, "You can derive the time-dilation formula from the Pythagorean theorem" and "I want to focus on code as rebellion." Also, wasn't coding supposed to be a hot in-demand skill or whatever?
  • I was a bit sad, but not surprised, that folks did not want to learn high-school algebra. Even if I promised beautiful visual proofs. I should've asked if that was because folks already understand it (or think they understand it), or simply because it's not as cool as... Causal Inference?

But again, this poll doesn't determine which series I'll do next. So – after I'm done with the catgirl project – which will I do next?

I think...

... Algebra.

Yes, the second-lowest rated one. But hear me out, here's 5 reasons I feel compelled to do the Algebra series before the other series:

1) The other high-rated series that I want to do (Bayes, Decision Theory, Systems Biology, etc) all require Algebra anyway.  So, if your algebra's rusty, I can use Nutshell to embed (optional) algebra explainers in the main text!

2) Algebra's a high-school graduation requirement, and it sucks that so many souls are crushed by rote-memorizing what's supposed to be "the language of Nature".

3) I honestly can't think of a good High-School Algebra explainer (that's free & online, anyway). In contrast, if I want to introduce someone to calculus or linear algebra, that's easy, I show 'em 3Blue1Brown. Even abstract (modern) algebra has good explainers online. But high-school algebra? Maybe this is hubris/arrogance, but I genuinely do not know of any good (free & online) explainers. They're all kinda...  plug-and-chug, or disjointed, or unintuitive, or lack a clear answer to "no seriously when is this useful, why the hell would I want to learn this".

4) We messed up the pandemic in part because the world's top policymakers & media outlets did not understand exponents or fractions.

5) In fact, I think most A+ math students don't really understand algebra, either. Heck, I recently realized I didn't really understand algebra.

For example, I know that "11 x 22 x 33 x 44 = 44 x 33 x 22 x 11", because "multiplication is generally commutative".

...WHY IS THAT TRUE?! Why would 11 days of 22 shipments of 33 crates of 44 bottles be the exact same total bottles as 44 days of 33 shipments of 22 crates of 11 bottles?! And why would this be true no matter what numbers or objects?

And how would you prove that visually?

(Technical note: no, it's not an axiom, multiplication's commutativity is only an axiom for two numbers – and even then, it's not obvious why it's the right axiom to use for the countable things in day-to-day life.)

So, even though "Algebra" is basic, I hope that I can re-explain it in a way that's intriguing even for folks who've already mastered it. Do you know how to visually prove general associativity or commutativity? The visual proofs of the Pythagorean theorem, the quadratic formula, Euler's identity, the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra?

Well, you will soon. 👍

Cheers,
~ Nicky

P.S: Hey, any of you going to be at CanFURence? 🐈

Comments

Tim S (Banana Juice Tech)

I'm excited to see your take on Algebra! That's a good article re: "Sunk Cost Faith". That's a good point that one's assessment of a project is noisy, so sticking with it, at least for a time is worth it -- if only to collect more data about which projects might actually turn out to be worth in the future.

ncase
>>71262992

Thank you! And yeah that Sunk Cost Faith article was a very helpful perspective-shift for me. I sometimes get into "jump from shiny thing to shiny thing coz it doesn't seem worth it halfway" mode, and lots of my pals are stuck in that mode too.

George Woodliff-Stanley

fwiw—didn't vote in the poll & as I was reading this update was like, "aw, HS algebra would've been cool…" then got to the part where you say that you're doing it anyway, and why, and was SO glad. Resonate lots with your description of existing HS algebra online explainers. I recently had this moment where I was like, "wait, how do I just KNOW 3/4 = 0.75? like how in the world would I turn that 3 and 4 into a SEVEN and a FIVE????". Tried to look this up online to very little avail, was frantically looking for old … elementary school?? problem sets to see what we were actually DOING when converting between decimals & fractions, and see if I could wrap my head around WHY. LOVE that you're doing this. :D Excitedly, George

Vincent Zalzal

To be honest, HS algebra is not of great interest to me. However, I see how wide the potential audience can be, if you get this right. That's a good strategic choice. I'd have a hard time putting myself back into the shoes of a high-schooler learning algebra, I guess this is also a good challenge as an explainer.

Jesper the End

HS algebra, sounds like a good topic! I think the poll leaves out many details of why something could be a good topic. Either way, all your explainers are super well done so even if it’s the second lowest I’m sure it will still turn out great!

Sid_Cypher
>>71269523

About 3/4=0.75, that's converting to "decimals", where "deca-" is Greek for "ten" :D So the decimals are about powers of 10, and that 0.75 is merely a special shorthand for 75/100, a decimal fraction if you wish. Since a hundred is divisible by four, the decimal turns out neat -- just take your 3/4 and multiply both divisor and dividend by the remaining 25 to get 75/100. Generally, get your divisor to be a power of ten somehow. I was lucky to fully understand algebra back then as a kid, and I've had good teachers, so it stuck well enough. Can't easily google a whole framework of this stuff, yeah - though WolframAlpha might help.

George Woodliff-Stanley
>>71269523

Yeah!! So easy to forget the inherent "ten"ness of Decimals; this is amazing. I think 0.75 had just become "a number" to me, not "a number in base 10". So part of the secret of how that 3 and 4 turn into a 7 and a 5 indeed seems to be that there's a *ten* involved. But then, still… … how? What's the ten *doing* to/with the 3 and the 4 to get the 7 and the 5? Your approach here offers one answer (though I haven't sat with it long enough to see if I really fully grok it or could use it to, say, without a calculator, generate 0.833333[…] from 5/6), and I eventually found my way in my frantic searching to "long division" as another answer—that is, an algorithm I could use to actually reliably turn the first set of digits into the second set of digits. (I've already re-forgotten exactly how to do it though, as I had since learning it in school… something more needed to really deeply plug it into my intuitional knowings rather than just do it because I memorized how!)

Ian Keyworth

I know this comment is late, but even if you never do more on a Game Theory explainer, I would love more information about the modern research into its social applications (and why it often doesn't work; "All models are bad, some are useful" and all that). I've monitored Prisoner Dilemma papers for a while but that hasn't been scratching the itch. If you have other good sources/books on it I would love to know. Thanks!