4 ms·

At 30 seconds into the video I say "from a topologist's perspective, how you might try and answer this question". I tried to be very clear that this was not the

At 30 seconds into the video I say "from a topologist's perspective, how you might try and answer this question". I tried to be very clear that this was not the one true answer, but just my perspective. And the impression you got was: > Instead it comes across as a geek being smug about knowing the "right answer" to brain teaser because topology." Perhaps the moral of all of this (and discussions on the internet in general), is that communication is hard.

lisper 8y ago
OK, I re-watched your video, as well as the Actionlab one it was responding to, and this: > it comes across as a geek being smug about knowing the "right answer" was unfair. I apologize. I went back and tried to figure out where the impression I got diverged from reality, and I think it was at 0:26 where you say, "people don't really have a good definition of what a hole is" and my brain extrapolated this to expect something like, "and in this video I'm going to give you one." Which is of course not what you say, but it's not an unreasonable expectation. In fact the impression I now come away with on second viewing is that topologists are just as much out to sea on this as everyone else. I suspect that was not the impression you intended to leave either. > communication is hard Indeed. But if I may offer (what I hope is) a constructive suggestion: the first step to clear communication is to know your audience. It's unclear to me who the target audience of your video was intended to be. You start out speaking very informally, e.g. "objects in topology are kind of stretchy and maybe you can chance something that looks like a hole into something that doesn't look like a hole." That indicates that you intended the video to be seen by a lay audience (also the video you're responding to was clearly intended for a lay audience). But mid-way through you casually introduce the terms "homotopy group" and "homology group" without explaining them (just pointers to Wikipedia pages) indicating that you expect a certain level of mathematical sophistication. I think that was one of the things that originally registered in my mind as "smug". In any case, I applaud the fact that you are putting forth the effort to make educational videos about math. I watched a few more in your channel and really enjoyed them. "Geared Cuboctahedral Jitterbug" was particularly cool! [UPDATE] Triple-piano just totally blew me away!
- henryseg 8y ago
  I'll admit that I didn't think terribly hard about who the audience is. This is another tricky thing of course - anyone can look at a YouTube video. I guess I tried to give an intuitive explanation of how a topologist thinks about hole-like things. One can only get so far before you have to start getting precise (and technical). This is where I give the names "homotopy group" and "homology groups", so that viewers at least have something to look up to learn more if they want to. I certainly didn't intend to give the impression that viewers were supposed to know what those terms are already. Maybe there is a video to be done on giving a better introduction to homotopy or homology groups, without requiring any background knowledge, but this wasn't that video. Incidentally, topologists don't use the word "hole" in a technical sense. So yes, we wouldn't claim to know what a hole should be better than anyone else. But in trying to make precise the intuitive ideas of what it means for something to have a hole, or a "loop" in it, we got to the kind of definitions we do work with. These ideas can, in principle, come back to be useful to analyze objects in the real world (persistent homology is trying to do this). Glad you liked some of my other videos!

lisper 8y ago

OK, I re-watched your video, as well as the Actionlab one it was responding to, and this: > it comes across as a geek being smug about knowing the "right answer" was unfair. I apologize. I went back and tried to figure out where the impression I got diverged from reality, and I think it was at 0:26 where you say, "people don't really have a good definition of what a hole is" and my brain extrapolated this to expect something like, "and in this video I'm going to give you one." Which is of course not what you say, but it's not an unreasonable expectation. In fact the impression I now come away with on second viewing is that topologists are just as much out to sea on this as everyone else. I suspect that was not the impression you intended to leave either. > communication is hard Indeed. But if I may offer (what I hope is) a constructive suggestion: the first step to clear communication is to know your audience. It's unclear to me who the target audience of your video was intended to be. You start out speaking very informally, e.g. "objects in topology are kind of stretchy and maybe you can chance something that looks like a hole into something that doesn't look like a hole." That indicates that you intended the video to be seen by a lay audience (also the video you're responding to was clearly intended for a lay audience). But mid-way through you casually introduce the terms "homotopy group" and "homology group" without explaining them (just pointers to Wikipedia pages) indicating that you expect a certain level of mathematical sophistication. I think that was one of the things that originally registered in my mind as "smug". In any case, I applaud the fact that you are putting forth the effort to make educational videos about math. I watched a few more in your channel and really enjoyed them. "Geared Cuboctahedral Jitterbug" was particularly cool! [UPDATE] Triple-piano just totally blew me away!

henryseg 8y ago
I'll admit that I didn't think terribly hard about who the audience is. This is another tricky thing of course - anyone can look at a YouTube video. I guess I tried to give an intuitive explanation of how a topologist thinks about hole-like things. One can only get so far before you have to start getting precise (and technical). This is where I give the names "homotopy group" and "homology groups", so that viewers at least have something to look up to learn more if they want to. I certainly didn't intend to give the impression that viewers were supposed to know what those terms are already. Maybe there is a video to be done on giving a better introduction to homotopy or homology groups, without requiring any background knowledge, but this wasn't that video. Incidentally, topologists don't use the word "hole" in a technical sense. So yes, we wouldn't claim to know what a hole should be better than anyone else. But in trying to make precise the intuitive ideas of what it means for something to have a hole, or a "loop" in it, we got to the kind of definitions we do work with. These ideas can, in principle, come back to be useful to analyze objects in the real world (persistent homology is trying to do this). Glad you liked some of my other videos!