Very cool!<p>Does anyone have a list of other similar texts?<p>There's:<p>- Geometry: Joyce's Java version of Euclid's _Elements_: <a href="https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html" rel="nofollow">https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...</a><p>- Physics: <a href="https://www.motionmountain.net/" rel="nofollow">https://www.motionmountain.net/</a><p>- Chemistry: The Elements by Theodore Gray <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/id364147847" rel="nofollow">https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/...</a><p>A nifty thing my kids enjoyed was the website version of the book, _Bembo's Zoo_ (which sadly is no longer on-line: <a href="https://soundeffects.fandom.com/wiki/Bembo%27s_Zoo_(Websites)" rel="nofollow">https://soundeffects.fandom.com/wiki/Bembo%27s_Zoo_(Websites...</a> )
Thank God people are moving towards this modality. I have a fervent hatred for textbooks and publishers. The former are antiquated, static, badly formatted, and often ride with distracting garbage in the margin, or worse inline. It makes actually reading them far more difficult than needs be, with unremarkable asides that may span pages and that are easy to get pulled into. While I understand that they have a purpose, they aren't for everyone so having a platform with the dynamism of a webpage is something that I hope will inevitably lend itself to future development along this course. Not to mention being able to have interactive questions that give quick feedback rather than requiring turning through pages to find out if you're on the right track... And this interactive stuff is just an excellent means to drive meaning from terse and difficult to explain systems.<p>Cheers to the folks that put this together, a thousand thanks for the travails you've been through to blaze these trails!
My undergrad math professor created one of the first fully online linear algebra texts: <a href="http://linear.ups.edu/html/fcla.html" rel="nofollow">http://linear.ups.edu/html/fcla.html</a> It's integrated with Sage, a Python library for studying (among other things) number theory. Another prof at the same university also wrote his own linear book, using a lot more illustrations, but as a traditional textbook.<p>I see this book as a solid evolution in both directions. Nicely done!
My gut reaction to this sort of thing is that textbooks work great and have a timeless quality. But with a little more thought, they certainly aren't optimal. Being able to see a video, hear a sound, or play with a figure can be powerful learning. I think my hesitation comes from the fact that this stuff just doesn't seem to have longevity (think educational java applets) and tends to be proprietary (shitty Pearson learning hw). How can we get newer media as robust as text and pngs?
It's not really a textbook but at this stage, 3Blue1Brown courses almost needs an obligatory mention for how fantastic they are.<p><a href="https://www.3blue1brown.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.3blue1brown.com/</a>
I hope that this sets a standard for future textbooks/publications. I haven’t been able to grasp several concepts in math unless I was able to properly visualize it, which most modern textbooks do with a terribly compressed and unsaturated JPG.
This looks like a fantastic resource. After a quick scan, I couldn't find any information on how this book was programmed / created. Does anyone know if a particular framework was used, or if this was all coded by hand?
I studied physics-based rendering from a book by one of the two authors (T. A-M), and it was written excellently. I'll have a look at this for sure, as I need a refresher every now and again.
A naive question: I see that they are using mathjax for the displaying mathematics content. But what are they using to create the interactive diagrams?
Cool to see stuff like this which makes math fun for everyone. I love stuff like this because it brings together two things I love, math and programming.<p>I mean textbooks are cool. But with the tools available to us we should be able to make almost any textbook interactive. It will need effort, pedagogy, programming skills and design. But it's certainly worth it.<p>Making an effort with this. Started with 6th to 10th grade math. Let's see how this goes.
Hell yeah. Linear algebra was a hole in my math education and has turned out to be far more relevant to my work than the calculus I spent so much time on. I’ve been teaching myself piecemeal on an as-needed basis but this looks like a great opportunity to finally get a cohesive overview.
Looks incredible! All this needs is a little bit of conversational AI magic in the background to filter and modulate the content according to plain-English student questions and its go time.<p>Note that this was finished in 2019, so now would be the perfect time for someone to polish this up and expand it to the rest of math! Assuming this is threeJS, you could get an open-source file format going for simulations, and even host crowdsourced applications of it to existing popular math textbooks by Figure/page #. I mean, linear algebra is cool, but the market for good free geometry education is limitless<p>Does anyone know if the big names in math education offer simulations yet, or is it all animations/images/videos still?<p>EDIT: definitely ThreeJS — love the vector chapter. What this needs is true spatial computing support - not pages with nested simulations, but site-wide (SPA-wide) <i>simulated objects</i>. What if every student in geometry class could have their own simulation on their Chromebook as they read/follow along? I can’t wait.
One critique that glares in my face is "you changed the textbooks via hackers and now my children's development is your fault". These accusations fly when money (e.g. big textbook starts a media campaign) is on the line. As such, these interactive apps need to be able to handle that level of criticism if in a public school (before college).<p>These applications probably need to be client side only enabled and a hash that agrees to the hash of the "approved curriculum" for most parents to think that this might be okay, or a read-only USB rental from the school library that gets verified when it is checked back in.<p>I will not let the government install unknown tech on my computer, but I am willing to download a read only file. I do not want to have my children learning "new math" and be able to point at the technology as the problem "because hackers" or some other BS that has sounds true but has a high amount of effort to disprove coming while chatting with parents at a bus stop or PTA meeting.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law</a>