Ben Syversen

Video documentaries featuring stories from the history of math and science.

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

In the early 9th century, Baghdad was arguably the cultural and scientific center of the world.

Out of this time and place came a book of al-jabr, by al-Khwārazmī, which begins the chain of transmission that leads to the algebra that we know.

My video:

https://t.co/1mhqyAUeZM

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@jcrabtree @mpershan @LongFormMath From what I can tell this is basically correct (tho it's clear in Whetstone that he's teaching numbers not magnitudes). Since Recorde is translating German cossic algebra, which is basically rhetorical with abbreviations, a change towards a more symbolic meaning would come later

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@mpershan @LongFormMath Ah cool.Will look that up. I’ve been reading some Jens Høyrup that goes in depth on the history which includes, at times, symbolic thinking expressed rhetorically and rhetorical thinking expressed with symbols (abbreviations really). V interesting but hard to explain succinctly!

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@abhijeetdw @mpershan Thank you!

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@mpershan While I actually do have a video related to this topic (how Aristarchus calculated the relative sizes of the sun moon and earth), this is the video I'd recommend for anybody wanting to understand the overall scale of the solar system: https://t.co/W0b98HCaep

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@mpershan Actual humans who make these kinds of videos (like me) definitely have nothing to worry about when compared to this.

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@FaradayYouTube So I think my question, then, is should I switch to a packaging (title in particular) that is more specific for my target audience even if it decisively loses in an A/B test, given that I think the video's currently going to the wrong audience?

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@FaradayYouTube ...which have been giving very definitive results (60/40, even 70/30), but don't seem to be changing the video's fundamental performance. Usually the *most* target-aligned packages (the ones that directly mention "algebra") do worse in testing though.

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@FaradayYouTube ...but AVD from suggested views is good/typical for my channel and this video's length. So I've tried to de-emphasize the Arabic aspect of the video and emphasize the math history aspect of the video. But I'm not sure how much to trust the A/B tests...

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@FaradayYouTube Thanks. To be more specific, my video is a 40-minute documentary about the origins of algebra (https://t.co/1mhqyAUeZM), but because it centers on an Islamic scholar it's been going to Arabic speaking viewers who seem to be clicking away far sooner than my usual audience.

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@mpershan Glad you’re enjoying it!

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@Daniel_Batal Gotta love that the reference guide to “quickly understand” all the new features is 150 pages long! 🤣

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@Almost_Sure Haha that’s true

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

Here's a grey area of AI copying: somebody made an AI gen video which copies, beat for beat, the story of one of my videos even though the words and visuals are different.

Is this an acceptable practice w/in YT or is it infringement of some sort?

@robertoblake @dabidoYT

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@dabidoYT Yeah. It doesn't exactly bother me -- the copied video is so bad that I can't consider it to be any kind of competition.

Faceless Youtube Automation Bros (tm) can't actually compete with real creators. At least not in this niche...

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@robertoblake @dabidoYT That's what I was thinking. I hesitate to call it "plagiarism," even though they clearly just fed my script into an AI and had it rewrite the thing with different words.

But yes, reusing stories is not new. I liked 8 Mile, but it was better when it was called Purple Rain...

[Ben Syversen @BenSyversen]

@second_bassoon A rising tide lifts all boats!