SoME #2
Make some awesome explainers
Last year
Last summer, Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown held a contest named SoME #1. The name is short for The Summer of Math Exposition. In this contest, Grant asked people to submit maths explainers — something that explains a concept in maths (or physics or computer science). This explainer could be of any form: a short video, a blog post, an interactive webpage, or even a game! The goal of this contest was to encourage more people to create explainers.
There are multiple benefits to this. One, it improves the collection of resources available to all for learning new things (More than a 1000 entries were submitted!). Everyone has a different learning style, and similarly, everyone has a different teaching style. Even if someone has made a video explaining a particular concept, the way you explain the same topic will be different. Some people will find their content easier to understand, and some will find your content easier to understand. The more high-quality content there is out there, the higher the chance that you will find something that you can connect to.
Secondly, when you explain a concept to someone else, you tend to dispel misconceptions you may have had about the topic, and you might find an easier way of thinking about a problem as you try to present it in a simple manner for the explainer. You are bound to learn something new and improve your own understanding of the subject. It is a win-win-win for everybody!
You can read more about last year’s contest on Grant’s website. You can also find a list of all submitted entries there. You can read/watch them at your leisure and learn many things new.
This year
The #1 in SoME #1 suggested that this could be a recurring event, and sure enough, it’s back this year as SoME #2.
Watch the announcement video by Grant on YouTube →
Not much has changed from last year. This time, there is an additional platform to help domain experts to collaborate with content producers. A repository has been setup on GitHub to help people with complementary skills to find and connect with each other.
For example, say you are well-versed in topology and would like to make a game related to something in topology, but don’t know how to make games. You can request for a game developer on the GitHub page. Similarly, if you are good at making videos but don’t know what to make the video about, you can look for a domain expert who would like to get a video made. By collaborating with others, you can make something amazing, something that would be impossible working on your own.
Here are some important links for this year’s SoME:
- Contest rules and details
- GitHub for collaboration and matchmaking
- Discord for general discussion
- Submission form
The deadline for submitting your work is 15th August 2022. Five winners will be selected who each will be awarded a Golden Pi creature and a prize money of $1000 sponsored by Brilliant. Very exciting!
I will not have time to make a video this year, but I will write a series on the Determinacy of Two-player Games with Perfect Information. The topic is inspired by some papers that I recently read that were written by Gale and Stewart and by Donald Martin. I will upload the series on this site.
Good luck! I hope you make some awesome maths explainers!