Summer of Math Exposition

This video is fantastic, I’m a student just learned Combinations 5 month ago, your video is great for student who are just going to learn this topic, and for those who just learn this but be overwhelmed by all those formula, and didn’t know with which formula to use.

But I do think you take explaining factorial too light, you didn’t explain it enough, and you bring up the factorial formula first, and after interduce all formula finally show the expended form, I think it’s too late, the student have been eagering that for too long

Great video, I enjoyed the intuitive explanations and real world examples. I also enjoyed the animations. My suggestion would be maybe add some quiet background music to engage the viewer more.

Nice,try improving language

Love the humor, and the references :) Since I already knew everything in the video, it’s hard to see whether it’s understandable for someone who didn’t know this beforehand, but my guess is that yes, it is. At least it’s the best possible way to explain it. When you told the first few sentences of the example problems, there was black screen, so I had to really concentrate to catch what the problem is. It would be better (for me at least) if you wrote full sentences on the screen instead of just the keywords. (Not all sentences, but the sentences from which the problem can be understood even if we just saw the screen, and didn’t hear the audio). Or you could just write down everything you say on the screen simultaniously as say it, it wouldn’t be too much to process it. I also liked the estatics, great work.

The idea for the video was good — an organizing structure to the basic combinatorics equations using the coordinate grid. The equations were explained well for the most part with some helpful visuals and animations.

However, there were several parts of the video that would make me not want to play it in class.

1. there is an inappropriate joke at the beginning of the video. I understand that you wanted to “hook” the viewer, but this is not the way to do it. If I weren’t watching the video to rate it and specifically interested in combinatorics, I would have clicked out of the video right away.

2. video length and organization was not ideal. I had difficulty paying attention and following along even though I am a math teacher, which is not a good sign. I would break up the video into several smaller videos, with exercises interspersed instead of saving them for the end. Also, trying to think of better “hooks” for students — what examples or exercises would be super fun and interesting for them? The video is trying to cover too much content and would be hard for a student to pay attention to.

3. I would also embed subtitles into the video instead of relying on the youtube subtitles because they cut off the bottom of the video.

Nice way to introduce combinatorics. Good homour. I will use this video, thank you. I appreciate the chart to help the memorization.

I believe this is above high school curriculum but I enjoyed it

Initial Thoughts

Good job on your first video! I thought your explanations were clear for the your high school audience.

What Went Well

I thought the card game analogy was a good one to use as an example. That gave you a relatable, concrete idea to use as a base to derive the formulas. I also thought the way to turned the example problems into the card game later made the transition from the derivations to the applications easier to follow.

Ideas for Improvement

An English phrase that comes to mind is “fishing for answers.” It means asking a question that has multiple possible correct answers, but having one answer in mind that you expect the students to give. This came up in the derivation for quadrant 4, when you highlight repeated cards in red, swap them out for two new cards, then ask, “Can you notice something?” At that point, it wasn’t clear to me what I was supposed to be noticing, but it was clear that there was a certain answer you were looking for. As a viewer, that made me feel behind, like I was missing something. Talking more about the strategy behind why you added the two extra cards to the deck before asking the question would have helped me make the connection to the previous case on my own instead of feeling like I’d missed something until you explained further. When using questions in future videos, I’d recommend trying to avoid fishing for answers to keep your viewers engaged.

Steady explanation, well structured, clear motivation. Very nice. Will benefit if factorials and its connection with combinations are expanded upon. The part where the video tries to justify the fourth quadrant’s formula is not very accessible: consider employing more visual guidance and extra finely broken-down explanations.