3 ms·
> I think that textbooks, math textbooks in particular, are an example where print publishing does a disservice. (I'm counting PDFs here too.) By having to lay
by ai_ia 5y ago
> I think that textbooks, math textbooks in particular, are an example where print publishing does a disservice. (I'm counting PDFs here too.) By having to lay everything out in print form, you have to clutter up your explanations with examples and footnotes that take up physical room. .
I agree with your sentiment. Although, I believe there is bit of problem of generalizing it to a wider field. Surely, you can make explorables with Linear Algebra, Trigonometry, Geometry, Number Theory etc, but there still exists a lot of mathematical fields, where such explanation using visualization is pretty difficult. It takes a lot of time to come up good explanations, while even longer for interactive explorables.
> All in all, I'd love to see more interactive textbooks. We've got this really expressive kind of document via the web. I think we should be taking advantage of it more.
This is something I have spent the last 4 years of my life building. I designed an alternative way of writing interactive books that takes a different approach than using just explorables. It's a conversational way of learning subjects designed for auto-didacts.
You interact (converse?) with the book and learn gradually. You can of course embed explorables into it (which I am planning to for upcoming linear algebra / discrete mathematics course), but the general process can still be generalized to any field. And if you are a LaTeX fan, you are in luck as all your notes are compiled as a Tufte-Latex Notebook. The medium is called Primer, homage to the diamond age.
You can checkout Primer here https://primerlabs.io https://primerlabs.io.
A comic-based guide to understand how Primer helps you learn effectively: https://primerlabs.io/comics/introducing-primer-comics/ https://primerlabs.io/comics/introducing-primer-comics/
- dragonvspanda 5y agoI loved the comic. Have signed up. Will be looking forward your future courses.
- trees101 5y agoGreat work, thank you. Have you considered Obsidian, and Obsidian publish, as a medium? Take a look at Andy Matuschak's site as one example, there are many variants out there too https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
- ai_ia 5y agoI was thinking of giving an option of exporting notes to roam with automatic backlinks generated. Given, obsidian's popularity, this is also definitely something on the roadmap. Ability to integrate what you learn directly into your knowledge-base (or second brain as some people call it), is an excellent idea. However, don't have the manpower right now and much focus is to create courses right now. Might be able do it, maybe within a year or so.