[ftio]

This is an absolutely phenomenal 'explorable explanation'. It methodically layers concepts to foster understanding, deploys interactivity to build intuition, and on top of all that provides crisp, clear narrative on top of all of the amazing visualizations.

[jakub_g]

If you enjoyed the article, check out others by the same author which are done in a similar way. For example https://ciechanow.ski/color-spaces/ and https://ciechanow.ski/earth-and-sun/

[RickS]

The interactivity also reminded me of this post from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/

[lobo_tuerto]

Or have a look at all his interesting articles here: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/

[Bendingo]

Excellent - thx !

[philshem]

We are all sitting here in collective awe, and the JS source contains this header:

> /* Dear explorer, this code works, but is by no means of high quality. Once a post is written I don't go back to the source code again and the formatting, robustness, DRYness and abstraction choices reflect that. */

https://ciechanow.ski/js/gears.js

[softawre]

What is your point? Are you saying that it's bad he didn't tidy up the source?

[war1025]

I think potentially pointing out the humility of the author. But unsure.

[Cthulhu_]

I wish I had sites or visualizations like this when I had to do maths, I mean for example I've had to use sin/cos/tan in all kinds of calculations without ever being explained what they actually are, and the formulas without being explained what they're good for.

[joshdance]

Is there a widely known name for these types of 'explorable explanations'?

[lwb]

Explorable Explanations is the term AFAIK. Nicky Case has a whole page of resources on the topic: https://explorabl.es/

[greggman3]

Drives me crazy that if I suggest diagrams like this might be useful on wikipedia or documentation I mostly get downvoted into oblivion.

[imtringued]

I'm sure a lot of users on HN are angry that this site requires JavaScript and demand it to be accessible on a text based browser.

[anderspitman]

Haha you might enjoy this: https://anderspitman.net/17/#curlable

And of course the logical next step: https://anderspitman.net/19/#netcatable

[pier25]

Yeah this is amazing. Interactive learning can be super powerful for a number of topics.