This will come in handy for my LinAlg exam :3
Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#52on a tangent, I was just reading https://medium.com/@dominikus/the-end-of-interactive-visuali... in short (over simplified, my take): interactive visualizations are dead because nobody interacts with them. wondering if this holds here as well. Can't find the reference anymore, but there were also papers in educational sciences that interactive books usually don't increase comprehension of kids (they just play with th…
Thank you for the link. I learned from it. I am the author of a widely-used LA text, and have considered adding interactive stuff. But there is a tradeoff. For one thing, it locks you to online, and despite the claims of our IT people, my correspondents (mostly self-learners) do not want online, they want print or PDF (as do I, since the appearance that LaTeX gives me is important to me). For another, the tech has in…
I'd be interested to know your thoughts on the Essence of Linear Algebra videos by Grant Sanderson. What role do you see material like that playing? (They are fantastic if you're not familiar) http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xV...
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#53If you're interested in more great animations for a visual understanding of linear algebra, I can't recommend 3Blue1Brown's "Essence of Linear Algebra" series on Youtube highly enough. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...
Holy shit. I wish I'd had access to these videos during my Mattix Algebra (I think it was called) course in undergrad. I feel like my lack of truly understanding LA has somewhat impaired my grasp of some of the other topics covered in CS undergrad and grad school.
Seriously... the hallmark of all the linear algebra classes I had was the instructor completely failing to demonstrate the various concepts in visual terms. And that's pretty unforgivable, since linear algebra feels like one of those subjects where, until you have some key components of it modeled in your head that serve to glue everything together, every new may as well be random words pulled from a foreign dictionary.
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#54on a tangent, I was just reading https://medium.com/@dominikus/the-end-of-interactive-visuali... in short (over simplified, my take): interactive visualizations are dead because nobody interacts with them. wondering if this holds here as well. Can't find the reference anymore, but there were also papers in educational sciences that interactive books usually don't increase comprehension of kids (they just play with th…
One possible explanation for that: the visualizations are only useful to those strongly motivated to learn the material itself (as opposed to doing well in a class/test or whatever). So, they may not be effective when casually presented to a group of relatively disinterested students—but they may be the perfect thing for some autodidact browsing HN.
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#55Although the focus with this book is with the fully interactive figures, I'm more impressed that ALL of the book is available for free. I'm constantly seeing more people coming out with books for free or just a passive donation link. This makes me immensely happy seeing as how they're leveraging the available free resources (Latex, CC-BY-SA content, free software for graphics) to make more resources available for fre…
Well written software doesn't seem to go stale, or at least not quickly and poorly written books do.
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#56Last year, i saw the videos by 3Blue1Brown and inspired by it went on to read some of the standard text books like linear algebra application by Strang. I had seen the Strang videos earlier but somehow did not follow it through. This time however my perspective was changed. I was approaching the subject through the lens of intuition and simplicity. Wherever i found something challenging, i waited for the next day to…
This time however my perspective was changed. I was approaching the subject through the lens of intuition and simplicity...And to my surprise, again and again, the difficulty was in my rigidness in understanding.
Thank you for penning those words. I hope people realize the significance of what you just said.
Perspective is key. You could say it is the KEY -- the key insight into unlocking everything else. I had a similar experience in 2009, and once you have the epiphany -- once you experience the awe of a shift and recognize the implications -- it's like your mind becomes unshackled. You realize you have been blind, and you've just learned to see. And in that flash you gain a deep, visceral understanding of what Alan Kay means when he says, "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points," and "We can't learn to see until we admit we are blind."
"Life's Illuminating Perspective" (2009) http://jamesthornton.com/manifesto
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#57Mandelbrot cites his ability to "think in pictures" as fundamental to his process and insights.
He offers some interesting reflections and anecdotes on this subject in this interview describing his classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles. Apparently his teacher considered him a total wildcard case who would either flunk the exams or pass with flying colours, because of his habit of approaching everything through geometric intuition rather than symbolic manipulation.
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for the link. I learned from it. I am the author of a widely-used LA text, and have considered adding interactive stuff. But there is a tradeoff. For one thing, it locks you to online, and despite the claims of our IT people, my correspondents (mostly self-learners) do not want online, they want print or PDF (as do I, since the appearance that LaTeX gives me is important to me). For another, the tech has in…
I'd be interested to know your thoughts on the Essence of Linear Algebra videos by Grant Sanderson. What role do you see material like that playing? (They are fantastic if you're not familiar) http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xV...
Yes, I admire them. I have some technical quibbles, as a fellow educator, but I admire them a lot.
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#59To me this book looks like a whole bunch of equations, with some fancy graphics sprinkled on top. And, far too many equations! Linear algebra is much more elegant (simple) than this. To pick one example, they define the inner product using the cosine of the "smallest angle between the two vectors." Sure if you want to calculate a number (an inner product in two dimensions), and you happened to know the angle in question, this might be helpful. But otherwise it completely obscures everything else about the inner product. How does an interactive graphic help you understand wtf is a cosine doing in this equation? What is a cosine anyway? Where is the graphic for that?
This just seems too backward and over-done to me. But go ahead and test it on some newbies, maybe I'm totally wrong here.
Re: Immersive Linear Algebra – textbook with fully interactive figures (2015)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy shit. I wish I'd had access to these videos during my Mattix Algebra (I think it was called) course in undergrad. I feel like my lack of truly understanding LA has somewhat impaired my grasp of some of the other topics covered in CS undergrad and grad school.
Seriously... the hallmark of all the linear algebra classes I had was the instructor completely failing to demonstrate the various concepts in visual terms. And that's pretty unforgivable, since linear algebra feels like one of those subjects where, until you have some key components of it modeled in your head that serve to glue everything together, every new may as well be random words pulled from a foreign dictiona…
Some of this comes down to learning-style. It sounds like your lecturer was not a visual thinker. Some people really like to just get the algebra and have-at-it (not me tho.) The "model" you refer to doesn't need to be visual. There are applications of linear algebra where the visual stuff just doesn't help much.