Robert writes:
Our friend Pollyhymnia sent me a link to this YouTube video, which made my day. I’ve often doodled in math class, but never this productively:
Patience, Please
This site is under reconstruction and will look strange for a while. We regret the inconvenience.
That is brill. Utterly brill.
Is the narrator Scottish? Something about her vowels reminds me of Amy Pond.
Don’t know where she’s from originally, but she presently lives in Long Island. Her web site is a treasure trove of cool things like mathematical balloon sculptures, experiments with music boxes, mathematical food carving, and musical instruments made of paper. She is also a composer — or as she describes herself, a mathemusician. Among other things, she’s written a septet inspired by Harry Potter (seven movements using seven instruments).
She doesn’t sound like she’s from Long Island (or “Lawn guy land”, if you have the typical LI/NY accent. Mine isn’t that bad, but I still pronounce it like that.) I think it’s her inflection that makes her sound like Amy.
These videos are incredible. I have a sudden urge to spend my entire afternoon watching them.
Hah, that’s really cool. I especially love the Little Prince reference.
Oh, hah, turns out one of my friends actually knows her (or at least they’re facebook friends) – went to the same university and she was (is?) a music major. Maybe I’ll try to see if I can get a group and read through some of her stuff.
That is unbelievably awesome.
And it’s part of a series. There are others!
You can find out more about her at http :// vihart . com/vi/ . We’d definitely hire her to teach at Muse Academy.
This is so cool!
Love love love. Now I have something to draw in Algebra other than ninjas climbing over stairs and sea serpents. (Funnily enough, I learned the knot game in Geometry last year, and spent the rest if the year carefully drawing interlocking circles. I also drew people with flames for hair that did the over-under thing with the outlines of the flames. The second game is how I’ve been wasting computer classes since I was nine and they were trying to teach me how to type.
Actually, now that I’m on that tangent, does anyone else have the same issues with basic computer skills classes that I do? We’re required to take one semester-long computer class at my school, and most everyone takes Computer Skills, because Web Design and Computer Programming are directed towards people who actually want to go into computer programming when they grow up, like my friend Daedalus, who designed all the demonstrations for the science department and has a job working for a Facebook game. So in all the computer classes I’ve taken, I’ve actually known more than the teacher. So why do I have to take the class? I feel like I should be teaching it instead.
Anyway. Brilliant. Doodle time!
YES. This was my issue exactly. Why waste a semester taking “Information Literacy” when I can type at high speed and have been using Office programs since I was little? I did get to learn Office 2007, but I still spent a ridiculous amount of time filling in Excel cells with colors to draw smiley faces and bird nests. I heard that other classes just played games the whole time when the teacher wasn’t looking.
Ah well, none of that takes away from the loveliness of the above video.
I tested out of those programs. Took robotics instead.
My poor math teacher…
These are amaaaazik!!! I went and watched the rest of the videos on her site, and they are all flamablamablous(not sure about spelling…)!!!!
I’m not going to get a thing done tomorrow during school.
Oh. My. Goodness gracious goodness.
My school doesn’t even have classes, and yet I think this’ll be my new obsession. This is absolutely incredible.
So cool! I watched all of the doodle videos on YouTube this morning before I discovered her website this afternoon. Oh, finals? Studying? What?
Is it possible to “like” an entire thread?
The art is nice, but I really like the speeded-up aspect of the video.
Completely amazing.
I feel a sudden urge to go off and draw lots and lots of doodles. Even though it’s way later than I planned on going to bed.
Ah well. What else is Christmas break for?
Oh! That is excellent!
That is so completely amazing! *is in awe*
Holy cake. The more videos I watch, the more amazing this person is. Ye gods.
I liked “How to eat Candy Buttons like a Recreational Mathemusician” quite a bit, too.
OMG I JUST WATCHED THIS AND IT SO ROCKS
We watched this in math class, and it rocks. And graph theory is awesome.
Needless to say, I spent the rest of class drawing snakes and not paying attention to Riemann sums.
By the way, speaking of awesome Youtube videos, today I saw a video of Lin Manuel Miranda (writer of and original Usnavi in In the Heights, which is a brilliant musical) rapping about Alexander Hamilton. So geeky. So good.
I just thought I’d let you know that I’m never paying attention in math ever again.
I’ll be trying some of these in class tomorrow. Although probably not math, since that’s one of my interesting classes.
There’s a great “infinity elephants” one in this series. My entire math notebook is covered with drawings like these.
I drew the most complicated knot ever today in Spanish. It was actually really pretty. I drew it in four different colors.
Wow! The time lapse drawings give the video an incredibly fast-paced feel. Trying to keep up with all her references to math and jokes about other things required my full attention…this video is like my brain getting bombarded with 5 minutes of awesome.
I never drew anything like this…my doodles were always caricatures of the teachers I had. I’ll have to try some of these squiggle games sometime.
Wow. All of ViHart’s stuff is so awesome! The playing of burning paper instruments needs to be, like, an official thing.
She also just posted another math doodling video. It’s not quite as awesome as this one though.
Cool! Normally I have trouble with this kind of thing (especially if the instructor is talking quickly). I start out fine, then, when I’m a third of the way through, I find that I made a mistake somewhere (shading in something I shouldn’t have, for instance) and I start all over. But this time was different! I did it! Pollyhymnia is awesome!