Jeffrey Biles

Rebuilding the undergraduate science curriculum.

CTO/cofounder @physicsgraph

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

Raising the ceiling for everyone

If you have a passing interest in physics, you should be able to explore that - even if you're "not a science person"

If you have a serious interest in physics, you should be able to finish the undergraduate curriculum in a year

[Chris @sutherlandphys]

we will increase the scores of those taking the ap physics test

but more importantly

we will be raising the number of students taking the ap physics test in the first place

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@thomasrogers03 I have great news for you

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

A NEW WAY TO PRIORITIZE YOUR LEARNING

When we first started, we did the standard: we put everyone through unit 1, then unit 2, then unit 3, etc. Many students didn’t like this because this meant very little variety in what they were learning, and it also isn’t optimal for knowledge retention.

Then we added Interleaving, which would prioritize topics in a breadth-first-search type way. This worked fantastic when our knowledge graphs were relatively small.

However, as our knowledge graphs grew, our interleaving algorithm started working less well. Students were getting served new lessons from all over the knowledge graph, in tons of different units, and it led to a less coherent experience.

Then we added Focus Mode, which let you choose a target that you were aiming at, and only served you topics within the prerequisites chain. This was great, but many students don’t know about it, and also once you completed your goal it sent you right back to interleaving.

Now we’ve added a nice middle ground, which provides the benefits of interleaving without the overwhelm that our initial implementation led to.

LEARNING THREADS

By default, you will be served lessons from the first 3 units of your course (or 2 from each course if you’re enrolled in multiple courses). When you finish a unit, that learning thread will switch over to the next available unit. This will work great for most students.

If you want to customize the order you tackle content in, you can choose 1-3 threads per course. Learning threads can be units, or they can be aiming towards a specific topic. When you finish one, you’ll be given a chance to choose a new learning thread to replace it.

With this change, the default experience should now be better - and power users will also have a greater degree of control over their experience.

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@rjk96159371 Ah, we had several complaints about the 2d vector drawing problems a couple weeks back, and we've since updated our drawing system so it's easier to use and grades more accurately.

How recently was your issue?

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

Jev opens up entirely new question types

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

🧪🧪NEW CHEMISTRY UNIT🧪🧪

Learn about THERMOCHEMISTRY

* All 4 laws of Thermodynamics
* Track energy transferred as heat and work
* Calculate heat using specific heat capacity and calorimetry
* Interpret thermochemical equations
* And so much more!

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

Could you share more about the llm evaluation error you ran into, or report the issue within the app?

In general we try to balance consistency, effectiveness, and opportunity for frustration. This new experimental question type should have a lot less frustration than current llm questions

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@adntaha_ai That's the magic of it, for sure

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

Showing up soon on https://t.co/74iSouDq2W

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@odemkur Thank you 🙏

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@Besciai Thank you 🙏

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@neejkapoor Direct Jev

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@Jeyffre Yep, it would be slow, clunky, and economically infeasible with traditional models - need fast, almost-free feedback.

[Mustafa. @oprydai]

physics gives you read access to the universe, engineering gives you write access

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

🥳 🥳 🥳

[EspressoCoder @espressocoder]

Woohoo, new "Unit complete" dialog @physicsgraph nice to have an acknowledgement of a small achievement along the way. 🥳

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

@thekevinmcp Thanks!

[Phil @phillydean22]

.@physicsgraph is going to change the world. I would've killed for a site like this in my formative years.

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

We also completely rewrote the drawing interface. I.... forgot about that.

So there's probably some other improvements still not listed

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

Since this post:

* New High School Chemistry unit
* 2 new Conceptual Physics units
* Step-by-step FRQs, with partial-credit/retries
* “Explain my error” button
* Integrated Jev into internal processes
* Tons of smaller fixes, sanded edges, and small content improvements

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

Since this post:

* New High School Chemistry unit
* 2 new Conceptual Physics units
* Step-by-step FRQs, with partial-credit/retries
* “Explain my error” button
* Integrated Jev into internal processes
* Tons of smaller fixes, sanded edges, and small content improvements

[Jeffrey Biles @JeffreyBiles]

https://t.co/27bsxMkgEt

[Chris @sutherlandphys]

and the weekly (this is just Monday because it refreshes every Sunday!)

270 focused minutes of work in a day is good stuff...but beatable

[Chris @sutherlandphys]

In case you guys didn't know PhysicsGraph is indeed cooking shipping like crazy and having record usage every week

Feel like I don't say that enough on here