

Hundreds of math and science educational videos - instantramen
http://www.khanacademy.org/index.html?

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deppp
I think i don't have to ask you this, but please, DONATE if you can. This site
brings the real value, and Salman quit his job just to do this.

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chaosmachine
Submitted this a couple months ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1058359>

Think it might be the highest voted thing I've ever posted here.

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asimjalis
Although someone else submitted it before that and only got 6 points.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059076>

~~~
chaosmachine
True. Yet another example of how a good headline will make or break a story on
social news sites.

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mdolon
Saw this earlier today on Reddit as well - this is truly a goldmine of useful
information. The range of topics he covers is simply amazing, with everything
from basic chemistry to fractional reserve banking. This man even quit his job
as a hedge fund manager to pursue this non-profit full time, so it's
definitely a worthwhile cause to donate to if you're capable.

Personally I'm going to try to watch a video or two every day, even for
material I already know. His videos are short and they do a great job of
refreshing old knowledge.

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Tycho
I've had a few interesting conversations with fellow IT students recently.
One, a very multi-lingual individual, said he wasn't picking any programming
modules because 'as soon as the dots and dashes start coming out, forget it,
it all looks like Greek to me.' During a lecture on research a slide of
statistical formulas came up, and it all looked like Greek to me. In fact, it
_was_ Greek (Greek alphabet). This got me thinking that maybe my aversion to
maths is needless - if I can program, shouldn't I be able to learn new
mathematic techniques too?

My next conversation was with someone who used to be a maths teacher, held a
maths degree, yet seriously struggled with the programming coursework, even
though she thought her maths would make it easy. I was surprised too. I
suggested that maths only seems easy to her because of the extensive schooling
one gets in arithmetic from an early age; she suggested it was because
programming was 'a male way of thinking' (!).

What's the link between maths and programming as skills? I mean, is maths the
'source code of reality' - just like code with unhelpful variable names? Or is
it really a different kettle of fish. I did well in maths at school... I just
_hated_ it. Trying to make sense of the mathematical notation in Wirth's
'Algorithms and Data Structures' reminds me why I hated it.

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nzmsv
I think mathematical notation is a big part of it. It just seems optimized for
writing, not reading, and especially not teaching.

Feynman talks about inventing his own notation in his autobiography. He then
had to give it up, because he had to communicate with other people. Reading
that made me abandon thoughts of doing the same, and realize I'm not the only
one having trouble with it.

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yequalsx
Well, another aspect is that there is so much information conveyed with a
mathematical statement. Consider the distributive property:

a (b+c) = ab + ac

It's quite simple but has some major consequences. These consequences aren't
obvious either until someone acquires the skill at being able to understand
what a formula really is saying. For instance, the distributive property is
why

x - 3x is the same as -2x

It takes most people a bit of effort and time to understand this though.

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mlinksva
As of a few days ago now the videos are also free (not just gratis) released
under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, the same one used for
Wikipedia, see <http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1378>

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grandalf
This guy is one of my heroes.

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Aron
I predict education to finally start changing in the next decade or so. What's
the value of having students fall asleep in lecture? Interactive education
with a computer, even if done in a class-like environment, seems much more
engaging and personalized. Stuck on a particular point? Find the video that
details that point from a different perspective, or slower pace.

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kyro
I'm currently working my way through his financial/banking series. Although he
doesn't delve much into detail, he does a really great job at explaining
general concepts and how systems work.

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swivelmaster
My girlfriend has been helped so much by Sal's videos on calculus. He explains
things VERY well.

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Estragon
Seems like they've been HN'd: their GAE calls are falling over at the moment.

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brown9-2
it's also currently on the front page of reddit

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bluesmoon
So to increase my karma, I could just find a few high ranking stories on HN
from a few months ago and resubmit them with a ? at the end of the URL. Just
as a social experiment, I'm gonna see if it works :D

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pg
Please don't.

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bluesmoon
I think I'm too lazy to go searching for old stories anyway.

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korch
I watched his thermodynamics videos and was quite impressed. It's actually
difficult to find approachable course material in that topic, but he
thoroughly explains it, all the way down to Boltzmann's H-theorem. How one guy
manages to cover all this material is incredible—he's going to become the Max
Headroom of Internet education!

And it sounds like his plans for the future are ambitious: can you imagine the
day when every lesson from an entire K-12 + 4 college years of education can
be watched on Youtube? Just fast-forward or rewind to wherever you are and
learn at your own pace.

It's also a clever inversion to achieve an optimization we programmers can
appreciate. If students are basically learning 90% identical content, then
instead of every student having a separate teacher, just record one really,
really exceptional teacher covering everything, and all students use that
teacher. I guess this means the world needs a lot _fewer_ teachers, but
everything gets balanced, so those teaching resources could be applied to more
complicated lessons that cannot be learned rote from video recordings. The
incredible end result being basic education levels are lifted for everyone.
Now that's a plan!

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bluesmoon
We used to do this (record instructors teaching) at my previous company,
however the videos were only available to registered (paid) students.

Making education freely available to everyone was the style of early Greek
philosophers. Then the sophists came along. They were a group of educators who
travelled around and would only teach those who paid for it. It's a pity
(albeit unsurprising) that this was the pattern that survived.

