A. Victoria Mixon, Editor
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  • Today’s story is even stranger than the one about how gardening is like writing or how dancing makes the Internet humane or even me spattering glue all over myself.

    But it is utterly brilliant, and I never get over watching this woman doodle:

    DOODLING IN MATH

    This is someone named Vi Hart, whom I have never met but I love. She is a something called a mathemusician at Khan University (I think she, like Shakespeare, makes her own words up) and the only person I follow on Twitter who is not all about writing.

    She explains the most amazing, complex mathematical concepts by doodling apparently-aimlessly all over the pages of her notebooks while she rambles on about how much she dislikes math class and is not listening to the teacher.

    She makes all kinds of doodle videos about math, and I love every single one of them.

    This particular video I’m linking to today is about Fibonacci Numbers and Lucas Numbers (I don’t even know what those are) and how a plant decides where to grow its leaves and why they don’t all use the same system, much less grow them randomly. She shows you the ends of pine cones so you can see the growth patterns, and she slices up a plant stem so she can create a little model out of torn pieces of paper in order to draw her own pattern of leaves.

    It’s all very casual and entertaining. One of the plants she uses she refers to as a “whatever-this-is.”

    In fact, very early on the plants are suddenly wearing googley-eyes and looking at you, and then a snapdragon starts talking to the camera. (Remember being a kid and making snapdragons talk?) She uses googley-eyes to show how scientists have studied repulsion, and she doodles comments as she talks, so the plants demonstrating these mathematical principles are saying, “Hi! I’m a plant!” and the sprouting doodled leaves say, “Go away,” to each other.

    It’s all just incredibly wonderful and hilarious and educational.

    And at the end it turns out the whole point of her story is that she’s just demonstrated the growth patterns of plants are not only possible. . .they are inevitable.

    She says, “That’s why I love math. Because it shows how the patterns of life are inevitable.”

    Which is, coincidentally, exactly why I love fiction.

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    10 Comments

10 Responses to “The Strangest-Ever Metaphor for Inevitability in Fiction”

  1. Once I get on a computer that allows me to hear videos, I’ll check her out! I need to learn a little more about math anyways, and get myself to do the summer math homework I pushed into the back of my mind.

  2. I discovered her videos a year or so ago and love them all. Genius. Fascinating, entertaining, and informative. They’re like perfection.

  3. She’s a doodling savant. Love it!

  4. Jeffrey Russell said on

    I haven’t watched them all. Yet, anyway. But boy are the ones I have seen enjoyable. I am taking for granted the narrator and the doodler are one in the same. I hope so, anyway, because the voice and the manner of speaking are so in tune with the doodles, and the ideas, and the humor!

  5. Victoria said on

    We use Vi Hart’s videos to teach our homeschooler math. Now he understands all the big concepts as if they were instinctual. . .plus he knows how to make snapdragons talk to the camera.

  6. Victoria said on

    Oh, my god, Deb, aren’t they amazing? We’ve been watching them for awhile, but when I heard her say, “Math proves the inevitable,” I thought, .Fiction too! That’s exactly what fiction does.

  7. Victoria said on

    I know. Now I want her to come to my house and doodle all over my manuscripts.

  8. Victoria said on

    I haven’t seen them all either. Nearly infinite fun to look forward to. . .

    Yes, the narrator and doodler are both Vi. She is so hilarious—even our son, who rebels against his math lessons, loves her.

  9. Thank you for introducing me Vi Hart! Best discovery in a long time! I’ve been watching them for 30 minutes now and my kids are drawn like magnets. Brilliant, fun, funny. And I don’t even like math.

  10. Victoria said on

    My son is mesmerized by her too, Brian. And he fights us on math every chance he gets.



Writer's Digest: 2013 Best Writing Websites (2013)

Authors


MILLLICENT G. DILLON, the world's expert on authors Jane and Paul Bowles, has won five O. Henry Awards and been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner. I worked with Dillon on her memoir, The Absolute Elsewhere, in which she describes in luminous prose her private meeting with Albert Einstein to discuss the ethics of the atomic bomb.


BHAICHAND PATEL, retired after an illustrious career with the United Nations, is now a journalist based out of New Dehli and Bombay, an expert on Bollywood, and author of three non-fiction books published by Penguin. I edited Patel’s debut novel, Mothers, Lovers, and Other Strangers, published by PanMacmillan.


LUCIA ORTH is the author of the debut novel, Baby Jesus Pawn Shop, which received critical acclaim from Publisher’s Weekly, NPR, Booklist, Library Journal and Small Press Reviews. I have edited a number of essays and articles for Orth.


SCOTT WARRENDER is a professional musician and Annie Award-nominated lyricist specializing in musical theater. I work with Warrender regularly on his short stories and debut novel, Putaway.


STUART WAKEFIELD is the #1 Kindle Best Selling author of Body of Water, the first novel in his Orcadian Trilogy. Body of Water was 1 of 10 books long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize. I edited his second novel, Memory of Water and look forward to editing the final novel of his Orcadian Trilogy, Spirit of Water.


ANIA VESENNY is a recipient of the Evelyn Sullivan Gilbertson Award for Emerging Artist in Literature and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I edited Vesenny's debut novel, Swearing in Russian at the Northern Lights.


TERISA GREEN is widely considered the foremost American authority on tattooing through her tattoo books published by Simon & Schuster, which have sold over 45,000 copies. Under the name M. TERRY GREEN, she writes her techno-shaman sci-fi/fantasy series. I am working with her to develop a new speculative fiction series.


CHRIS RYAN drew acclaim from the New Yorker for the hook to his novel Heliophobia. He is the author of poetry collection The Bible of Animal Feet from Farfalla Press. I edited Ryan’s debut novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him to develop Heliophobia and his work-in-progress Pogue.


JUDY LEE DUNN is an award-winning marketing blogger. I am working with her to develop and edit her memoir of reconciling her liberal activism with her emotional difficulty accepting the lesbianism of her beloved daughter, Tonight Show comedienne Kellye Rowland.


In addition, I work with dozens of aspiring writers in their apprenticeship to this literary art and craft.