On 16/01/2012 06:05 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Relevant: http://vihart.com/
>
> But I like your analysis better.

Why thank you honey. :-)

Also, I gather Vi has recently joined Khan Academy. Having never heard 
of it, I of course decided to see what it's about. The introductory 
video is very amusing, and Mr Khan seems like a nice guy. A lot of the 
things he says make a lot of sense.

And then I picked a random YouTube video from Khan Academy. As it 
happens, "Introduction to Matricies". The results were... unimpressive.

The video is 11 minutes long, and in that time I learned the following 
facts:

1. A matrix is a grid of numbers. (I'd feel happier if he said 
*rectangular* grid of numbers.)

2. To add two matrices, they must be the same size, and you add them 
element by element to produce a result of the same size.

OK, so there were some examples in there. But 11 minutes to say that? I 
could read out the above two sentences in about 11 *seconds*. Sure, if 
you're trying to explain something for the first time, taking it slowly 
and having a few examples is all good. But 11 minutes??

The reason seems to be that rather than having a tightly written script, 
the guy seems to be just ad libbing the whole thing. He dithers, he 
interrupts himself, he's indecisive, he rambles a lot. That's why it 
takes him so long to explain so little.

Unlike Vi, who draws stuff on paper (and talks like a machine gun), this 
guy laboriously doodles stuff with some kind of electronic whiteboard 
software. The results are utterly illegible. So many of his videos have 
little comments on them such as "this is a 3, not a 5". Quite apart from 
being hard to read, it looks *ugly*.

Now, to be clear, I only looked at, like, 3 videos. Maybe that's not a 
representative sample. And, if the blurb is to be believed, there are a 
vast number of such videos available, covering a wide range of topics, 
/and/ nicely categorised and arranged. I gather there's some sort of 
interface where you can track your progress, find related topics, and so 
forth. All of which /is/ very cool... but I can't help feeling that the 
actual videos could be done better.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with Vi there. The video with 
him and her seemed... awkward. But we'll see. It's a sensible alliance; 
nobody does slight video quite like Vi.

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