Thank you for this interview. I enjoy Derek Muller's videos and appreciate his techniques. This video gave me even more appreciation for why he does what he does.
As a linguist, it's interesting to hear his accent fluctuate more and more as the Australian interviewer gives him questions - bringing out his childhood Australian influence.
Of non-medical PHDs, his thesis is number 102 in how influential it has been to shaping his life after the degree. I'm really glad someone has taken such a thorough look into the effectiveness of Mr. Rogers vs. Khan
we have to get rid of the idea that someone who doesn´t know the answer is dumb. I Think this comes from us grading students all their live. instead of trying to grade them teachers should try to teach. Grades dont push a student as much as when you convey fascination for your subject to them
This man right here has truly been enlightening. I have seen that by using his method I can teach even myself topics that I, as a student, may have wrongly thought I knew.
Derek's videos help viewers to feel like they are part of the experience. As such, his videos are more inclined to be watched all the way. In some cases, his content is understood enough that even I learn stuff. :D
Wow, he really knows what he's talking about. I didn't know he had a PhD on what basically is "How to make a good science video." Also, boy can he sing!
Your selling yourself short ***** People like this love to educate and curiosity is one of the best conversation starters on the planet. You may surprise yourself.
lol...when watching any of bradys videos, i feel that when they (the guest) look at the camera for a majority of the time...it makes me feel that brady is behind it holding it awkwardly for hours on end. i dunno...i just get a hilarious mental image of how contorted brady would be 'imagined' to be. lol. dont get me wrong, i love his videos and his camera techniques.
You have to understand that a lot of people are not educated and half of them that are, do not understand it! But you have great ideas and charisma keep up what you're doing I'm not knocking it! I just stumbled upon the video because my name is Derek too.
Yes and no. Brady's videos usually aren't quite as broadly topically conceptual in the same way; they're often focused on a particular small idea or bit of information and then pull it apart in great detail. For that sort of video there's fewer misconceptions to overcome and when going into great detail on a topic you can overcome what few there are. Derek is covering more broad topics without as much detail, and that's where it becomes important to hang a lantern on people's misconceptions.
Essentially keep things simple, but not to simple. I Like Derek's approach to his videos, please keep it up. All these awesome science vids motivated me to go back to school and take science again. So congrats it worked at least once.
In computer programming there's entire FAQ books written on 'gotchas' which basically catches the wrong assumptions or wrong expectations of intermediate programmers and examines why exactly they mismatch with reality of programming. Only when you understand the 'why' (under the hood internals) do you get a mental model that more closely matches with the real system rather than an abstract mental model based on assumptions and expectations.
Experienced teacher now. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink", if its not already thirsty, was an old way of looking at teaching and learning, but my Grazier Father in Law said that if you didn't lock up a herd of new cattle away from water for three days before you let them out, they would all set out for the country in which they were born and raised. Obviously the Education system is designed to cause a similar desperate thirst/hunger for something really valuable to learn, once they get out in the real world..(?)
He doesn't make people look stupid. All he does is ask questions. If anybody does look stupid (I don't think they do), it's because of the answer they give.
Brady Haran ,surprisingly, has a tone of condescension , which is what I feel. Derek is doing a REALLY GOOD JOB, Infact he has made, unwittingly so , a very important contirbution to scientific learning and pedagogy.
No Brady, it's not sanitisation, it's the scientific method. A video about the measurement of the physical world can be measured, to some degree, to evaluate its effectiveness. Art is assessed and critiqued regularly. At least this process produces objective outcomes.
I would conclude that you know more than his target audience. He stated that more knowledgeable people won't learn as much and it will be more of a review.
Nice interview :) I'd like to see a video collaboratively made by Derek Muller and Sal Khan... I think, the strength behind Khanacademy videos (and this is still a real work in progress) is that you have a million videos about the same topic over and over with slightly different approaches and you also get automatically generated exercises along them. The exercise is probably more important to improve the conception given by the video.
There are often certain low level of significance involved in RU-vid comments. Derek has taken the comments a bit too seriously. However this was a great interview, he provided very smart answers to this topic!
look people in the street are not the same as people searching for science videos on the internet, people from the street that you bump into have significantly less chance of having any knowledge about things you ask them.
Of course- if he went to someone in the street and asked about laplace transforms he'd just get funny looks. People don't know what a laplace transform is so there are no common misconceptions. The point is that when trying to lead people to a full understanding of a concept you need to start with where they are- in the case of laplace that would generally be a blank canvass, for Newton's laws people often "know" them incorrectly. Different styles of video for different topics and audiences.
inertia, people understand the concept when you explain to them what it is, many people may not know a name given to a certain phenomenon, however i believe the importance is understanding the concept not the name someones given it.
+Himaya Jayasinghe the INCH has been defined as exactly 25.4 millimeters (as of July 1959). Which makes a meter equal to 3.28 feet OR a foot equal to 0.305 meters. Remember that neither unit (or entire system of measures) is related to or derived from the other so any equivalent units in either system will most likely be some decimal fraction of each other.
As a kid I always assumed everyone did know how everything worked. Guess that's why I becoming a physicist now. I can't stand watching any of his videos, people always ignore common sense staring them right in the face.
i think people dont learn from expository videos because they dont have value to them, so they brains save resources and not invest in the rewiring needed, but if they see people looking stupid for not knowing physics, then they have a social incentive to spend the mental resources needed to remember/understand, and people watching a video with a specific purpose do learn because they already have they own incentive. (sorry for the bad english lol)
isnt he basically bashing brady's way of teaching people? all of brady's videos are 'here are the facts, clear and concise', which derek says here is a bad way of teaching interesting
LOL . It's not his *goal* to make people look dumb. He does not feel people are dumb. But still it seems an inevitability. As long as you have something to learn you will look dumb when confronted with this 'new stuff'.
It sucks to see so veritasium talk about getting a phd as if it is a small phase ... while I'm here struggling with first year of undergrad math. Sigh.
Brady made quite a clever analogy when he mentioned the realtionship to marketing. That's because ofthe nature of communication. There is no one effective way to communicate because any attempt at information transfer must consider the pre-conceptions, pre-dispositions, judgements and all the rest of things that will get in the way of the information. Try walking up to a black man and trying to express that ou understand how difficult it must be to be black. Fuck me in a rational world it's absolutely true. Statistically, slavery had made it so difficult for the black race to get up, we basically screwed them over. Then education and opportunities and all the rest get in the way. But your naive approach at being nice will probably earn you a punch in the face. Because you did not consider his attitude towards the matter at hand.
Derek grew up in Canada, if I recall, so he sounds pretty much like someone from southern Canada or the northern USA. His family is originally from Australia, though, and I think he lives there now.
Not really since Brady asks .... questions; i was going to say 'dumb' questions but that wouldnt be fair- if Brady says 'isnt that like so and so' and a scientist says 'no, not at all, because of such and such' thats at least approaching the kind of 'teaching the misconceptions approach Derek is talking about. At least i think.
From the looks of it he could just shave off his beard and start a boy band!! Banned Science?!! ;-) Seems like he grew a beard to be perceived as a "serious" physics guy!!
When demonstrating Earth and Moon distance ... Instead of a Basketball and a Tennis ball, why not a Soccer ball and a Softball ... still not accurate but closer to the actual size ratio which might not make people look so dumb ... JMHO Try it again and see if you get the same results
I'm not inclined to agree with you on both counts, as I deem science to be up there with the more important things in life, but I can agree to disagree.
The Kaiser Actually we highly overrate the importance of our lives. But we are condemned to be like that, even if our lifes are really not that significant from an objective perspective, it is all have, as far as we can say for sure. So we have to carry this burden of being forever in such paradoxical situation.
