phantasmagoria of animegirl view on cohost

@two

actually the number two IRL

he/any
twotwos.nekoweb.org/

Thanks for playing, everyone. I'll see you around.

@two12/8/2023, 4:21 AM

phantasmagoria of animegirl view @lookatthesky

phantasmagoria of animegirl view @lookatthesky12/7/2023, 7:10 AM

i wonder if itd be interesting to try to explain math ideas to internet adults who don't understand a lot of math (or even some who do) but who have the drive to know a little bit...

when i was a tutor i found the biggest problem i ran into was that the students didnt really have anything they wanted to learn, instead only having things they were obligated to learn. they were incentivized to rush through past "realizations" and into rote methods, memorization, and so on for grades.

so under these conditions, not only was it difficult to take the time to properly build up to the concepts they needed to know, but more importantly, there was no time to show them the fun parts - and even if I wanted to try, they wouldn't have any appreciation for them.

if you're someone who feels like they have gaps in their math education, or just specific things you've heard about that you wanna understand a little better, and you wanna try to do it in a hopefully playful way, let me know, comment below? it'd be interesting to gauge interest for this. i don't currently have the tools to do this properly - i would need a drawing tablet, as well as a computer that doesn't easily overheat when I'm trying to do interesting stuff on it like sharing my screen for extended periods. but if we could get it working, i think it'd be really fun.

I'd love to take my beloved ideas and little games of symbols, this thing which is the most widely detested part of school, and use it to try to put into practice what a more liberated model of learning can look like. one independent of external motivations, and one that takes the frustrated stumbling around in the dark that is self-learning, and elevates that to a collaborative, assisted process; really, i just want to help more people appreciate this thing i've spent most of my life experiencing. if i could get just one being to idly play around with math where they wouldnt before, in any way, it'd be a massive success.

#math #mathematics #learning #tutoring #The Cohost Global Feed #autodidactism #autodidact

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in reply to @lookatthesky's post:

Is it Shaker!?@EarthShaker12/7/2023, 7:44 AM

I skipped about a year of school altogether - skipped as in truant, not as in 'skipped a grade' - and somehow managed to make it statistics and trig without ever learning how to do proofs. Like I know the general idea but i couldn't do one even to save my life.

If you ever want to talk about proofs, I would listen.

phantasmagoria of animegirl view @lookatthesky12/7/2023, 7:54 AM

oh, interesting. proofs are basically like... a game? all of math is a game, but the process of just doing math is usually playing around and seeing if anything pops out at you, or if you think of anything cool to try. proofs are kinda like, ok, you have all these tools, and you have something you believe is true. can you chain your tools together in a way that's airtight and feels satisfying or creative?

i am actually, currently, watching a video demonstrating a proof i'd consider very creative - it takes a simple inequality and it turns it into questions about waterballoon fights. I don't know how well it holds up to someone who doesn't know what an "injection" is already (they do explain it in the video), or who isn't used to manipulating equations and inequalities, or who doesn't understand what "monotonically increasing" means ("increasing and never decreasing"), but sometimes it's not about understanding every little thing - videos like this are often about simply appreciating the power of creativity in math, and how you can leverage your knowledge of seemingly unrelated things in order to show that something must be true. The mere spectacle of it is often all that you need.

Maynard @Quelklef12/7/2023, 8:22 AM

this is so lovely!

jeroknite @jeroknite12/7/2023, 8:23 AM

I think this would be good and interesting and beneficial for probably a lot of people, but it's not something I specifically need since I have a good grasp of everything I think I need to know. I think you should do it if you're able, since I've known quite a few who struggled with the really basic stuff (like knowing how decimal points work as one example)

phantasmagoria of animegirl view @lookatthesky12/7/2023, 8:25 AM

that's a funny example, because a less applied more abstract/for-fun mathematician like myself will usually tend to avoid using decimals wherever possible, hehe

jeroknite @jeroknite12/7/2023, 8:42 AM

That's fair, I suppose, but it was also vital for the task she was doing (weighing things on a scale that displayed 2 decimal points of precision). She thought "point ten" (.10) was higher than .5 (which it is in software, to be fair)

phantasmagoria of animegirl view @lookatthesky12/7/2023, 8:43 AM

no i agree it's absolutely vital! i also think it would be a challnege to explain it in a novel way at least for myself.

jeroknite @jeroknite12/7/2023, 8:44 AM

Well, challenges can be fun too

Saltbearer (in bold)@Saltbearer12/7/2023, 10:23 AM

I stopped going to public school halfway through sixth grade due to health issues, and after a couple years of less-demanding home study, mostly ignored educating myself. Sometimes I feel like I should know More Math, but I don't know exactly what, or what I might actually do with the knowledge. Sometimes I have vague fantasies about developing a game, or programming something, or doing Music But Mathier, and I know that doing such things would probably involve some sorts of math that I haven't learned how to do properly as some of the hurdles. I've found logic and integer sequences and things interesting, and feel like I can get the hang of things as long as I'm made to care enough. Maybe my eyes are places some numerical dance routines should be stuffed into in a hopefully playful way?

vaporware @vaporware12/7/2023, 5:01 PM

i keep hitting math around simulations that needs like differential equations plus linear algebra, they always mention this one matrix (is it jacobian or something?). but i feel like at my peak math game i could learn but i keep having to re look up wait how do you integrate again? wikipedia is soooo bad for trying to learn math.
give me all the good math posts plz

@knutaf12/8/2023, 4:35 AM

I rushed through math and got very far without fully understanding things. Now I've forgotten basically everything from calculus onwards but I kind of would like to learn more or properly learn it this time. Your post sounded pretty interesting to me.