3 ms·
> it explains the concepts so well. Indeed. Watching the video I found the practical and visual illustration of math concepts when implemented in mechanical ge
by mrandish 2y ago
> it explains the concepts so well.
Indeed. Watching the video I found the practical and visual illustration of math concepts when implemented in mechanical gears to feel intuitive in a way I never felt from chalkboard math instruction. As a person who's always struggled with traditional algebra and up math education, seeing it presented in this physical way really felt fundamentally more accessible to me. Like I strangely felt far more 'connected' to concepts in a way I never have before. Has anyone ever tried to teach algebra and higher level math concepts this way?
I suspect if back in high school and college, math classes had geared machines I could touch and turn a crank on to see the "math work", maybe my life would have been different. I basically dropped out of college due to falling behind in high school on algebra fundamentals and never being able to catch up in college. When I found I loved computers in the college's BASIC 101 class, yet found any access to computers beyond that class requiring a transfer to the math dept (this being the early 80s), and not being able to pass the prereq classes for that transfer, I dropped out. Strangely, I immediately bought an 8-bit computer with 4K of RAM and became an entirely self-taught programmer (which ended up working out very well for me in the end), but what might have been...