Bored by math class, student turns to squiggling

[Video Link] To alleviate the boredom of math class, Vi Hart has taken to experimenting with squiggling. Be sure to check out Vi's other delightful math geek videos. (Via Cynical-C)

Many more posts about Vi Hart on Boing Boing here.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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dagfooyo

I love these videos! Damn, I was doodling fractals when I was bored in math class too. Too bad it was before the age of youtube. She’s more entertaining than I would’ve been anyway.
Christopher Robinson

What a fantastic video! However, (and I don’t mean to draw from the awesomeness) but I gotta call BS on the “mathclass” part…. So the teacher simply missed the tripod? Really?
- dagfooyo
  
  Perhaps she’s got a concealed camera in her hat and is sitting very very still throughout the whole thing.
- https://plus.google.com/110351916304126121516/about Sébastien Pérot
  
  Near the end of the video, at 5:15, you can see she’s sitting in front of a wall. I guess she’s just generally bored of math class while being at home.
http://fat-tire.myopenid.com/ ft

Is she in a fractal class?
http://fat-tire.myopenid.com/ ft

BTW– check out the pbs Nova episode on fractals. It’s awesome and the “preview” is the whole 52 minute show.
http://www.filepile.org/openid/cartoonmonkey Chad Essley

Erm.. why not take all that energy and try to draw something interesting.. like CARTOONS? *shakes head*
nosehat

A really clever math teacher would see the doodling and start teaching fractals (or topology, or …) based off the students’ doodles.
simonbarsinister

Rumor has it Vi has artificial robot forearms.
I challenge anyone to find a picture that proves otherwise.
- JPW
  
  Do the last few seconds of the video count? . . .
  - simonbarsinister
    
    Forearms JPW, not hands, not wrists, not upper arms.
    Just forearms.
    - dragonfrog
      
      Well, there’s http://vihart.com/vi/
bcsizemo

Memes, memes everywhere I say!
Oskar

The great things about these videos is that it was exactly this kind of stuff that got us math nerds interested in math in the first place, but try to explain why space-filling curves are AWESOME! to a normal person and their eyes quickly go blank. But they are awesome, anyone would think so, and Vi does a great job of showing why.

Also, Hilbert rules.
nickelrocket

someone’s never seen “The Dot and The Line”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmSbdvzbOzY
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_YDTN7MUIUZNGTVOYR7ZJSXZAN4 kid_a_ok_com…

Boy, Sharpie sure is aggressively marketing its product these days.
blueelm

Hmmm… I took it to mean she got the idea from her doodles during math class? I used to sit and draw instead of doing my homework, but I just switched my major to art (a terrible mistake).
Spriggan_Prime

I too also turned the creative results of my hours of boredom in math class into a lucrative career in the arts.
http://www.facebook.com/daen.de.leon Daen de Leon

First genuinely useful (well, kinda useful) bit of math-based code I wrote was a fractal screensaver (Sierpinski triangles, hexagons etc, Mandelbrot set …) in FORTH, driving a GKS vector graphics box, around 1986. Also, probably some of the most fun I’ve had programming for money! If anyone works on the Shell Tern oil platforms, could you let me know if it’s still being used?!?
http://profiles.google.com/walter.guyll Walter Guyll

I think she’s done too much Koch.
Tiki Wahine

Hey, that’s a common freehand machine quilting pattern! Second hobby here we come? :P
Grumblefish

Really clever politicians would allow teachers to teach as they chose rather than to a cast-in-stone curriculum…
Logolepsy

She is the daughter of George Hart http://www.georgehart.com/
It makes a lot of sense.
- HenryPootel
  
  I wonder if she has a brother named Emacs?
- bibulb
  
  I’d not twigged to this until yesterday – like you say, it slammed EVERYTHING into focus. (You get brought up around mathematical sculpture, it probably gets in your head…)
http://www.facebook.com/edytzel Eric Dytzel

In the end…. the squiggle becomes math itself. There is no real escape
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5310808 Christopher Locke

I didn’t know this was a “thing”. I’ve been doodling like this for years, and as recently as a few weeks ago. I’m glad to see other people doing it, too. Great video!
scott ghelfi

She’s good at articulating the neurotic thought process of the doodler / fidgety smart kid.
And there is research that shows that doodling during lectures, meetings and so forth, actually increases your retention of the material discussed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7912671.stm
pamaro

Should be subtitled, How to Further Fortify Your Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
- http://repeaterband.com skeletoncityrepeater
  
  That is not OCD, or anything like it. This is someone doing something for fun.
http://profiles.google.com/westcarleton Ray Perkins

Similar to this game: http://www.onemotion.com/flash/snake-game/
Gonçalo Alegria

I’m in love.