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Rewards + Pause + Updates + Interactive Textbook? (Patreon)

Published:
2022-07-21 18:33:33
Imported:
2026-06

Content

(4 min read)

Hi all! Turns out my schedule was too crammed to finish Nutshell this month (here's the beta, if you forgot), so I'm pausing my Patreon for July. You will not be charged on August 1st.

In the meantime, here's this month's rewards!...

· · · · ·

Three Other Updates:

🎙 I'm giving a keynote talk next month at a math-exposition conference! I'm coordinating with the organizers to figure out when they'll post the videos online, because last year's still aren't up. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But I'll probably give three mini-talks:

1) My How To Explain Things Real Good talk, updated with more math-communication tricks,

2) showing off Nutshell [an extra incentive for me to finally finish it], and

3) a talk on math and virtue ethics.*

(* I recently read, and I recommend, Mathematics For Human Flourishing. It's co-written by Francis Su, the first non-white president of the Mathematical Association of America ["finally, an Asian who's good at math"], and Christopher Jackson, an inmate who discovered math's beauty while in prison, and now helps other inmates get their GEDs.)

🌞 Want to try explaining math accessibly & beautifully? There's a bit under a month left to join 3Blue1Brown's Summer of Math Exposition 2 "competition"! The prize pool has expanded from 5 "winners", to 15! (that exclamation mark is for emphasis, not a factorial)

p.s: for tips on explaining complex ideas, might I recommend my 18-minute talk I posted last month?

🥔 [content note: dieting] Remember I said I was participating in Slime Mold Time Mold's *Potato Diet* experiment? Their first analysis is out – with 160 participants! (summary tweet-thread) I also analyzed my own data, (tweet-thread) and will explore SMTM's open dataset soon.

· · · · ·

What Interactive Textbook Do You Want?

With Nutshell (and Orbit, maybe Observable, and my good ol' simulations), I can finally make something I've wanted to try for a long time: a free, online, interactive mini-textbook!

But... on what?

Please be the tie-breaker for my indecisive brain. Which of the following mini-textbooks do you personally want –– whether it's for your own learning, or to teach students & peers? (I asked a similar survey last year, but here it is again with some entries added/removed.)

Here's 17 ideas:

  1. Game Theory (classic game theory with its flaws, the more-plausible evolutionary game theory, mechanism design a.k.a. "reverse game theory")
  2. Economics 101 (supply-demand, monopolies/monosponies, externalities, taxes & subsidies, etc)
  3. Georgist Economics (why the rent is too damn high, and what to do about it: shift tax burden to a land speculation tax + maybe a citizen's dividend/basic income)
  4. Public Choice Theory ("politics without the romance": policymakers & voters seen with game theory & economics. most public choice texts are pretty doomer-y, so i'll try to be more solution-focused.)
  5. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems ("some guy broke the entire foundation of all of mathematics using nothing but basic number theory, but his work indirectly inspired the computer, so i guess it all worked out.")
  6. Algebra in Pictures (all that high-school crap you were forced to memorize, but with, like, actual visual intuition and stuff.)
  7. Systems Biology (if your eye cells & stomach cells have the same DNA, why don't your eyes make stomach acid? the science of how your cells – and all of biology – modify themselves with biological networks.)
  8. How To Not Make Terrible Decisions (classic decision theory, functional/logical decision theory, ergodic economics, robustness/anti-fragility. ok this bulletpoint is more of a grab-bag than a coherent curriculum)
  9. Control Theory (how your thermostat works, and what it means for being alive)
  10. Statistics Without The Sadistics (statistics rebuilt from the ground up around computer simulation. a.k.a the resampling technique)
  11. Bayes (bayes theorem & practical intuition, why correlation is evidence of causation, and a bit of bayesian statistics)
  12. Causal Inference (how to get causation from correlation: econometrics, causal network analysis, maaaaaybe SINDy's.)
  13. Differential Equations ("things change each other over time". this is the math of that, applicable to everything from physics to ecology to brains to society.)
  14. HTML, CSS, JavaScript (so that we can take back power over the web, by really owning the tools to make the web)
  15. Virtue Ethics For Queer Atheist Nerds (neo-Aristotlean virtue ethics, from a secular, queer, & nerdy perspective.)
  16. Cognitive Educational Psychology (how to learn & teach, according to [our current] science)
  17. Cognitive Neuroscience (neural networks, artificial & real)

Help me decide! Which piques your fancy, if any? Leave a comment about what topic(s) you'd like a free interactive mini-textbook on, whether they're in the above list or not!

As usual, I may be too brain-scrambled to actually make any of this. Curb your enthusiasm accordingly.

Potatingly Yours,
~ Nicky Case 🥔

Comments

Jonathan

4, 1, 3, 2, 8, 11, 15 in order from most to least

Steffen J. Roth

I would love to read about 4, Public Choice! There is a great lack in economists education about that at least in Germany our days

RPGgrenade

16, 17, 11, 12, 7, 1, 8 from most to least

Xan Farley

your insights on game theory would be HUGE!! i'm a game designer, and the fundamental flaws in how game design is taught and relayed have been on my mind lately. i can think of no one i'd like to hear from more on the matter!

mark

Virtue Ethics for Queer Atheist Nerds is calling my name tbh!

Jay McGavren

Most to least: How To Not Make Terrible Decisions (needs narrowing down but this is a great topic), Economics 101, Cognitive Educational Psychology, HTML/CSS/JavaScript. This stuff has been covered elsewhere, but not by Nicky Case, so it doesn't count!

John Trevithick

Hard choice, but I vote for 12,11,8,9 - anything related to causality and systems dynamics. That said, the Cognitive Educational Psychology info looks meta-useful.

Antonio Checa

16, 4, 8, 13 from most to least.

Rachel Helps

Virtue ethics and CSS are my votes!

ncase
>>88060568

Thank you for your votes, Jonathan! (Also I see you set a domino effect for the rest of the comments; others are now also voting by #, sorted most to least. That's extra info that's helpful that I forgot to ask for, but you got the ball rolling!)

Chris Ruebeck

Listing most-desired first, etc.: 4, 3, 10, 11, 12, 7, 14, 15. These are difficult choices—all/any of what you've listed would be wonderful.

the-alchemist

* Causal Inference * Public Choice Theory * How To Not Make Terrible Decisions

Rev Storm

My vote is for 17, closely followed by 7.

Mike Crawford

interactive textbook for 16 🤯

Brendan Nelligan

5 is the most interesting to me, but I would read them all!

Tyler Beatty

Do them all :P I like 7 and 9.

Jason Medeiros

10, 11, 12, 16, but I'd be into any of them.

Jacques Frechet

1 sounds fun (curious about reverse game theory!), 3, 12 (always wondered about that), 10. Maybe 15? Oh but also definitely 7! These all sound pretty good TBH.

Eric Willisson

Coincidentally, I'm most excited by the multiples of 5! 5, 10, and 15. Agreed with the others that any would be good

Greg Perry

11 and 12 would be great! When does correlation become strong enough to imply causation?

Rodrigo Assael

I take it that: "All of the above" might not be of great help so... After some intense analysis, my vote goes to: 8 (necessary for the world we live in right now), 13 (necessary for all of us engineers that know them but don't really Know them), 15 (necessary for everybody that needs to expand their mind. That's right World, I'm talking to You) & 16 (necessary for all the teachers that are trying to make a better world. So yeah, again, we all need it).

Hed Bar-Nissan

My #1 (not up there) would be: Bell's theorem Of the (wonderful) list above by order: 12, 2, 15 and thanks!

Miri

As much as I love math (and everything else on that list) and would love to learn it from your work, I think my order of "I want to see first, for the betterment of the world" is | 16 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 15 | But I have been in love with your work since "We Become What We Behold" (it REALLY helped me understand that mechanism!), and you failed to disappoint me even once. You are, and always have been, an inspiration to me <3 Thank you!

Bern

Differential equations pleasssssse! Ordinary and partial (like me, sometimes) 😝 It’s so foundational to understanding the math behind not only engineering concepts but complex adaptive systems all around us, which its boring name really betrays 🤓

Gal Green

#7 sounds interesting. Also, the description for #7 is one of the most horrifying things I've ever read; I think eyes-in-wrong-places is my biggest nightmare fuel, and now I'm imagining eyes growing in my stomach.

narF

First pick: Georgist Economics! Then: Economics 101, Public Choice Theory

narF
>>88295952

Also: you really don't have to pause your Patreon every time. We're not paying for a product: we're paying for you!

Jesper Cockx

They all sound great, here's what personally would interest me most: 3,4,8,10,12,15,16.

Nathan Borson

7, 10, and 17 most grabbed my attention! 🙏

Stephen Mann

2, 3, 4, 13, 12, 11, 9, 7. Also, a bunch of people here must be able to help with some of this. You could maybe break up some of the tasks and delegate. Your work is so valuable, there are likely to be plenty of volunteers willing to pitch in some people-hours. (Including me!)

Orb Li

13, 17 would be most interested to me

Tim S (Banana Juice Tech)

Regarding textbooks, my votes go to 2 (maybe with a flavor of 3), 4, 7, 10, or 15

Sean Riley

Econ 101 for usefulness.

Minibego

Virtue Ethics For Queer Atheist Nerds - for my own PhD needs, heh.