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Learn time series with a story illustrated by Stable Diffusion (tigyog.app)

100 points by jamesfisher ↗ HN
We just published this tutorial about ARMA(p,q) models for modeling time series, and how to fit them using Python. But while it’s a tutorial, it has a few twists. First, it’s interactive: you’ll learn by solving problems and making choices. Second, it’s a story: you play a character in a plot that gives you real-life problems to solve. And third, it’s illustrated: we spent many hours hacking with Stable Diffusion, GIMP, and matplotlib.

This is chapter 3 in our interactive course, Everyday Data Science. [1] The first half of the chapter is free. You can get the whole course forever for $29. These chapters are a lot of effort to produce, so please let us know what you think :-)

- Andrew Carr [2] and Jim Fisher [3]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118530 [2]: https://twitter.com/andrew_n_carr [3]: https://jameshfisher.com/

24 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 56.3 ms ] thread
sophie_l
Nice storytelling, and I love the images!
mikejulietbravo
This is really cool! We'd love to help you turn this into a Lightning App if you'd be interested
mikejulietbravo
Lightning App = Hosted version of this with a full UI attached.
redhal
I find it a little shady to wait for people to get to half the course before requiring to buy it.
zorgmonkey
It is effectively a free trial of the course, which seems fine as long as it is disclosed upfront that the rest of the content is paid.

Edit: after actually using the site I see your point, the only indicator is the small text "free preview" which I probably wouldn't have noticed without first having read the Show HN post.

jamesfisher
Hi! Do you think there's any way we can make it clearer what's going on? I put "free preview" at the top, but perhaps it can be easily missed.
merlincorey
I also didn't notice the "Free Preview" on the progress bar until reading about it in this thread.

As distasteful as it may be, an actual heading or otherwise strongly formatted text note near the top should suffice for most people.

StrictDabbler
It looks like you cut the preview from 46% of this chapter to just 22% of the chapter... I went back to look for a quote from about 41% of the way through to explain to another commenter why the style is so effective and ran into the paywall earlier than I had my first time through. Just FYI, the content before 22% isn't strong enough to sell the preview. It has to get to the questions where you're asking for intuitive guesses on the real mathematical expressions to make it clear how valuable this is.

Honestly, you should just be giving away this whole chapter. If you did then I could forward it to colleagues, let them learn this one concept and suggest they get the rest of the info.

As it is I really can't do that. It'd be like giving a friend a flyer that was shoved under my door.

jamesfisher
Hey, thanks for the feedback (and your kind words!). I've moved the paywall back to (roughly) where it was. It's a challenge to find the right balance between showing off the content, but also leaving enough to encourage people to buy the course! All ideas appreciated for tweaks and alternative payment models :)
sliken
Indeed, especially at an eye popping $30 an hour or so for content.
jamesfisher
Hi, it's actually $29 for the entire course, of which this post is just one chapter. Was there some content that suggested it was $29 for just this chapter? I need to fix that if so!
sliken
Ah, that's a surprise. It went from 0 to 46% then it popped a "buy me" dialog, I had assumed it was $29 the 47-100%. I only took 10-20 minutes and seemed pretty pricey for another 10-20 minutes. Maybe add a "$29 for this course/N chapters" or "$29 for a course and show the syllabus".
jamesfisher
Thanks for the reply! I can see now that it's not super clear. I might assume the same thing at first sight. I'll see what I can do to clarify it.
StrictDabbler
I find myself irritated by how effective this method of instruction is.

I'm not sure which is more annoying:

-going through years of education in pure mathematics without this kind of tutorial

-not having come up with this method myself, when it's so close to the dumbed-down edutainment software of the 90's

Every university course should start with at least a day of instruction written in this style.

[kicks dirt]

garren
A product that takes a similar approach is: “A Curious Moon” @ BigMachine [0]

It’s not an intro to time series or data analysis, but it’s a great intro to Postgres, db administration, and etl that follows a fun and compelling storyline. The presentation is different, but the “edutainment” style is similar.

[0] https://bigmachine.io/products/a-curious-moon/

werzum
I love this type of education - do you know where I can find more content like that? I really have trouble finding stuff like this just by Googling; rather, I seem to stumble over it from time to time.
sliken
Heh, indeed, the similarly effective method if gamification. Even relatively "dry" things like algebra can be gamified, Dragonbox is a good example. From my limited experience (1 kid), it works really well.
eutectic
Not to be rude, but I found it a bit infantilizing. I would rather just have the information.
StrictDabbler
That's fair in a sense but it also looks like they moved the preview paywall much earlier in the chapter, 22% instead of 46%.

Towards the middle of the chapter they start asking intuitive questions about how coefficients in the power-series map to the real-life concepts they've been discussing "childishly" up until then.

It's a major turning point and I wonder if you just didn't get the opportunity to see that shift. It's infantilizing right up until it isn't.

iandanforth
How did you get Stable Diffusion to write 'congo.com' on multiple boxes correctly? I have to assume there was gimp editing and then blending?
jamesfisher
Yeah, I used the perspective tool in GIMP for that. That was the main bit of "editing in post".

I was saying earlier, it would be cool if there was an ML tool for adding/modifying text in images. Similar to how there are additional tools for fixing faces, super resolution, and so on.

fudged71
Very cool. Are these interactive stories created with Twine?
jamesfisher
Thanks! It's actually created with TigYog [1], a platform I'm building to let people write these kinds of interactive stories/lessons. It's somewhat influenced by things like Twine, but:

* It emphasizes "mostly-linear narrative" rather than "exploring rooms in an open world" * It emphasizes using interactive fiction for education (e.g. features for "correct answer") * It emphasizes writing over programming (e.g., no explicit variables) * It has a WYSIWYG editor that feels kinda like blogging

Let me know how it goes if you try it out!

[1]: https://tigyog.app/

Gatsky
Perhaps we’re finally getting a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.