Chris Higgins
The Late Movies: Doodling in Math Class
by Chris Higgins - September 21, 2011 - 10:00 PM

The Late Movies

So let’s say you’re Vi Hart and you’re doodling in math class, and you decide to dig into the math behind your doodles. You make some videos showing and explaining these doodles and talking really fast, and hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube enjoy them — and perhaps learn a little something about math from them too. Won’t you doodle with Vi now?

This is delightfully nerdy. Especially when she gets into the multi-pointed stars.

Binary Trees

“Your teacher seems to think that drawing and labeling axes is the very essence of mathematics. But you’re bored, and can’t help but wonder: why?”

Stars

“Trouble is, your teacher is too busy trying to convince you that factoring is a useful skill for the average person to know, with real-world applications….”

Snakes + Graphs

“This doodle also works for snakes on a plane.”

Infinity Elephants

“The singular of ‘sheep’ should be ‘shoop.’”

Squiggle Inception

“Good squiggles really fill up the page.”

More Doodling

See Vi Hart’s Math Doodling page for more. Anybody else a math class doodler?

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Comments (5)

  1. Squiggles! I’m all over that. I did these awesome patterns, including squiggles, to fill up the left margin of my notebooks during class. And not just math class. It wasn’t a case of being bored; it was a bona-fide learning aid. I have ADD; it seems to keep enough of my mind occupied that it doesn’t get fidgety and lets the rest of my mind really pay excellent attention to the lecture. What’s more, whatever I was doodling ends up with some of the lecture inevitably linked to it in my mind. In college, I progressed to knitting in class, and it had the same effect. (I had to make sure the profs were okay with it, though, and made a point of asking questions during lectures to make sure they knew I was paying close attention.)

    posted by Calli Arcale on 9-21-2011 at 11:13 pm

  2. That is one sexy voice. Anybody know who that is?

    posted by Rough on 9-21-2011 at 11:18 pm

  3. @Rough – that’s mathemusician Vi Hart! http://vihart.com/

    posted by Chris Higgins on 9-22-2011 at 12:04 am

  4. I draw Dr.Zoidberg every day in my Algebra 2 class. I seem to be getting better as the class gets even more boring.

    posted by Forest Gamble on 9-22-2011 at 6:28 am

  5. I have ADHD, but I’ve mellowed out. In school, I wouldn’t have been able to pay attention at all if I didn’t doodle. I have almost all my old notebooks, and there isn’t one page of notes that goes doodle-less. I guess you could say that I always knew cartooning was going to be my career.

    posted by Thatoneguy on 9-23-2011 at 4:40 am

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