Ok, let's do this. What are good YouTube channels that you watched (or still watch) because they're fun to watch, but you also ended up learning from them?
Only recommendations from people born this century are allowed
Include a link to the YouTube channel, what it's about, and why you liked it. And tag others who could add to the list. Younger kids deserve better recommendations than the ones from the previous century.
YouTube for youngsters: Epic Rap Battles of History. This did more for @ArshKabra's history knowledge than ICSE History ever did.
I grew up reading Ya Perelman's books but never could get the kids interested in reading them. ASAP Science came to the rescue.
Is mechanics your thing? I feel jealous when I see all the animations and slow-motion videos explaining mechanics. So much easier to learn, and you can focus on higher level things.
Because @anujdeshpande whined about the adults being excluded, I'm allowing recommendations from older people. All such recommendations will be tagged #olderpeople
Which means all recommendations *not* tagged #olderpeople are from verified 21st century sources.
As I said just a few weeks ago, all science and maths should be taught using @3blue1brown style animations. And the recommendations in this thread are a step in that direction.
#oldpeople recommendation: but a channel on space tech sounds interesting. And another vote for @veritasium which also showed up in @ArshKabra's recommendations.
If you watched any YouTube videos because of recommendations from this thread, please let me know. Closing the feedback loop is important in tracking quality.
My DMs are open.
#oldpeople recommendations: CGP Grey's topics are all over the place, but all of them sound interesting.
Why am I separating the people born before 2000 from the ones after? The older people merely adopted the internet. The younger ones were born in it. Formed by it.
Hmmm... I wonder how many kids are interested in the art of making and writing movies. Second recommendation in this category, this time from #oldpeople
Nerdwriter and Wendover Productions upgraded to a full recommendation. And "Half as Interesting" makes a debut. Explainers for all kinds of stuff, including some geopolitics and current events.
Yet another vote for @veritasium
It appears that Veritasium, The Crash Course, and Wendover Productions are at the top with a large number of recommendations.
More votes for Crash Course, Kurzgesagt, Geo History, Half as Interesting. And new entries: Real Life Lore, Knowlegia, VSauce. All from a verified kid.
Three #oldpeople recommendations by @iamsarnaik here: The Science Asylum, Mind Your Decisions (fun math problems), and Zach Star (advanced sciency topics)
Who are Indians descended from? Aryans from Europe? Dravidians who've been "here" forever? The Indus valley civilization?
A controversial question for 150+ years, but now we have DNA evidence that answers these questions with a high degree of certainty.
🧵
The controversy originated with the (now discredited) "Aryan Invasion Theory" which began as a respectable theory of how Indian, European, and Persian languages all have a common ancestry: but was quickly adopted by racist white Europeans
It started in late 17xx when William Jones, a linguistic scholar, was appointed a judge of the Bengal Supreme Court. He came to India and noticed striking the similarities between Sanskrit, Persian, Gothic, Greek, Latin.
Devanagari is an extremely elegant script. But this was never explained to us in school.
A thread on the awesomeness that is devanagari.
Let's start with the things that my teachers did *not* teach me in school:
Why do both श and ष exist? (The difference in pronunciation was never explained) Why do ङ and ञ exist?
What is ऋ? Is it pronounced “ri” or “ru”, and in any case, why does it even exist if री and रु exist?
Much later in life, when I understood the meaning of the rows and columns in Devanagari, everything fell into place and I saw the beauty and elegance of it all.
Ever wondered why "sin" (of trigonometry) is called "sin"? Today, I decided to find out, and the history is fascinating. It comes from the Sanskrit word for bowstring which somehow got translated to the Latin word for the "pallu" of a toga.
Follow me down this rabbit hole 🧵
Let's start with this wonderful image I received from a friend on WhatsApp (source unknown). Here, you can clearly see why "tan" is called "tan". But what about "sin"?
If you think of the solid yellow arc as a bow, then the solid blue line (sine) is the bowstring 🧵
jīvá (जीवा) the Sanskrit word for bowstring is the name given to sin by Aryabhata the inventor¹ of the sine and cosine functions.
How do you get from there to a toga? A series of interesting accidents
Good HBR article (by @TylerCowen et al) on reducing wastage and useless bureaucratic overhead from your hiring process.
Quick overview: /1
Do not have more than 4 or 5 "rounds" of interviews/interactions with a candidate. A study (at Google) showed that the first 4 gave 86% of the value. After that, the value diminished rapidly. /2
For each role, have one person who is the primary decision-maker. Unnecessary democracy and consensus results in worse hires.
A committee will hire a camel when a horse is required. /3