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Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

mathigon.org

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Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#21

Post by danharaj »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #18
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #6

It really feels like we're on the cusp of a textbook similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'. As in, something that learns your interests and customizes to your tastes while still teaching. A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods. If advertising networks have ef…

> something that learns your interests It's not rocket science, a mole rat could figure out that kids want to play video games and eat candy all day long.

One of the most popular video games amongst kids is about tinkering, exploration and building cool stuff.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#22

Post by otabdeveloper2 »

derefr wrote: post #19
otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something that learns your interests It's not rocket science, a mole rat could figure out that kids want to play video games and eat candy all day long.

Textbooks aren’t just for children. (Adult education is woefully underoptimized.)

Adult interests are a no-brainer in the same way.

"Figuring out your interests" isn't the hard or useful part. The hard part is changing your default (usually harmful) interests into something useful and productive.

That involves lots of psychology and (yes) manipulation and coercion.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#23

Post by otabdeveloper2 »

danharaj wrote: post #21
otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something that learns your interests It's not rocket science, a mole rat could figure out that kids want to play video games and eat candy all day long.

One of the most popular video games amongst kids is about tinkering, exploration and building cool stuff.

No child learned anything useful in Minecraft.

It's better than Candy Crush (no overt addicting psychological tricks) but ultimately the same kind of waste of time.

No child ever grew up and said "gee, how great it is that I spent 10000 hours in Minecraft instead of doing sports or learning a useful skill".

I grew up on video games myself; trust me, it sucks.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#24

Post by ai_ia »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #6

It really feels like we're on the cusp of a textbook similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'. As in, something that learns your interests and customizes to your tastes while still teaching. A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods. If advertising networks have ef…

I am building Primer. :)

https://www.primerlabs.io

You can checkout the documentation part for images/gifs to learn how it works.

Bit late on schedule, but working hard to release soon.

Made a video about the same explaining the interface.

https://youtu.be/acTdwGV0s9I

P.S. The landing page is a horrible experience on mobile. My bad.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#25

Post by spiralganglion »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #23
danharaj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most popular video games amongst kids is about tinkering, exploration and building cool stuff.

No child learned anything useful in Minecraft. It's better than Candy Crush (no overt addicting psychological tricks) but ultimately the same kind of waste of time. No child ever grew up and said "gee, how great it is that I spent 10000 hours in Minecraft instead of doing sports or learning a useful skill". I grew up on video games myself; trust me, it sucks.

I grew up playing video games, and now I'm a graphics programmer. I learned to program because I wanted to make games. Trust me, it slaps.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#26

Post by fazzone »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #23
danharaj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most popular video games amongst kids is about tinkering, exploration and building cool stuff.

No child learned anything useful in Minecraft. It's better than Candy Crush (no overt addicting psychological tricks) but ultimately the same kind of waste of time. No child ever grew up and said "gee, how great it is that I spent 10000 hours in Minecraft instead of doing sports or learning a useful skill". I grew up on video games myself; trust me, it sucks.

Some years ago I worked at a technology-oriented summer camp where I personally taught several bright young children to program. Minecraft mods were an incredibly popular project and a big driver of interest for many of the kids. Many of my counselor colleagues got into programming themselves modding Warcraft III and other games of that era. The absolute conversion rate may be low because the playerbase is so huge, but I think something like Minecraft is definitely the first (or zero-th) step in the journey of a lot of kids these days who become interested in technology and will later develop into the next generation of programmers & technologists.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#27

Post by itissid »

This looks awesome. But:

1. Grain of salt: contemporary research shows how learning has other facets that are also important like grit[1] (i.e. repetitive application of hard work that has the right direction).

2. Contemporary research suggests that when learning a new concept is made "easier" using such methods its more efficient. On the contrary this is only the first step. Learning is better when its harder, but harder in a very specific sense: recall and mixing different concepts in tests spaced appropriately is really the hard work[2]

3. Contemporary research is also very much against bucketing learning as just only about "Learning Styles", like learning with music, play and pictures for the very same reason as above.

I also love the WWC: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/ Its a much standardize way look at what educational techniques pass muster in the real world. I wonder what similar to mathigon is present in WWC's list.

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/0y545gn2withb5e/DuckworthPetersonM... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Peter-C-Brown-ebook/dp/B00...

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#29

Post by RobLach »

otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #18
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #6

It really feels like we're on the cusp of a textbook similar to the Primer in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer'. As in, something that learns your interests and customizes to your tastes while still teaching. A textbook that is able to diagnose common misunderstandings from a set of wrong answers to a problem set and evolve its teaching methods. If advertising networks have ef…

> something that learns your interests It's not rocket science, a mole rat could figure out that kids want to play video games and eat candy all day long.

Figuring out and guiding the motivations of children is harder than rocket science.

Putting a rocket into space is just a lot of maths; we're not close to having anything like that in regards to human outcomes.

Re: Mathigon – an interactive, personalized mathematics textbook

#30

Post by galaxyLogic »

solipsism wrote: post #13
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. While I appreciate that math education at the elementary and high school level is easier to author and has more data points, where I think this approach would really shine is at the college level. The main problem in math is that the higher level you reach, the fewer experts who exist or are willing to sit down 1:1 and tutor students. I think an automated teaching system for analysis, writing proofs, number…

IMO most college level math isn't difficult Don't make the mistake of assuming the entire world is like you. Plenty of people struggle with lower level math. What makes you think the concepts are not difficult for them, and to blame only the teaching?

It's not either or. It's difficult to understand concepts (well) and it is also difficult to EXPLAIN concepts (well).

The better the explanation the easier it is to understand for more people. Whereas a bad explanation is something that assumes students understand something most of them don't.

It's really not a blame-game but more an impedance mismatch between the teacher and the students. IF you can have your own tutor the tutor can adjust their level of explanation just to you, but that is not economically feasible for most students. Therefore if automated AI-learning text-books can make progress in this direction it is great.

It may be that the biggest impact of AI will be not by having something smarter than us, but something that can teach more people to understand difficult concepts. In other words biggest impact of AI may be in education.

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