4 ms·

Do you have an example of a tree-oriented concept explanation?

azeirah 8y ago
I think mind-maps fit into that category, although I think /u/motohagiography is referring to something more specific than that.
DonHopkins 8y ago
Probably not quite what /u/motohagiography was referring to by that term, but illustrating what he meant by visually grokking vast trees with interesting structures: The Global Dynamics of Cellular Automata: An Atlas of Basin of Attraction Fields of One-Dimensional Cellular Automata. By Andrew Wuensche (Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico) and Mike Lesser (International Ecotechnology Research Center, Bedford, United Kingdom). Published by Addison-Wesley in 1992. ISBN 0-201-55704-1. Author's web page: http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/gdca.html http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/gdca.html PDF file: http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/downloads/papers/global_dynamics_of_CA.pdf http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/downloads/papers/global_dyn... This is a beautiful geeky coffee table book! They've developed a wonderful way to graphically display the converging state space topologies of cellular automata basin of attraction fields. It shows basins of attraction as loops, and garden of eden nodes at the tips of dendrites. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cellular_Automata/Global_Dynamics https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cellular_Automata/Global_Dynam... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_(cellular_automaton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_(cellular_autom... The book includes some intriguing black and white illustrations and color plates, as well as a floppy disk with software to generate your own images on an IBM-PC. Key to Basin Field Presentation: https://i.imgur.com/UfzbR7s.png https://i.imgur.com/UfzbR7s.png Color plates: https://i.imgur.com/ByKC6AS.png https://i.imgur.com/ByKC6AS.png https://i.imgur.com/mzOTW8w.png https://i.imgur.com/mzOTW8w.png https://i.imgur.com/hzj2aik.png https://i.imgur.com/hzj2aik.png https://i.imgur.com/OA1FfPa.png https://i.imgur.com/OA1FfPa.png https://i.imgur.com/cyq46MW.png https://i.imgur.com/cyq46MW.png https://i.imgur.com/D009cVU.png https://i.imgur.com/D009cVU.png https://i.imgur.com/vZlvMbX.png https://i.imgur.com/vZlvMbX.png
motohagiography 8y ago
To test the concept, I put together a taxonomy of a topic few people understand (dressage, or essentially, riding horses), which can be mystifying from the ground up. A taxonomy is right in the middle of an unstructured mind map, and a logically parseable ontology. So maybe, a directed acyclic mindmap?:) The practical parts of this are in the "Movements" branch of the tree, and when you have expanded it, consider that most people learn this topic from right to left, instead of left to right. https://www.qtra.io/hn-comment-answer https://www.qtra.io/hn-comment-answer It uses code directly from the d3 example pages. I just wrote something for parsing a csv file into a tree, which I think is now native to a few packages. It doesn't give you physical competence (which can take decades), but a map of the logic of categories is useful.
- bangonkeyboard 8y ago
  That's a very impressive and tactile answer, thanks for taking the time to put it together. This seems to tie into the old debate of top-down versus bottom-up pedagogies. A high-level map of a topic is indisputably valuable, but I personally find it most useful as a guide for where to dive deep and back out, to make concrete the abstractions; a more directed patching-together of competencies, as you put it.
  - motohagiography 8y ago
    Thank you. Indeed, the top-down/bottom-up view of education is analogous to the efficiency of breadth-first vs. depth-first searches in different problems. Depends on what you want to achieve. The reason I use these is I think a lot of suffering comes from (or can be defined as) churning on deep-node problems without information from higher level concepts, and a notation that "locates" meaning in an broader ontology can relieve some of it, and yield new understanding. I think this is a theme Ted Chiang is on to as well, as it appears in the literary world as well as STEM.

I think mind-maps fit into that category, although I think /u/motohagiography is referring to something more specific than that.

DonHopkins 8y ago

Probably not quite what /u/motohagiography was referring to by that term, but illustrating what he meant by visually grokking vast trees with interesting structures: The Global Dynamics of Cellular Automata: An Atlas of Basin of Attraction Fields of One-Dimensional Cellular Automata. By Andrew Wuensche (Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico) and Mike Lesser (International Ecotechnology Research Center, Bedford, United Kingdom). Published by Addison-Wesley in 1992. ISBN 0-201-55704-1. Author's web page: http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/gdca.html http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/gdca.html PDF file: http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/downloads/papers/global_dynamics_of_CA.pdf http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/wuensche/downloads/papers/global_dyn... This is a beautiful geeky coffee table book! They've developed a wonderful way to graphically display the converging state space topologies of cellular automata basin of attraction fields. It shows basins of attraction as loops, and garden of eden nodes at the tips of dendrites. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cellular_Automata/Global_Dynamics https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cellular_Automata/Global_Dynam... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_(cellular_automaton) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_(cellular_autom... The book includes some intriguing black and white illustrations and color plates, as well as a floppy disk with software to generate your own images on an IBM-PC. Key to Basin Field Presentation: https://i.imgur.com/UfzbR7s.png https://i.imgur.com/UfzbR7s.png Color plates: https://i.imgur.com/ByKC6AS.png https://i.imgur.com/ByKC6AS.png https://i.imgur.com/mzOTW8w.png https://i.imgur.com/mzOTW8w.png https://i.imgur.com/hzj2aik.png https://i.imgur.com/hzj2aik.png https://i.imgur.com/OA1FfPa.png https://i.imgur.com/OA1FfPa.png https://i.imgur.com/cyq46MW.png https://i.imgur.com/cyq46MW.png https://i.imgur.com/D009cVU.png https://i.imgur.com/D009cVU.png https://i.imgur.com/vZlvMbX.png https://i.imgur.com/vZlvMbX.png

motohagiography 8y ago

To test the concept, I put together a taxonomy of a topic few people understand (dressage, or essentially, riding horses), which can be mystifying from the ground up. A taxonomy is right in the middle of an unstructured mind map, and a logically parseable ontology. So maybe, a directed acyclic mindmap?:) The practical parts of this are in the "Movements" branch of the tree, and when you have expanded it, consider that most people learn this topic from right to left, instead of left to right. https://www.qtra.io/hn-comment-answer https://www.qtra.io/hn-comment-answer It uses code directly from the d3 example pages. I just wrote something for parsing a csv file into a tree, which I think is now native to a few packages. It doesn't give you physical competence (which can take decades), but a map of the logic of categories is useful.

bangonkeyboard 8y ago
That's a very impressive and tactile answer, thanks for taking the time to put it together. This seems to tie into the old debate of top-down versus bottom-up pedagogies. A high-level map of a topic is indisputably valuable, but I personally find it most useful as a guide for where to dive deep and back out, to make concrete the abstractions; a more directed patching-together of competencies, as you put it.
- motohagiography 8y ago
  Thank you. Indeed, the top-down/bottom-up view of education is analogous to the efficiency of breadth-first vs. depth-first searches in different problems. Depends on what you want to achieve. The reason I use these is I think a lot of suffering comes from (or can be defined as) churning on deep-node problems without information from higher level concepts, and a notation that "locates" meaning in an broader ontology can relieve some of it, and yield new understanding. I think this is a theme Ted Chiang is on to as well, as it appears in the literary world as well as STEM.