Tag: youtube

What’s a Tensor, By Dan Fleisch

Not just because it is worth your while understanding what tensors are, but also because this (to me) is a great example of how to teach well on YouTube – a topic that I want to get better at this year:

Do Less Of

Here is a list of things I hope to do less of in 2023:

  1. Exams (setting papers, correcting papers). Exams, given the way they are conducted almost everywhere I teach in India, are stupid. They fill hours of my time, but neither I, nor the students, benefit from them in any way. I am more than willing to die on this hill. Exams are stupid.
  2. Eat lesser. But conversely and not at all paradoxiacally, make every meal count. If the option is between eating a badly made meal and not eating, I hope I have the wisdom to pick the latter every time. It will have at least two advantages – I get to fast more than I did this year, and when I do eat, it is likely to be a much more pleasant experience.
  3. Spend less time reading stuff on the phone. My attention span suffers for it, and I need to get better at not taking my phone out of my pocket every chance I get.
  4. Reading while I am eating. Related to the second point, of course – I aim to make every meal I eat a celebration of food – but this is also related to the third point. But in general, try to get out of the habit of using the phone as a way to escape the world around me.
  5. Mindless YouTubing. That’s not the same as spending less time on YouTube – I’m convinced that I need to spend more time on the platform. But YouTube Shorts is the enemy, and so is YouTube’s recommendation engine. It doesn’t optimize for what is best for me in the long run, and I think Odysseus may well have been on to something.

In Praise of 3Blue1Brown

I’ve been talking about bloggers I admire this past week, in one way or the other. But when it comes to consuming audio and video content, I’m at a comparative disadvantage. I much prefer reading to listening or viewing – partly because I read much faster. The other reason, of course, is that my preference for reading very quickly becomes a vicious cycle. Because I’m better at reading than at listening or viewing, I read more, and as a consequence, I get even better at reading. And so on.

But that’s just me, of course. Other folks might have (and do have) different preferences. In fact, I’ve often been told that I really should be creating videos in addition to writing this blog. And I don’t disagree, not even one little bit, and for the following reasons:

  1. If my purpose behind writing on this blog is to help people learn better (and that very much is the case), I’m not doing a very good job if I’m not optimizing for the medium that people prefer
  2. Creating YouTube videos really forces you to hone in on the exact message. Writing blogs allows me to be lazy while writing, and I needn’t worry about length and conciseness. I know this is a bad habit, and one of my to-do’s is to get better at writing bogposts.
  3. Creating videos allows you to be much, much more creative.

But that last point is precisely why I haven’t gotten around to creating videos just yet. Well, that last reason combined with my talent for procrastination, but let’s not go down that road. Let us, instead, go down that first road, the non-procrastination one.

It comes down to (surprise, surprise) an economic concept. Specifically, complements and substitutes. It would be the easiest thing in the world to set up a camera in a class in which I am already teaching something, and put up that video on YouTube. And folks who might watch this recording are simply substituting physically attending my class for virtually attending it. Which is great, of course, and I’ve have enjoyed watching videos that use this technique created by other folks.

But there are other videos on YouTube that don’t just substitute for the real world. The creator treats the format (video) as a complement to his content. The video is not a substitute for the physical classroom, it is a complement to what the creator is saying. And if you want to understand what that really means, try the following. Pick a math textbook of your choice, and try to understand linear algebra. Then watch Grant Sanderson weave his magic on the same subject.

And sure, maybe I was taught the subject badly in college. But even with a really good teacher and/or a really good math textbook in college, I cannot imagine not falling in love with the way Grant teaches us linear algebra. If you’ve watched even one of the videos in that series (and I really do hope you will watch all of them), I think you’ll agree that he comfortably ticks all of the boxes in my little list above.

And there’s so much to admire with all of his videos. The little “pi’s”, the music, his voice (an underrated part of what makes him such a good teacher. His pauses, his inflections and modulations, the pace at which he talks, all are always perfect), and the animations all end up making his videos so much better. And the content itself, and the insane amount of both coding and thinking that must go into each of them, is a whole other story.

My personal favorites from the channel are the Linear Algebra series, and the series on calculus. And as someone who teaches statistics, his video on Bayes Theorem is also fantastic. But let me be clear, these are simply the ones that resonated the most strongly with me. All of 3Blue1Brown’s videos that I have seen are fantastic. All. Every single one of them.

And if you left school/college with a slight dislike for mathematics (as I did), you couldn’t do yourself a better favor then spending a little bit of time everyday watching 3Blue1Brown’s videos. And if you are in love with mathematics (as I now am), you don’t need me to tell you to go watch his videos, now do you?

Grant, thank you very much for your work!

Bertrand’s Paradox, Explained By Numberphile and 3Blue1Brown

… which, by definition, makes this self-recommending!

Ways to Learn Outside of College

Outside of college doesn’t necessarily mean not enrolling in college. It means complementing whatever it is that you’re learning in college.

  1. Listen in on Twitter. I’ll use economics as an example, but I’m sure this applies to practically any subject. Listening in means quite literally listening in to people in the field having a debate about, well practically anything. #EconTwitter is a useful way to get started. This tweet, for example, was fourth or fifth in the “Top” section at the time of writing this blogpost.
  2. Learn what lists on Twitter are, and either follow lists made by others, or start creating your own. This list, for example, is of folks on Twitter who have been guests on The Seen And The Unseen (TSATU).
  3. We’ll resume our regular programming from the next point onwards, but just in case you’ve been living under a rock, listen to The Seen And The Unseen. Multi-hour episodes, well over two hundred of them. Each of them with guests who are experts in the real, meaningful sense of the term. Each backed with impeccable research by Amit Varma. All for free. What a time to be alive.
  4. Following topics on Twitter is often more useful than following people on Twitter, although as always, TALISMAN.
  5. Why not read about each Nobel Prize in economics, say at the rate of one a week? Here’s the complete list of Nobel Prize winners. Here’s the 2020 prize winners page. If you are an undergraduate student, focus on the popular science version. If you are a Master’s student, read the more arcane version. Of course, nothing prevents you from reading both, no matter what level of economics you are comfortable with. 🙂 An idea that I have been toying with for a year: a podcast about the winners, created in the style of this podcast. This also ought to be done for all of India’s Prime Ministers, but that is a whole separate story.
  6. Blogs! There are far too many blogs on economics out there, all of them unbelievably excellent. Some are directly about economics, some are tangentially about economics, some aren’t about economics at all, and those are the very best kind. Read more blogs! Here’s how I read blogs, if that helps.
  7. YouTube. 3Blue1Brown, Veritasium, Kurzgesagt, Sky Sports Masterclasses on Cricket (yes, seriously), and so, so, so many more! One of my targets for the coming months is to curate my YouTube feed the way I have curated my Twitter feed. Suggestions are always welcome!
  8. Podcasts.
    Amit Varma responded on Twitter recently to a question put up by Peter Griffin. The question was this. Amit’s reply was this.
    Alas, this applies to me. My podcast listening has gone down due to the pandemic. One, because I have not been in a frame of mind to listen for extended periods of these past eighteen months. Two, because my listening was usually while driving. But still, podcasts. My top three are (or used to be): Conversations With Tyler, EconTalk and TSATU.
    (And one day, so help me god, I will write a blog post about WordPress’ new editor. Why can one not embed a tweet in a numbered list in the 21st year of the 21st century?! And they call this a modern editor! Bah.)

Questions about Veritasium (as just one example), and how that might possibly relate to economics might arise in some reader’s minds. Two responses: don’t compartmentalize learning. Ask, for example, about the economics of producing videos such as these. Second, learning about other subjects (interdisciplinary learning in fancypants English) is helpful in many, many different ways. Ditto with Sky Sports Cricket Masterclasses. Learn about training like an athlete, and then watch Adam Gilchrist talk about training with his dad. (The first couple of minutes, that’s all).

The larger point about the list is this: there really is no excuse left to not learn a little bit more about any subject. Learning can (and should) be a lifelong affair. And the role of college, especially in the humanities, is to help foster that environment of learning, and to act as guides for young folks just about to embark on their (lifelong) journey of learning.

Or, to put it even more succinctly, we need to have classrooms act as complements to online learning, not as a substitute for it. And that needs to happen today, not some vague day in the future.

Etc: Links for 25th October, 2019

  1. Images from the BBC that shows the extent to which Iceland’s glaciers have melted.
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  2. An article by a long time observer of cricket in South Africa – and all of what ails it.
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  3. Speaking of sports: geographically challenged football supporters.
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  4. If you are seeing more ads on twitter, this may well be why.
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  5. A useful set (well, to me, at any rate) of tips for making the rabbithole that is YouTube more enjoyable.

EC101: Links for 3rd October, 2019

  1. Everything is correlated.
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  2. For students at Gokhale Institute for sure, but elsewhere too: the Stiglitz essay prize.
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  3. Capitalim vs Socialism.
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  4. On reforming the PhD.
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  5. On complements, substitutes, YouTube and reading.