Space Math Academy | Hacker News Reader

Space Math Academy

space-math.academy

Only had a couple minutes to try this but I'm already confused by a couple things.

- "UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE" I guess this is a joke but I don't really get it, just seems like a weird thing to have there.

- In the first popup, the "audio transmission" is significantly different than the printed text.

- "The Earth is a sphere." - this is not true, I think it should be classified as a hypothesis

- "The universe is expanding." Isn't this a theory? I don't think it can be called "a basic statement", it is a well-tested theory based on a lot of observational evidence.

- "Humans and gorillas evolved from a common ancestor species." This is obviously a theory, it's like THE theory when you need an example of what a theory is. You cannot establish this by experiment or observation.

- "Light is an electromagnetic phenomenon described by Maxwell's Laws" Why is this classified as a theory?

etc.

The categorization of this first lesson seems very arbitrary, and often contradictory with the "knowledge database" on the left.

Edit: Did you AI-generate these questions and then not proofread them?

There are photos of the Earth taken from the neighborhood of the Moon. They show something that is indistinguishable from a sphere to the naked eye.

Sure, with instruments you can measure it and find that it deviates from a perfect sphere. But every object that is made of atoms multiple atoms is not a perfect sphere.

I don't think it's a pedantic point, this is supposed to be a site about learning math that NASA scientists use, and the exact shape of the Earth is very relevant to them.

I just think it shouldn't be used as a canonical example of a fact when you'll probably learn at some point that it technically isn't true.

Some point being any half-decent middle-school textbook, or any popular science space book for teens. There's usually a footnote or an info box explaining that Earth isn't a perfect sphere.

It's not some arcane nerd knowledge. It's just a detail people don't remember from school because it's irrelevant to their lives.

Looks like NASA is to blame for these https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/2page23.pdf

I do agree much of the categorisation is baffling (I could nitpick several others). In that respect it's a shame to start off with that lesson when some of the others are so much more relevant to the mission concept, interesting and less debatable

Thanks, I tried to find that original source but wasn't able to.

I'm trying to overthink the space power systems exercise now ;-)

Actually very nicely designed, but the pedant in me is screaming "you can't just expect the other 3 solar panels to have the same number of dead zones" and I can't find the source either...

"If I jump out a window I will die"

Is not a fact: I have never died jumping out of a window, thus it is a hypothesis (because it is testable, though that raise epistemological problems in of itself)

viz. this evergreen gem: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/12/13/we-jumped-from-planes-w...

>Math

But the first exercise is about judging statements based on nebulous definitions, definitely unrelated to mathematics?

Mathematics is concerned with a lot more than arithmetic and computation. Beyond the most basic levels, a mathematician will profit greatly from being aware of this type of epistemological vocabulary and a strong sense of their underlying meaning. Whether reading or writing mathematics, we're constantly dealing with propositions, and correctly taxonomising those propositions can really help keep your mental workspace clean.

I do question the effectiveness (and accuracy) of this exercise, but its learning objectives I think are quite apt.

To be honest I do not think that these word games are helpful at all. Throughout all of my mathematical education what has always helped me to keep my "mental workspace clean", was to never abandon the model.

> and correctly taxonomising those propositions

The correct taxonomy for a proposition is true/false and proven/unproven.

I can not even fathom a mathematical model where distinguishing a "law" from a "fact" is meaningful.

And the idea of defining a "fact" as something empirically demonstrated is just ridiculous, I totally reject it.

I dislike the linked site. A lot. But counterpoint: Zermelo-Frankel with or without Axiom of Choice is a fair mathematical analogue to distinguishing laws and facts, in my opinion.

Put another way, decidability is a large area of mathematical research.

>Put another way, decidability is a large area of mathematical research.

What does ZF(C) have to do with decidability? Decidability is a question in any sufficiently complex system (Gödel's first theorem). And exactly this distinction is what I made for the taxonomy of propositions, you can group them into true and false and also into provable and unprovable. What would be a fact and what would be a law?

Regardless of that, in neither case the empiricism the site uses to define a fact would play any role.

Introducing Space Math Academy!

Reimagined NASA’s Space Math curriculum (https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/) as an immersive game, instead of static PDFs. Students solve the same problems real scientists face daily -- calculating orbits and trajectories, dealing with space weather, etc. -- in an interactive way that goes beyond worksheets (or just sending PDFs to an LLM).

https://space-math.academy https://www.github.com/dynamicwebpaige/space-math

Powered by Gemini for storytelling and text-to-speech (TTS). Links to the GitHub repo and live link that you can play above, thanks to Google Cloud Run. Please file feature requests, if there's enough interest will add more missions and a leaderboard.

Seems fun but unusable on mobile. Windows are not responsive enough. General design seems fun though

I'm so confused by the first task...

specifically I got hit with "chimpanzees and humans have common ancestor" (or something like that)

definition for a "fact" (supposed correct answer) given on the page ("A basic statement established by experiment or observation. True under specific conditions.") seems to me akin to "direct result of some experiment"

meanwhile, determining common ancestry - in my mind - took a lot of work, comparing anatomy, digging out bones and stuff... all the correlation, all the composition

surely it's more of a theory that's supported by many facts?

Seems very well put together, but I guess idk what a fact vs law is

Well people, knowledge become belief. - Position of Moon creating tides, which affect some places very strong, because line of shore constantly moving more then by cup meters, so some operations need to be planned according to tides, this is not belief, this is fact. Position of Sun amplifies tides for up to 50%. BTW, people knowing Astronomy, easy conclude, most extreme Sun tides amplification happen with Sun Eclipse.

I also seen few other wrong classifications.

Sorry, good idea, but such mistakes made it unplayable.

How does it save the progress?

Oooh, I hate this.

"The Earth is a sphere" -> nope

"Water freezes at 32F" -> depends

"Apes and Humans share a common ancestor" -> not a fact, although an extremely likely theory. The site's definition about fact mentions observability. I'd accept "Ape and Humans share 99.x% of DNA, indicating common ancestry" as a fact

Reply on news.ycombinator.com