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Comment by skhunted | Hacker News Reader

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Haha, the way maths is taught at university hasn't changed in centuries.

Let's not pretend this has all been figured out and perfected. Heck, most maths professors I encountered in my studies could trace their scientific lineage straight back to C.F.Gauss[1] and that's how they taught. Don't get me wrong, some were great teachers, others not so much, but there are valid alternatives to the classic lecture.

[1] https://www.mathgenealogy.org/index.php

What are those valid alternatives that work at scale for a majority of the population?

One example that comes to mind is Kahn academy. They've built out new pedagogical methods.

There's also Unacademy a company I'm sure has helped millions of people learn new things.

Khan Academy uses lectures.

Very different types of lectures. Small chunks of info, lots of graphical representations, etc. These are very different that the type of lectures I had in school.

His lectures are terrible explanations and he doesn’t use professional looking graphics. Khan Academy is not a good product. My opinion refers solely to the math content.

The traditional lecture does have a lot of value, however, we are also quite certain that the instructional experience can be improved through the addition of visualizations and simulations. This is especially true for interactive visualizations where the learner can ask, "What if ...", experiment, and see the results of their interactions.

The lecture format is very old and would not have persisted if it didn't provide a good value. At the same time, it's age also implies that there is room for improvement.

The vast majority of students never ask, “what if…” The vast majority just want to know the mechanics of doing the problems well enough to pass the test. At the time a student is taking Calculus 1 they don’t ask questions about why it works. They just want to know, for instance, the rules of differentiation. Later in life, when they have intellectually matured, videos like 3Blue1Brown are interesting and fascinating. The vast majority of students would not learn well from 3Blue1Brown type videos.

Those students will not learn no matter what form of pedagogy you use. But 3blue1brown lectures are great for those who do want to learn

Yes. But in the classroom most students don’t want to learn. Hence my statement that it wouldn’t work in the classroom.

The goal of education is to educate that unvast minority and for them to become deeper specialists faster.

To hell with the majority which will forget it next week and go management or delivery. They are unimportant for the key idea of education.

The lecture format has only been competing with high-production-values video for a decade or two, and with interactive examples for much less than that.

Interactive examples using Macromedia Flash or Java applets are straight in the "a decade or two" time frame.

(The 3B1B one is of course also among the best :

https://eater.net/quaternions )

And, while it was before my time, universities might have had some before the World Wide Web ?

Video has been around for much longer than that too.

I'm also not sure why "high production values" is supposed to matter, aren't Feynman's video lectures good enough for you ?

> There’s a reason we teach things the way we do

Is it that nobody kwen how to make good videos before? Or do you mean that teaching cannot be improved?

The Gutenberg Method of teaching acknowledges the existence of the printing press and suggests one person standing at the front telling everyone what to write down may be outdated

https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~key/PHY1600/PER%20Papers/Ef...

If you’ve experienced that one great teacher that inspired genuine interest in a subject where you previously had none? It’s historically hard to scale, but I think that’s the potential here and it’s a subject that a lot of people lack interest in but has wide reaching impact

Strict adherence to old methods due to overly restrictive and risk-averse governing bodies in educational institutions?

Ah, that must be why math literacy is ubiquitous.

Here’s a thought for you. What percentage of the population wants to be mathematically literate given the amount of effort needed to gain that literacy? In my 30 years of teaching math at the college level the anecdotal evidence I have is that this number is quite low. Why do you think the number of mathematically literate people should be significantly higher than what it is?

What methods of teaching will work for those who don’t want to do the work to be mathematically literate?

You are doing a terrible job at teaching math. but hey, you got your cushy guv-job so who cares about the next generation?

You don’t know whether or not I’m good at my job. A well reasoned response would be different than the one you gave.

Mind elaborating on what that reason is? Otherwise this comment just comes off as a drive-by dismissal…

Pretty much everyone has ideas and opinions on teaching and what would work. It is easy to tell when such opinions are made by people with no experience teaching. In the same way a professional carpenter can tell when some wood work was done in an amateurish way.

Why do teachers do things the way they do? Is it because they are mostly stupid, incompetent people who haven’t thought as much about their job as amateurs have? Everyone has “the solution” but, yet, that great insightful idea doesn’t take off. Is it a conspiracy on our part? Perhaps it’s because that solution doesn’t work at scale.

Single-person made animations and applets became available only ten years ago and still require a programmer. We collectively lived under a rock for ages and entered the world of computers and smartphones few minutes ago. Considering the inertia, you had no time to check if this particular solution works at scale. Why are you so pre-opposed to it?

I can only think of: because nothing works at scale in education and it’s generally slow as hell.

I’ve done things like this. Back when Flash was around and Captivate was first out I created interactive lecture videos. One in particular was, I thought, really good. It was an explanation of how progressive tax systems work and how the amount of tax paid is a piecewise defined function of salary. Included in the videos at various places were concept questions. The video would stop at such a question and when you answer it would continue.

What was the result of this? Most didn’t watch the video and those that did didn’t finish it. Students largely don’t watch lecture videos or videos of any kind regarding math. For online courses students are using AI programs to do their work. They answer questions that should take minutes in seconds.

Most of the people I’ve responded to on the thread I started have no idea what they are talking about.

Ooo “drive-by dismissal”, I like that phrase, gotta remember that one

what's the reason it doesn't work??

That’s a wild take

What’s wild is people who haven’t taught thinking they know better than people who do teach.

Are you trying to imply that you have some teaching experience of your own? You're doing an incredibly bad job of establishing your credibility in this thread. Try being less combative and providing some substantive explanations for why you're so strongly convinced that there's no room for improvement over the status quo.

In particular, I'm curious how you come to the conclusion that high-quality video content cannot work better for "the vast majority of students" than sitting in a lecture hall. Do you have any theories about what kind of student good video content can work well for?

..why you're so strongly convinced that there's no room for improvement over the status quo.

I didn’t make this claim. I said that videos like 3Blue1Brown’s videos would not work in the classroom for most students. I further said that there was a reason things are done the way they are.

Imagine going to a place of business and seeing people doing their job. A job you’ve never done before. You start giving advice on what they should do. Most likely your views would not carry much weight or be worth much consideration.

> There’s a reason we teach things the way we do.

Really? Whats the reason?

Efficacy, maximal effectiveness over a large population, and because it works better at scale than other solutions.

I was under the impression that our education system is more about keeping children off the streets while both parents go to the office/factory than really educating them. This was especially visible during covid.

In that sense I agree with you: videos won't do the job.

On the other hand there is this one guy making videos that, I believe, reached way more people than any single teacher would. How does that count for scale?

Can we agree that there is room for both and that these videos are a nice addition?

3Blue1Brown’s videos are great and a treasure. I’m glad he does what he does.

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