kalid

7 ms·

91.
by kalid 10y ago
Thanks Sujan! I've been poking around with quaternions, appreciate the pointer :).
92.
by kalid 10y ago
Thank you!
93.
by kalid 10y ago
That's awesome to hear, thank you. The goal of education should be to spark the fire so we learn more. Really glad to hear the intro made the rest more intriguing :).
94.
by kalid 10y ago
Exactly. Wikipedia helps me remember things I've forgotten, but it's slow going when trying to learn a new topic. The first paragraph includes a set of links that you recursively follow.
95.
by kalid 10y ago
Thanks Petra! I've been kicking around ideas for an "intuitive wikipedia", guides explicitly (and realistically) designed to get you from curiosity to mastery. Wikipedia has a few problems: * Too much detail for beginners (to
96.
by kalid 10y ago
Kalid from BetterExplained here, glad you like it! I had similar confusions; despite years of engineering classes, I didn't build an intuition for Calculus until a decade later. It felt like such a waste. (Yes, I could memorize rules;
97.
by kalid 11y ago
Perfectly put. To me, intuition means "actually understanding the concept". Sometimes we understand incorrect things, which should be removed, but we have to go beyond fragile, memorized facts.
98.
by kalid 11y ago
For what it's worth, I recently bought a house. Having a rotating line of credit on a credit card that was paid off did not help with some loan history requirements. The lender wanted to see loan with fixed payments in the past 3 years
99.
by kalid 11y ago
Yep! Archimedes was essentially doing integrals 2000 years ago. He got close to infinitesimals, and centuries later we had derivatives and limits. It's strange to teach them in the reverse order (i.e. Most sophisticated theory first, l
100.
by kalid 11y ago
(Looking back at comments, replying to this a bit later.) 1) Exactly. It's like spoiling a movie. 2) Hah, the postmortem is more about the Reddit interaction (write up about went well / things I'd change). I'm planning o
101.
by kalid 11y ago
Thanks Chris, really appreciate it. Hearing when the site clicks with someone is invigorating. No real paid subscriptions yet but it's a great idea =).
102.
by kalid 11y ago
Ah! Yes, I'm planing on starting up a community area for contributions, to make collaborative guides to topics. Hope to make an announcement early next year :).
103.
by kalid 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I have a community in progress at http://aha.betterexplained.com -- I have some collaboration ideas I'll be announcing early next year :).
104.
by kalid 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I see the articles as a supplement to the formal description people usually have in hand when they are googling for help :). For the succinct formal definition I definitely recommend Wikipedia or Mathworld.
105.
by kalid 11y ago
Glad to hear it helped, thanks.
106.
by kalid 11y ago
Thank you!
107.
by kalid 11y ago
Nice point. Yes, naming can prime people to understand or be confused by a topic. Renaming the "imaginary numbers" to the "rotated numbers" would make them orders of magnitude easier to learn. "What's so strang
108.
by kalid 11y ago
Awesome. I think it's a general principle (blurry-to-sharp) that works for many fields.
109.
by kalid 11y ago
By popular demand: http://patreon.com/betterexplained :)
110.
by kalid 11y ago
Really glad to hear the site helps with new insights (especially for someone who has aced the tests/grades). I was in a similar boat, qualified on paper, but not in my heart of hearts. 1) In general I like any efforts to explain things
111.
by kalid 11y ago
Whoops, might not have been clear enough. In more mathy terms: Multiplication by 2 means "1 (starting point) times 2 (scaling)" If we "do the opposite" we can take the inverse of the starting point or the scaling: -1 (ad
112.
by kalid 11y ago
Yeah, to be honest, I'm writing for someone who saw the textbook definition of trig but didn't have it click. I'm not sure how it would work as a sole treatment. (However, I suspect the vast majority of people reading the art
113.
by kalid 11y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Agree analogies are context (and time) sensitive. As soon as you make a reference the clock starts ticking about how long it would remain relevant. For this specific example, I was writing to a high-school version o
114.
by kalid 11y ago
Wow, glad to hear the articles had a positive impression :). I'm bouncing ideas for intuitive guides for any Wikipedia topic. After the 10 min intro, you can read the Wikipedia article for more details.
115.
by kalid 11y ago
Yes! That's a great point. Similar, if you ask people to pick a random point in a circle (random angle, random radius length) you don't get the random distribution you were expecting.
116.
by kalid 11y ago
Thanks, I appreciate it! :)
117.
by kalid 11y ago
Good question. I see the site as a complement to existing lesson plans. Some teachers have taken the material and presented it in their own style, which I absolutely love: Article: http://betterexplained.com/static/arti
118.
by kalid 11y ago
Hey, thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear the trig article helped (one of my favorite aha moments -- all the trig functions, including stuff like the exotic cosecant, can be drawn together.) I'm a fan of Tau as an interesting simplify
119.
by kalid 11y ago
Hey! Thanks for the compliment, it really means a lot when the site resonates. I'm not super experienced with lectures (mostly writing), but I think it works in office settings. Check out this talk from Simon Sinek: https://
120.
by kalid 11y ago
Exactly! I hate the Taylor Series explanation of Euler's formula. "Oh, just take the most analytic definitions of e^x, sin(x), cos(x), mix-n-match, and it works!" All symbols, no intuition. If we see each concept individually

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