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Comment by shagie | Hacker News Reader

The amount of effort to do a single 30 minute video of this sort when scaled out to a half or full year math class is significant.

Another consideration is that we learn things from it because we want to learn it. We are engaged with the topic the instant we hit play because we want to watch it.

Compare that with a high school or college setting where the majority of the class is taking it because they have to - not because they want to. This means that there's no initial engagement and a professor can't call out the student in the 3rd row from the back that is starting to fall asleep.

This can work really well for the people who want to learn it. However, it potentially adds to people who don't want to become competent in the material falling further behind.

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> The amount of effort to do a single 30 minute video of this sort when scaled out to a half or full year math class is significant.

This is true if Grant is the only person doing the work, however having a well educated and scientifically engaged populace seems important enough that we (the human race) should devote a few more resources to creating high quality (and freely available) courseware for all curricula/year levels.

High school math has a standardized curriculum that doesn't change significantly - it's 100% possible to create this high quality material for the whole n years and make use of it year after year. Especially that the most important part of this is the software used to make these semi-interactive graphics (which is open-source), so a teacher can just do it their own way, incorporating animations fit for their examples - no need to pre-render a video for each day. Do a "normal" class and visualize important aspects.

I’ve had classes where I didn’t want to learn shit but I learned anyway because of videos like this. Like the explanation is so clear that as long as you don’t fall asleep you absorb it.

I didn’t become interested in science and math until later in my life and I spent much of my childhood in classes where I didn’t care.

I usually watch 3b1b without any prior “want to” or any idea what it will be about. For me it’s the format that drives interest.

Although I’m from a natural-math-guy group, in a sense that I usually have no issues with understanding the material, in contrast to these “so interesting, but I understand nothing” comments below it. I always wonder why they watch it, cause it must be just a set of vector animations then.

I agree you can’t get around people fundamentally not being interested in the material. That being said, I still think that the power of 3b1b does should not be understated. It can cultivate interest as well!

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