Summer of Math Exposition

When you showed “3 feet = ?”, my brain immediately started singing “The only thing I knew for sure was ‘three feet make a yard’…”

I’ll provide feedback on two levels: as a video for a classroom lesson, vs. a video to perform well on the YouTube algorithm to grow and find it’s audience.

Overall, a great classroom lesson! The motivation and concept was very clearly laid out, the examples all illustrated the point and added a bit of complexity each time. It gave time for the viewer to digest what was going on. The slow pace made me feel like it’s a high school lesson, not an undergrad lesson (unless I’m overestimating undergrads). The music was pleasant, voice clear, and visuals helpful without being distracting. Leaving the original question as an exercise to the viewer, plus some others, is a fun way to spur them into action (‘dang, I want that Ussain Bolt answer”)

As a YouTube video, it felt a bit long and slow. The emphasis was more on working through repetitive examples rather than a big aha moment. The first 10 seconds are wasted on intro music, rather than jumping into a motivation immediately. The speaking, pauses, and multiple examples really draw it out. Not having the answer to the Ussain Bolt question made me feel a bit disappointed.

These two goals are so different, hence the almost opposite reviews. If it’s meant for organic/casual YouTube viewers, it could be snappier and quicker, with more of an a-ha moment or punchline at the end. I don’t think you need to go heavy into meme-y editing or animations, just rearrange and re-edit for pace. If it’s meant for a classroom, wonderful lesson!

I enjoyed the choice of topic - the simple concept of multiplying by 1 and cancelling out the units helps any person understand why/how to set up unit conversions. Nice work!

This is a standard discussion in many different classes or day-to-day life, but it is pretty well done. I think the audience would be more useful to lower school students that are learning this material rather than high school or undergraduate students.

The video motivates explains the concepts well, and the video itself is nice, although relies too much on the equations and manipulating the symbols

I thought the exposition here was really exceptional, and this is the kind of thing I would definitely show to students. I appreciate everything being kept pretty simple in terms of the visuals, and keeping the pacing of the explanation slow and calm. The questions at the end are also a nice stepping-stone into dealing with units students may have never seen before. Great job :)

Unit conversion is a good topic, and multiplying by 1 is a good way to frame it. When you do the conversions, you end each section by removing all the work from the middle. But that work is the point, so you want that to be the last image in the students’ minds. Maybe leave it there, and just box the start and end values to make it clear that’s the final answer.

clear explanation of an important method, but better for a lower lever viewer

Slightly better than the standard approach, it may be useful as a video chart for students taking an introductory course in physics.

Quite a nice video with good quality. Quality 9/10. Length 10/10. Easiness in understanding 9/10. Overall 9/10

Very good and clear. This reminds the viewer that multiplying by 1 does not change things and then goes on to show many different versions of 1. I like that cm^2 and cm^3 were shown as cm being multiplied 2 or 3 times and that this forced us to use the cm in the denominator that number of times. Good job.

The explanations are simple and clearly explained. But the topic is too primitive for high-school and undergraduate levels. Also, the video could use more visuals rather than simply writing out the math - the explanations are too dry at the moment.

This was a really clear explanation of something that pretty much every scientist/engineer will run into. I think it could have been more concise, but it was very informative.

An understandable explanation of unit conversion. The pacing was a bit slow but for someone who doesn’t understand the topic, it is probably just right.

As someone who doesn’t have to deal with miles and feet and cups I’m deeply thankful for the simplicity of the metric system… I was confused in the start why you made the conversion so complicated. In the end I understood what you were going for. Maybe check the setup of your mic for redcording? There were some strange sounds in the background. Overall I think the video delivers on what it set out to do. So, well done.

This is a good video. However, I find it rather slow, and sometimes important details are skipped. I would have rated it an 8 if you both made the “ones” more of a thing. Like define it as “anything that equals one” - the video seems like it is put together quickly as it stands.

Seems pretty basic, but quite thorough in explaining. There’s an old trick that requires only changing the decimal place, for metric units and that might be useful to note in the video, or maybe not - https://howtotrainyourrobot.com/the-only-metric-guide-you-may-need/

The concept chosen could have been mathematically stronger.

I liked the consistent emphasis on multiplying by one, and how this is transferable to things like giving fractions a common denominator. Also, the area and volume conversions are worth emphasizing as students often get confused on these. It would have been nice to have a some examples with easier numbers, such as converting cm^3 to m^3 as this shows clearly that 1 m^3 is NOT 100 cm^3, as many younger students expect. I liked the questions at the end. As a side note, as I teach in Europe, many of my students will never have used feet, inches etc., so this would not be relevant to them, but in the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) these conversions are important.

I find it very clever to motivate unit conversions as multiplications by 1, it makes it approachable, less intimidating for students. Please do not abuse the Transform visual in Manim, because it erases the previous scene and can make students miss important parts. Transform is the equivalent of what some (not good teachers) do of erasing a line on the whiteboard to replace it by the next result. Any student that blinked during the erasing step will get lost. It is better to have more lines, there is no need to everything in a single line.