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A Way-Too-Philosophical Behind-The-Scenes Post
🕑 Added 2018-08-28 14:09:31 +0000 UTC When you're overwhelmed with over-philosophical questions about life, there's only one thing to do: make a graph.Here's a totally scientific graph of all things people make. Each dot is a thing. The x-axis is how many people it reaches. The y-axis is how valuable it is to each person it reaches:
(not shown: things with negative value)
Let's narrow this down from "all things", to just "educational things":
(edit: A reader pointed out I've made a shaky assumption – that "value" is a single dimension. Fair enough! For now I'll bite the bullet and say, “all models are wrong but some are useful”)
Note that there's a soft tradeoff between reach & value. A TED talk can reach millions, but will "only" be an introduction. A lifelong mentorship with a world-class expert can be incredibly valuable, but will "only" scale to a dozen-or-so people. It's not impossible to have high reach + value, but it's incredibly rare.
Reflecting honestly on my past work, I think this is my graph:
"ENHANCE"
Two things to note.
First off, Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. Most of my early work (and some of my recent stuff, like Joy.js) is crap. And that's fine! To quote Jake the Dog, "Dude, sucking at something is the first step to becoming sorta good at something."
Second, my non-crap stuff is in the bottom-right corner – the land of TED talks, pop-sci books, edu-YouTube. That is: lots of reach but "only" slightly helps each person it reaches. And that's also fine! I think "help many a little" and "help a few a lot" are both good strategies.
What do I mean? Here's a graph:
Yeah. That totally makes sense, and not me forcing a mathematical metaphor.
That said, I do want to explore other parts of that curve: something more niche, but also maybe more value-per-person. That's why, in June, I asked you for help! I posted a poll on four ideas for explorables. Each explorable's goal was to teach a specific skill.
The contenders: web programming, non-fiction writing, statistics w/ resampling, and... "learning how to learn". Learning How To Learn, obviously, won. (but surprisingly: statistics was a really close second, and web programming was dead last!) So, in July, I worked on the Learning How To Learn explorable.
I then took time off to set up & run the Explorables Jam – there's 20 new explorables to play/learn with! – but, honestly, I was stuck on Learning How To Learn.
Why? It was too general. I tried teaching about all learning: learning math, learning art, learning habits, learning motor skills, learning to overcome phobias... I was reaching for too much! The only things I could say that applied to all of them were banal platitudes.
In other words – or in a picture – my "total value" rectangle was too flat:
In physics, Pressure = Force/Area. I could try to increase my Pressure (my social impact) by increasing my Force – but I'm already at my max for a single person – therefore, the only alternative: I had to decrease my Area.
I had to narrow my scope.
But narrow to what? What idea in learning was simple, valuable, yet relatively unknown to the world, and thus could benefit most from a fun, accessible explorable explanation?
You guessed it – I drew a graph:
Spaced Repetition. That's what I should've done, and what I've been quietly working on the last three weeks! I should've shared more progress with y'all, but I wanted to wait until I had something interesting to show.
I do now! Here's a GIF:
(if you can't see the GIF, try this link)
This GIF shows: an interactive comic, a simulation of Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve, and flashcards in-comic so you can learn about spaced repetition using spaced repetition!
My Spaced Repetition explorable will be out end-of-September. Sorry again for being quiet about what was happening behind-the-scenes, but: 1) I hope this post explains why I rebooted the project, and 2) I promise to share more behind-the-scenes posts from now on!
(P.S: If you want to see the remains of Learning How To Learn, here's a link to a simulation of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow", and a clone of Flappy Bird. Open-source code is here. Feel free to salvage the scraps!)
I'm excited to share Spaced Repetition with you next month, and I hope it's a good value-rectangle! Thank you all so, so much for supporting me, encouraging me, and sticking with my indecisive butt.
Comments
Emelin Ringuette
This is fantastic, and I love having the "behind-the-scenes" look! I adore that you come up with visuals to solve your dilemmas. I hope you have a sketchbook somewhere just full of nothing but diagrams and graphs. I aspire to that.
Nicky Case
Aw, thanks! And best of luck on the puzzle game project! :) ( If you're interested, someone made an explorable – for the Explorables Jam – on how to make good puzzle games! <a href="https://auroriax.com/puzzle-explorable/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://auroriax.com/puzzle-explorable/</a> )
DominoPivot
Loving your work as always. In fact, I almost decided to work on an interactive lesson about Regular Expressions for a university project, but the lack of a teacher to accompany me forced me to postpone that project to later(tm). For now I'll create a puzzle game. Something simpler but more manageable.
Nicky Case
Thank you Marie-Noelle! :D
Marie-Noelle Wurm
I loved this post. Keep doing what you do, it's awesome <3
Nicky Case
That's a really good question! Another example I think a lot about: China invented moveable type & the printing press *centuries* before Gutenberg. And yet... it never took off. And it makes you wonder: what inventions exist *now* that could benefit the world, but we're all just not seeing the value of? > "but that is dice and I want cubes" ಠ_ಠಿ
Grävling
I think a missing dimension in all of this is *how do you get people to recognise that you have made or done something of value* ? It is not a given that they will notice, spread the word etc. Consider, there is a Museum in Nara, ancient capital of Japan, which shows thlngs which the Japanese adopted from Chinese culture (via Korea) when they were first exposed to it. Buddhism? Check. Temple architecture? Check. New pottery and woodworking techniques? Check. Chairs? Nope, they brought some, but it never took off. How could this happen, or not happen? I see this sort of thing all the time. Somebody wanted to have engraved cubes with art on all six sides for a game he was making. He wanted to know who made such things. I sent him the exact url for a dice making company that will print custom art on any or each face of the die. He came back with ...."but that is dice and I want cubes". ARRRGH! The solution is staring you in the face, and this is your project, you have been working on for months, but you still cannot see it. I think this is one of the hard ones.
Jerry Michalski
Thank you!
Nicky Case
> are any of these better for memorizing poetry? They're all general-purpose, so they should all more or less be good for that! Though, relevant – Piotr Wozniak has 20 tips on how to use Spaced Repetition best, and there's a really good example in there on memorizing poetry. Skip to Point 10, or Ctrl+F "Teddy Roosevelt": <a href="https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/20rules</a>#Enumerations In sum: don't make a flashcard with poem title on front / ENTIRE poem on back. Instead, make multiple cards, where the front is ONE line of the poem, back is NEXT line of poem.
Jerry Michalski
Oooo, thank you. I had heard of Anki and Tinycards, but didn't have the context. The Leitner Box is new to me. All now in context in my Brain: <a href="https://bra.in/5q5MVq" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://bra.in/5q5MVq</a> Separate question: are any of these better for memorizing poetry? I'm not sure how to use flashcards for that...
Jamieson Taylor
Nah, we have at least 3 weeks lost to procedures, schedule issues, and other administrative nonsense. You'll be releasing just about when everyone is finally settled in to their routines. Which is what makes it such great timing for me! Love your work so much ;)
Nicky Case
Thanks Jerry! If you're interested in trying Spaced Rep out right now, Anki is the most popular software for it (it's open-source, too): <a href="https://apps.ankiweb.net/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://apps.ankiweb.net/</a> It allows for creations of *any* kinds of cards, not just language-related! As for me, I'm using a Leitner Box, which is a physical version of Anki (that was invented by a German science-journalist decades before Anki) It's very arts-and-craftsy! Here's a short video about it: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S2LJIAydyg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S2LJIAydyg</a> And if you like Duolingo's design, the team behind Duolingo have a sister project called Tinycards: <a href="https://tinycards.duolingo.com/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://tinycards.duolingo.com/</a> It's not open-source like Anki, but, unlike Anki, you can start playing with it w/o downloading anything or even signing up! Tinycards was actually my first time using spaced rep (I used it to memorize the countries of the world), but eventually I switched to the Leitner Box anyway. Hope those links & resources help! (...but not help SO much that my next explorable is basically obsolete. ha ha. ha.)
Nicky Case
My timing would've been better if I got the Spaced Repetition explorable done *before* the school year starts, but... well, late > never???
Nicky Case
Thanks Maurico! That's actually really relieving to hear that these behind-the-scenes posts are valuable. I can't tell if I'm being too navel-gazey, but it seems people like my belly button lint, so... back to digging I guess!
Jerry Michalski
Thank you for these explorations, Nicky! I'm interested in tools that help us all implement spaced repetition. I know Duolingo is based on it, but what might a general-purpose framework look like?
Jamieson Taylor
Your timing is so perfect, you have no idea... Can't wait to see it!
Mauricio Arreola-Garcia
Great post, Nicky. This isn't too philosophical at all; this is very wise of you as a content creator to consider the impact of your content early in the project and define scope. Your impact integral makes a lot of sense and shows that you're thinking about your niche in the ecosystem of all creators. I hope I speak for your followers when I say that I learn as much from your explorables as I do from your creative process. Hope the see the Learning Explorable soon!
Nicky Case
I didn't know the Civil Air Patrol taught spaced repetition, that's really cool! Also hooray for language-learning – I read Fluent Forever a few months ago (which introduced me to the Leitner Box, a pen-and-paper spaced repetition system) and have been using its techniques since to learn French. Definitely going *much* better and faster than when I last tried to learn French in high school.
Tim S (Banana Juice Tech)
Spaced repetition is really helpful. I wasn't taught it in school (I learned it in the Civil Air Patrol study book), but it really should be shared more. I think I end up doing it by accident sometines. I have a few Japanese language flashcard apps on my phone, and I end up using them only when I feel myself getting rusty.
