Johnny Chung Lee to donate $5k for Khan-style linear algebra lectures | Hacker News Reader

Johnny Chung Lee to donate $5k for Khan-style linear algebra lectures

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58 pointschl20 comments

This is something I've thought about frequently. I would like to find a non-profit who would take donations and apply them towards finding and paying very good experts on any number of subjects, help them design and record their lectures, collect supplemental materials (required reading materials, exercise questions, tests, etc), and post it online for free (public domain?).

Khan is great but he cannot teach everything. Programming, history, literature, graphic design, etc. all deserve similar treatment.

You described a university.

Universities would be very different if their sole purpose was to put great educational content online for free.

Perhaps not the _sole_ purpose, but check out opencourseware: http://www.ocwconsortium.org/

I'm not sure how to pass the clearly understandable Khan academy style test, but Gilbert Strang of MIT has a series of 35 excellent lectures on Linear Algebra, starting here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK3O402wf1c

Absolutely. Strang makes it seem really easy, perfect lecturer.

The lectures are available on iTunes University too.

You may find his style slow though, I used to watch his lectures at about 1.5x speed using Quicktime (opt+ff). You can use vlc too on Windows.

I'm a little slower, 1.4x on VLC.

I am watching those lectures as well. I ordered the previous edition of the textbook to follow along with. One thing that really irked me was that the quality of the audio in some of the lectures was spotty. I had to turn the audio up all the way in my headphones and then it seemed to only come in on one side. I know it is a minor detail but when I think about the high quality feeds dedicated to celebrity gossip it gets a little bit depressing.

I clicked into some of the other courses and was disappointed to see that video lectures weren't available for all the courses. We really need to get to a point where all the math, comp sci, etc is available in high quality format. Another thing we need is redundancy. I think G. Strang is an excellent lecturer but we need variety for different learning styles. Still I am impressed with what MIT is doing and hope to see more of this in the future.

Yes, the book is great as well, it's written in a very friendly tone.

These lectures were recorded long ago (1999), recent lectures (on calculus and another course) by Strang have higher video quality.

I have experienced mono audio on some too, you might be able to fix it with your video player though. ( If you are watching on iPhone/iPad, there is a mono setting in settings-accessibility btw.)

Check out http://www-math.mit.edu/~gs/ for the other lectures by Strang. Also in this paper: "too much calculus" http://www-math.mit.edu/~gs/papers/essay.pdf he discusses why linear algebra should be emphasized more (and calculus less) in the digital age.

yea I caught that point about too much calculus. I studied math as an undergrad - 3 semesters of calc, 2 real analysis, 2 more of topology and have not used any of it as a programer. I did linear algebra and discrete math but it was not enough to really make a difference. It seems like history is more at play here than anything else. For 300+ years they have been polishing up that continuous math track and it was what all the scientists and engineers found useful.

I also think this is the reason everybody uses doubles and floats for doing financial apps. It makes so much more sense to use integers and talk about "how many" pennies one has rather than "how much" money one has. Floats and doubles were designed to estimate continuous quantities not exact figures.

"(and passes the "clearly understandable", Khan academy style, 10 minute video lecture)"

it definitely doesn't pass the 10 minute video lecture requirement though. Strang talks about SVD for almost 45 minutes.

Here are all the other videos and assignments + solutions:

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-...

I agree with you. Lee should donate the $5000 to Strang and be done with it. If they are not to his satisfaction, it is up to him to specify what he doesn't like about these world class lectures from a renowned expert teacher.

Summary: He might be willing to "donate" $100 to Khan Academy (not you) if you spend several hours producing a high quality educational video for him on specific linear algebra topics he doesn't understand, and he reviews your videos and finds them to be completely to his satisfaction, according to criteria he will not specify.

It's a very insulting offer rather that inspiring as he no doubt hopes. $100 for an instructional video is nothing. $100,000 per video might get you some nice PBS style ones. In between is the realm of hope to get something good. Wanting custom lectures tailored to your private needs though, and payment is contingent on if he feels like it? Sheesh.

I suggest instead depositing the $5000 prize money in trust, establishing clear criteria for winning, and then empanel impartial and qualified judges to choose winners according to the established criteria. For the 10 best videos there will be a $500 prize each, and maybe an extra $1000 for the top one overall. The prize must be awarded no matter what, even if they only get 10 videos total that are not as great as they would hope. The credibility that comes from actually awarding the prizes will improve the quality of entries of the next round.

As it is, the terms are so wishy washy that most likely the $5000 will never be awarded and a lot of people will waste a lot of time and then be frustrated to find a whiney person explain why nothing was really worthy of his precious prize money.

Another way to structure it would be to award grants of production equipment and software for video and virtual blackboard work to assist talented teachers in producing videos. These could be granted to the most promising 20 videos, with the hope that they would come back to enter phase 2 of the competition where they produce things with their new pedagogic gear.

What is the name of the software for the electronic blackboard used in Khan's videos?

Ive been going through Khan's Linear algebra vids after having Lee's problem - I'd highly recommend them for this use case. I'm hoping the same goes for the Khan's diff eq vids!

What is he going to do, if several people post lectures of acceptable quality?

For each acceptable one posted he will "donate $100 to Khan Academy up to $5000"

I see. Thanks.

The author should post a rubric, so that others can determine what's acceptable and what should be covered.

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