eltonlin

>I wish It didn't happen here Sorry I don't quite understand - would you be willing to elaborate?

Ah, so since you usually need to ask 5-6 clarifying questions, you'd rather it be done in short bursts synchronously!

Right now with explanations.app, you can only follow-up with comments OR by posting new questions - asynchronously. I see that this might be a problem.

I look forward to you trying it this weekend :^) so I can also hear about your usage experience before deciding on the best way to solve this sync./async. trade-off

(perhaps the naive solution is voice chat - you post a question, your teacher happens to be free, you happen to be free, you just talk quickly back & forth)

Maybe you're right, but I'd challenge your middle paragraph.

When there are 10 students, they often have some common misundersetandings that can be addressed together e.g. they all want a review of Taylor's theorem needed to do electromagnetism, and they forgot it from high school. So I argue there is a lot of room for reusability of explanations.

>"pay $10 to watch another guy get tutoring" The format async., so if person A asks a question, person B doesn't have to sit and watch. The same way it works on Stackoverflow - if someone asks a useful question that you wanted to ask, you can reap the rewards of the existing answer.

You're right, the blog talks about one thing, the product does another thing.

The reason I conducted those interviews was that I wanted to understand the good intentions behind instructors who I disagreed with, especially instructors who put an extraordinary effort to change things(even when it was unpopular). That's how I started to understand the strongest arguments for mandatory attendance, and a synchronous learning experience. That's also how I learnt first-hand that the key incentives problem "what's the reward for teaching well at a research university?"

Having said that, through talking to other students, especailly the busy ones, who live off campus, have a part-time job, and via my experience, I understand first-hand the need of efficient options that don't require commuting and waiting. explanations.app is async. and remote for that reason. There are lots of existing async remote options, but they are textbased. I hope providing a visual async remote option, means that it can attract students who genuinely wants to learn things properly but also efficiently.

Ah I'm sorry for that. That was a bug from an earlier version that saturated the javascript event loop and caused the microphone to not work properly. This should be fixed as of last month's version.

Sorry again!

Thanks for the concrete feedback - OK I will make the price more visible. As for pricing/purchase, it might not necessarily make sense to students - from what I understand, they want to look for the right subject, then the teacher, before deciding to subscribe and pay.

Where should I learn about better UI/UX?

Ah I didn't realize the Piazza post isn't publicly viewable, thanks for telling me. I recreated it as a screenshot now https://imgur.com/gallery/GtuF78M

This is a course 6 issue mainly. Course 8 and 18 I've had generally good experiences with (but I'm a course 6 major).

As for OCW, I think it "looks" complete, but it's actually not very useful because so much material is missing e.g. no pset, no solutions, only lectures but no notes, only lecture notes but no recitations, etc. etc. which is why I know Aayush and Ashay are working on https://mitsoul.org/

Anyway, thanks for your comment!

>The ability to communicate WHY we are doing what we are doing I really resonate with what you said. The Why and the contextual motivation is what I'm always so starved for in classes that I don't understand.

This rings true "trying to be a good teacher in a university setting is extremely unrewarding". Thanks for sharing, and the students who make you feel bad despite you doing more than your fair share, can gtfo.

BTW, I didn't mention it, but I still remember vividly a lot of the TAs/profs. who gave a shit about helping me. So while I had a rough time, I remember some of of the good experiences.

And at the end of the day, we all want a place where we're rewarded for doing the right things, instead of punished.

Thanks for sharing. 100% - one of the downsides of focusing on attendance and in-person interactions is - simply the time cost, inflexibility and inconvenience for students who already have saturated schedules.

(I was first-exposed to this talking to students from community colleges, many working part-time jobs.)

Hey sorry to hear your experience. First to clarify - it varies - the classes (usually required CS classes), usually had overcrowded Office Hours, but there were many classes in math & physics where OH was very available (and I did very well in as a direct consequence, though I was a CS major).

If students complain about availability, but never show up despite everything you did, then that's their problem. What people say and do is, unfortunately, not the same.

And I'm sorry to hear about the strange incentives for not being able to report to the department about cheating.

Initially when I started the app, I was very anti-teacher. But as I learnt more and talked to more teachers, I realized, man teachers also have their fair share of indignations from the system.

Thank you for the thoughtful comments, I appreciate it.

FF mobile: you're correct, this is not mobile responsive yet - I will work on a future version to fix this.

>Different names with Google Login Is it that it shows "feynman-mvp" which is different from explanations.app, or is it that your name is shown to be different?

>What's a "server" I was trying to re-use the same concept from Discord "servers", a community of people. Which word would you use instead?

>Robust search Sorry that you got nor esults - yes the search is pretty terrible. Untitled/empty blackboards are not great too - moderation and vetting will probably be needed

>How does one readily see only college-level content In this current version, all the math & physics "servers" are college level (so manually vetted), and everything else is categorized in the "everything else category". Is there a better way to do this?

Thanks again!

Sounds great - I'm a huge fan of Georgia Tech's online masters. As for AI, I think if it solves all your problems, great. And it's real-time, and free.

But! The reason I still work on explanations.app is that, I often struggle not with "facts" but with the "fundamental way of thinking". How do the great mathematicians think about matrices, do they just see them as numbers on grids, as vectors, as transformations, how do you you think in the first place, how do you approach the problem, that kind of stuff is what I struggle with the most. And that's very hard to articulate too as a specific query, which is why Youtubers like 3B1B are so amazing - there are so many hidden choices they had to make to frame their explanations in certain ways and in certain narratives.

Anyway you can always let me know if you want to try out explanations.app : ) best of luck

I couldn't convey the technicality across, but the bad experiences I had were mostly localized in course 6 classes - Intro to Algorithms, Design & Analysis of Algorithms, Intro to Machine Learning. I actually did very well in math & physics because Office Hours were much more available, and they tried teaching in different formats (e.g. TEAL).

>incredibly open policy on working together Yes this was mostly the case - except for course 6. Also, I - sadly - didn't have study groups. For a combination of reasons, including my flaws, I just wasn't good at making friends in college.

As for how it's different from a job board with zoom - the key is to solve the "scarcity" issue, in my opinion. Teaching 1-on-1 for n students scales O(n). If there's a way to teach n students O(log(n)) i.e. address all overlapping needs with videos that can be replayed infinitely, then address remaining personalization problems, that's the approach I believe in

Yes you guys are right. This "video-based Stack Exchange format" will have clear disadvantages. You can't observe the non-verbal queues in-person for example that helps you discover the root of their misunderstandings etc.

>Any sort of teaching methodology will serve some students at the expense of others Yes, I admit this isn't helpful to all types of students, though I wish it can at least be helpful to an initial set of students

>"All the debt is assumed to vanish when you start a new session. Nobody acknowledges that the kid has been collecting debt for a decade now"

I think you articulate it really well. It speaks to me at a personal level because my stunted academic growth in college still affects me today, and it will never go away.

Good luck with Filo!

Ah, which alternative icons would you recommend that wouldn't get blocked by strick unlock origin settings?

Thank you for your kind remarks. As for the need for more videos on the "approach" of solving problems, that really resonates with me. I always wanted to learn how those mathematicians "see" matrices for example, how they "think" of what to do in the first place, etc.

If you're ever interested to try teaching/learning on explanations.app, I'm always here!

Ah OK, so I better make the carousel pause when a video is playing then!

This book looks absolutely riveting - just read the preview on Amazon. Which e-books platform did you buy it from?

Ah thanks for your feedback. I was worried that if I put $10/week, then it's not immediately obvious that it's a magnitude less expensive. Would it perhaps work if I highlight/emphasize the $10/week in the description below on the website? Or do you think it must be in the title?

Which programming subject do you want in particular? If it's coding syntax heavy, then the blackboard format might not be suitable. But if it's algorithm-heavy, then blackboard visuals could be very helpful.

Feel free to email me eltonlin@alum.mit.edu or if you prefer calling https://cal.com/eltonlin1998/15min

(BTW the things I described like overcrowded Office Hours etc., restricted access to past problems, were all Comp. Sci classes - Intro to Algorithms, Design & Analysis of Algorithms.)

Thank you! If you want help setting up you can always call +1 503 250 3868 (Tokyo time) or email me eltonlin@alum.mit.edu :^)

Ah I see why you'd want realtime interaction. In earlier versions there used to be voice chat, so when the learner-and-teacher happen to both be free, you'd talk in real-time. It was removed to focus on the async video aspect, but hearing what you said puts that back in my radar...

When you mention "good prompts", is that in the context of AI, or with asking questions in general? Is it easy/hard to create good prompts from your past experience?

As for Linear Algebra, I noticed you didn't sign up - did something change your mind? Feel free to be brutally honest as it helps me make real progress! If it's easier, feel free to call +1 503 250 3868 (Tokyo time zone), or email eltonlin@alum.mit.edu anytime!

I just read it, I agree with your points wholeheartedly.

Ah I couldn't figure out how to linkify links - how did you do achieve this?

I thought they're taught to be frugal

I read this too late! I already paid for Taxfyle for this year's Form 1120, they cost around $500. Would you recommend me to switch to Intuit next year for 2025, and why?

Look for a normal UK provider that supports "wifi-calling".

For US numbers, use Tello's basic e-sim: it supports "wifi-calling" i.e. as long as you're connected to the internet, you receive & send calls & texts as if you're in the US, no matter which country you're actually in. Because it's just a normal number, it'll work with WhatsApp.

$7/month for unlimited text, 100 phone minutes, no data.

From what I'm guessing (correct me if I'm wrong), the "2-3 people who can help you" are so busy so you feel bad asking / it's just an inefficient arrangement for them. Moreover, tutoring for truly advanced math basically doesn't exist, or would be insanely priced (proven Wyzant tutors charge $100-150 undergrad.level)

How would you feel about a hybrid between pure Youtube & pure tutoring? Where a proven mathematician creates detailed visual explanations (that don't omit steps) on fundamental advanced topics based on what you ask? And you pay, say $30/month, which is much cheaper because of economies-of-scale for the teacher?

My incentives is that I'm the founder of https://explanations.app. I'm a MIT grad, ex-Apple, raised $500K. I'm pivoting desperately and will spend all my energy and focus on what you want if you give me a chance to work with you.