Interactive Mind Map for learning(github.com)
github.com
Interactive Mind Map for learning
https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map
61 comments
Im using mind maps since 13 years a lot and i think they're great for organizing information, learning things or keeping track of things, just needs 2 be done right.
I have some of them on big sheets of paper hang up to my walls (stuff im learning atm), some using software (ie budget
or project planning), lots on b5 paper blocks and loads on a4... works well for me. as well I use it a lot when planning thinking about new/current software.
Mind maps are great for recalling terminology hierarchies (for the lack of better word). I have not used them much in my engineering studies but I have taken some courses in history and philosophy where I often had to recall lots of terminology related to, for example, certain time periods or philosophical theories. The spatial aspect of a mind map really helps me. Just drawing the map is usually enough for me to remember everything that's in it for a few days. I simply close my eyes and picture the map in my head.
This, however, requires that I draw the map myself by hand. Drawing it by hand forces me to carefully look at every pixel of the map. Adding some fancy fonts and pictures like in your example can help in the sense that you spend more time looking at the pixels.
This, however, requires that I draw the map myself by hand. Drawing it by hand forces me to carefully look at every pixel of the map. Adding some fancy fonts and pictures like in your example can help in the sense that you spend more time looking at the pixels.
requires that I draw the map myself by hand
And this is the secret. It doesn't much matter if you use tables or bullet lists or mind maps or whatever makes sense to you for the particular domain, it's the fact that you are organizing the info in your own brain that matters.
From a teacher-student perspective, mind maps seem to work best if the teacher presents the student with a partially-filled mind map and lets the students fill it in.
And this is the secret. It doesn't much matter if you use tables or bullet lists or mind maps or whatever makes sense to you for the particular domain, it's the fact that you are organizing the info in your own brain that matters.
From a teacher-student perspective, mind maps seem to work best if the teacher presents the student with a partially-filled mind map and lets the students fill it in.
I agree with your opinion referring to Mind Maps as is. However, I do think there's a non-linear representation schema becoming more available accordingly with VR growth.
Given how rapidly x+y values for mind-maps increase alongside content complexity for any one 'abstraction level'; constraints like screen space and uni-dimensional view-points for hierarchies come into play. It would be nice to easily see how core skills connect to different disciplines, say. Then again, side-stepping this by using different kinds of connections/views for nodes across levels may have an exponential maintenance curve. It reminds me of that old/strange hyper-connected theory for Internet infrastructure I can't remember the name of.
I'm keen to think of new methods for map-building since I find them personally useful, but I wonder if I suffer from the hammer-nail bias.
Given how rapidly x+y values for mind-maps increase alongside content complexity for any one 'abstraction level'; constraints like screen space and uni-dimensional view-points for hierarchies come into play. It would be nice to easily see how core skills connect to different disciplines, say. Then again, side-stepping this by using different kinds of connections/views for nodes across levels may have an exponential maintenance curve. It reminds me of that old/strange hyper-connected theory for Internet infrastructure I can't remember the name of.
I'm keen to think of new methods for map-building since I find them personally useful, but I wonder if I suffer from the hammer-nail bias.
Author of the project here.
I do agree with you that mind maps have their flaws and limitations. But I found most curated list and most content in general to be quite rigid in structure. These mind maps should let the users explore and be guided through arrows.
And the big problem that I find is that google and other search engines are a black box. You have to know what you want to ask for to get an answer. The poses a big problem because many don't know what to ask.
Wikipedia is great too but I found it to lack in the visualisation aspect. Everything is connected but many people don't know exactly how and where and with what it is connected. These kinds of visualisations are very popular on the internet (https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap is one example) because they do bring clarity as to what it is the person doesn't know. However this repository although great, it just shows an image.
With these mind maps I can replicate the same but make it interactive. Now users can not only see what they don't know, but if they do want to learn it, they don't have to waste time online finding resources, they just click on a link and see what the best way of learning the topic is. If any questions arise when they are learning the content, then the search engine of their choice will answer these questions.
I also try to solve the problem of dependencies of knowledge. For example if user wants to learn 'machine learning'. I show that machine learning requires knowledge of statistics and linear algebra (http://i.imgur.com/A75JMNt.png) and then give links to the mind maps of both of these topics so user can learn them. There should be no wandering around and wasting time finding resources and being lost.
I do agree with you that mind maps have their flaws and limitations. But I found most curated list and most content in general to be quite rigid in structure. These mind maps should let the users explore and be guided through arrows.
And the big problem that I find is that google and other search engines are a black box. You have to know what you want to ask for to get an answer. The poses a big problem because many don't know what to ask.
Wikipedia is great too but I found it to lack in the visualisation aspect. Everything is connected but many people don't know exactly how and where and with what it is connected. These kinds of visualisations are very popular on the internet (https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap is one example) because they do bring clarity as to what it is the person doesn't know. However this repository although great, it just shows an image.
With these mind maps I can replicate the same but make it interactive. Now users can not only see what they don't know, but if they do want to learn it, they don't have to waste time online finding resources, they just click on a link and see what the best way of learning the topic is. If any questions arise when they are learning the content, then the search engine of their choice will answer these questions.
I also try to solve the problem of dependencies of knowledge. For example if user wants to learn 'machine learning'. I show that machine learning requires knowledge of statistics and linear algebra (http://i.imgur.com/A75JMNt.png) and then give links to the mind maps of both of these topics so user can learn them. There should be no wandering around and wasting time finding resources and being lost.
I find the most valuable point is the last: whereas, sure, you can go on wikipedia and find dependencies of an area of knowledge, that three of prerequisites makes more sense to be presented as a flow converging on a point, rather than having to dig deeper until you find a node you already understand.
A suggestion for your product: build these dependency graphs automatically, and let users mark subjects as already satisfied. That way you can omit digging into dependencies that are satisfied. If you really want to be righteous, recursively mark the dependencies of the satisfied dependency as also satisfied. That way a user can pick a topic and find everything that still remains to learn to get to that point.
And you can have the best of both worlds. Generating a linear progression of things to learn becomes a simple matter of printing the dependency tree in postorder.
A suggestion for your product: build these dependency graphs automatically, and let users mark subjects as already satisfied. That way you can omit digging into dependencies that are satisfied. If you really want to be righteous, recursively mark the dependencies of the satisfied dependency as also satisfied. That way a user can pick a topic and find everything that still remains to learn to get to that point.
And you can have the best of both worlds. Generating a linear progression of things to learn becomes a simple matter of printing the dependency tree in postorder.
Have you explored taking links from Wikipedia and adding them into your visualization? It might be interesting considering most articles have resources at the bottom.
I do link to wikipedia articles on nearly all nodes. I just expand it with more learning resources after. I think wikipedia is always a great starting point for learning about any subject. Or you meant something else?
I meant crawling wikipedia to add nodes automatically
Oh I see. I think something like this has been done before and the results are usually messy. Although I do want to use algorithms and curate things in a more 'smart' way that I do now. A bonus point of doing it by hand is that I take in the time to understand the topic for myself and actually understand why that node goes there and not in some other place.
You've created a significance map of your own conception of these subjects. It is, afterall, a mind map.
On a side note, I would subdivide Philosophy into Epistemology, Ethics, Naturalism, and Phenomenology and reclassify/reassociate accordingly.
On a side note, I would subdivide Philosophy into Epistemology, Ethics, Naturalism, and Phenomenology and reclassify/reassociate accordingly.
Checkout Moonwalking with Einstein
And Anki
You can also think of this project as an index of links similar to what Google has. Only instead, the index is human curated and it is an open canvas that all can explore.
I find mind maps to be an excellent way working. I've tried wikis, org mode, plain text files. The mind map is fastest way of tidying up a mess for me and I found I usually don't have time for doing much more. It's either that or a text file. I'm just not going to put in any more work despite my good intentions. If I need to publish something then of course I will put it in a document.
If I'm learning about something or just debugging or designing then I'll use the mind map like a text file. I just type a paragraph and hit return. Each paragraph is a node but initially it's structurally no different than a text file - a list of paragraphs. The big advantage is that later I can take some of those nodes and put them under a sub-node. Its a great filtering tool, (filtering in the sense of signal to noise reduction). Maybe it's just because I am naturally so disorganised that I like it. Stuff comes out of my mind unstructured. I need a refactoring tool and I want one that's as lazy/easy as possible.
Some kind of an org-mode tool can work ok but I found it to be too slow to create links and embed images. Wikis are just too painful. At least in a mind map what you see is what you get and in fact the structure is right in your face (a bit like lisp).
If I'm learning about something or just debugging or designing then I'll use the mind map like a text file. I just type a paragraph and hit return. Each paragraph is a node but initially it's structurally no different than a text file - a list of paragraphs. The big advantage is that later I can take some of those nodes and put them under a sub-node. Its a great filtering tool, (filtering in the sense of signal to noise reduction). Maybe it's just because I am naturally so disorganised that I like it. Stuff comes out of my mind unstructured. I need a refactoring tool and I want one that's as lazy/easy as possible.
Some kind of an org-mode tool can work ok but I found it to be too slow to create links and embed images. Wikis are just too painful. At least in a mind map what you see is what you get and in fact the structure is right in your face (a bit like lisp).
I think Mindnapa are better for this. The information is associated. For example you will need maths for some fields. Table of contents would mean duplicating links.
But... I also agree that everyone learns and parses information differently.
But... I also agree that everyone learns and parses information differently.
Mind Maps are definitely not a great way to be a 'canonical store' of information, but that does not mean that they are useless at all.
I find them to be great at brainstorming, for example. Dumping several related aspects of a project into the mind map feels very intuitive to me, no overhead involved at all. And it eases the cognitive load of several concepts floating around your subconscious and taking up your brain CPU.
For learning, I plain disagree with you. I even see your point that information may be better 'first presented' to a learner in other ways (although I've had good experiences with mind maps being a 'discovery' tools as well). However, learning has other moments other than the discovery. Mind maps are great at teaching how concepts fit together, and also good as a studying tool in the recall moment (rather than linear notes).
You may also view them as an 'index' to information presented elsewhere. Once a book was posted here on HN which had a 'graph of chapter dependencies' inside the book, which people loved. A graph of chapter dependencies is at least very close to a mind map.
By the way, since you mentioned UDC and DDC, even library science and information science courses do teach mind maps as tools as well. Because they have their uses, even if you know UDC or DDC.
I find them to be great at brainstorming, for example. Dumping several related aspects of a project into the mind map feels very intuitive to me, no overhead involved at all. And it eases the cognitive load of several concepts floating around your subconscious and taking up your brain CPU.
For learning, I plain disagree with you. I even see your point that information may be better 'first presented' to a learner in other ways (although I've had good experiences with mind maps being a 'discovery' tools as well). However, learning has other moments other than the discovery. Mind maps are great at teaching how concepts fit together, and also good as a studying tool in the recall moment (rather than linear notes).
You may also view them as an 'index' to information presented elsewhere. Once a book was posted here on HN which had a 'graph of chapter dependencies' inside the book, which people loved. A graph of chapter dependencies is at least very close to a mind map.
By the way, since you mentioned UDC and DDC, even library science and information science courses do teach mind maps as tools as well. Because they have their uses, even if you know UDC or DDC.
This looks similar to https://metacademy.org. I am curious how these maps are built and how resources are being selected (methodology-wise)?
Thanks for that link - it happens to have information at the intersection of several of my interests.
This particular map looks to be curated by the author of the GitHub repo.
Author here. I was greatly inspired by this website. It was my goal to actually combine metacademy's idea of solving the dependency problems of knowledge and do it in a similar way but visually.
But how do you choose which resources (books, articles, courses..) to include? Is it performed algorithmically or by hand? I was working on the similar project (dependency trees for concepts) and the biggest roadblock I faced was the addition of new resources, since it is laborious, doesn't scale well and is pretty subjective.
Currently the entirety of the mind map was hand picked and curated by me. I did use the internet a lot though as there are quite many threads online that have recommendations on what the 'best ways of learning X' is.
I also try to ask help from other people, ideally experts in their fields on how to best structure the content. Mathematics one is quite challenging just because everything is really so connected as far as ideas go.
I hope as this projects gets popular, more people will be willing to help and improve it. It is a collaborative process after all.
I also try to ask help from other people, ideally experts in their fields on how to best structure the content. Mathematics one is quite challenging just because everything is really so connected as far as ideas go.
I hope as this projects gets popular, more people will be willing to help and improve it. It is a collaborative process after all.
I've had pretty good success crowdsourcing recommendations for https://www.findlectures.com by asking offering a weekly email of talks, and prompting people for recommended speakers / conferences on sign-up.
I have a separate form on the site to get suggestions, but the email signup one has better quality because it weed out people who want to spam the site with their own content.
I have a separate form on the site to get suggestions, but the email signup one has better quality because it weed out people who want to spam the site with their own content.
Hey Gary, I love what you have done with find lectures. I use it quite often actually to find material. I am thinking of perhaps making a newsletter for this project saying 'what is new' in the mind map. What do you think?
Yeah, I think that would be interesting. Let me know if you make one!
I did. :)
Here it is (bit.ly/learn-anything-letter).
Here it is (bit.ly/learn-anything-letter).
Signed up! I'll be interested to see how the Patreon thing goes as well.
By the way, while researching about Metacademy I have stumbled upon their developer group[0] where they were discussing challenges they were facing, thought you may find it useful. Good luck!
[0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/metacademy-dev
Metacademy has been great to get me to ramp up for my course's material quickly. I hope such maps will properly evolve across domains. It seems like the web is a great way to discover the structure of these maps, but it takes more time than it could.
This is excellent but discovery has too much friction. I've been looking for something like the google knowledge graph for personal or business use haven't been able to find anything pre-made and I'm far too lazy to build it myself with Cayley or Neo4j or _insert graph database here_. Has anyone heard of anything similar?
Just want an easy way to search, and add entries to a graph database, hopefully with node-level permissions that can be applied.
I feel like it would help everyone, so I'd assume someone other than Google would have made it already but I haven't found it... anyone up to the task so I can be lazy?
This is really cool and I hate to show up to complain, but the text is blurry on my screen (mac, chrome) -like blurry enough that i get an uneasy feeling that makes me want to close the window.
Can't wait to build off of this. Mind maps are good for many, but others would prefer structured lists. Either way, a crowdsourced/curated learning base is something I've been itching to build.
I have been working to do this with a high(er) degree of granularity for a high school physics curriculum. The idea is to represent a student's unique journey through a topic space, and break free of the enforced and artificial linearity that a textbook's sequential chapters impose.
Don't we all learn naturally by following our needs, or curiosity, through webs of knowledge, forging our own path to understanding?
EDIT: Found one of my favorite quotes on this: "The student feels that, on his own, he wouldn't have followed the route he has just been led down; and he forgets that there a thousand paths in intellectual space open to his will." – The Ignorant Schoolmaster (Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation), Jaqcues Rancière
Don't we all learn naturally by following our needs, or curiosity, through webs of knowledge, forging our own path to understanding?
EDIT: Found one of my favorite quotes on this: "The student feels that, on his own, he wouldn't have followed the route he has just been led down; and he forgets that there a thousand paths in intellectual space open to his will." – The Ignorant Schoolmaster (Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation), Jaqcues Rancière
Kudos! Great job! One bit of advice: this would work better as a single page app that magnifies/animates as you zoom in on topics, letting you keep the big picture in sites.
Agreed. Zoom in on subgraphs for nodes which represent complex topics in their own right.
I need to read the rest of this discussion a bit later, but a quick comment in case anyone is still here:
I see mind maps and tables of contents as different UI views of the same data. Years ago I used a product on Windows called Inspiration which let you flip between the two views: a hierarchical/collapsible outline, and a graphical map showing boxes and lines (or such).
Since I found myself using the collapsible outline feature much more than the pictures, but wanted many more features and support for a theory of knowledge, I wrote and am working on adding features to:
http://www.onemodel.org
It makes an internal knowledge graph as one uses the product (stored in postgres, runs fast). It builds an object model on the fly as a side-effect of using the product, using relationships, numbers, etc as knowledge at an atomic level where words are secondary. The best info organizer (for my style at least) that I know of, though (so far) less feature-rich than many products. I hope the About page at that link explains the present and future well.
I see mind maps and tables of contents as different UI views of the same data. Years ago I used a product on Windows called Inspiration which let you flip between the two views: a hierarchical/collapsible outline, and a graphical map showing boxes and lines (or such).
Since I found myself using the collapsible outline feature much more than the pictures, but wanted many more features and support for a theory of knowledge, I wrote and am working on adding features to:
http://www.onemodel.org
It makes an internal knowledge graph as one uses the product (stored in postgres, runs fast). It builds an object model on the fly as a side-effect of using the product, using relationships, numbers, etc as knowledge at an atomic level where words are secondary. The best info organizer (for my style at least) that I know of, though (so far) less feature-rich than many products. I hope the About page at that link explains the present and future well.
I worked on something similar a while ago. First I also looked into building something more visual/map like but after many iterations I got frustrated by the lack of overview one had for more complex maps. So I pivoted to a more TOC/text based version. It was supposed to be community driven but when I finished my studies, the app lost the utility it once had to me. But it's still up & running:
https://owleo.herokuapp.com/concepts Source: https://github.com/Gregoor/owleo
A startup that also takes the visual learning map route is Expii: https://www.expii.com/
https://owleo.herokuapp.com/concepts Source: https://github.com/Gregoor/owleo
A startup that also takes the visual learning map route is Expii: https://www.expii.com/
One suggestion on helping people remember better. The emojis are ambiguous. Like I cannot remember the difference between the 2 book icons. I suggest make them the same with a $ sign on the paid one, Or better $ flying out of a book for a paid ebook.
IMHO people learn better with pictures that are vivid, would you remember something better if I attached it to the word "elephant" vs "an elephant with a pink underwear"?
IMHO people learn better with pictures that are vivid, would you remember something better if I attached it to the word "elephant" vs "an elephant with a pink underwear"?
Love this idea. I hope it can grow.
Just played around with the demo, one think I would change is to make it work as a single page to make it instant, it feels kind of slow.
Just played around with the demo, one think I would change is to make it work as a single page to make it instant, it feels kind of slow.
Interesting but not really surprising that mathematics is the big sink in the graph. Although I'd put philosophy there too.
Cool idea, but not _really_ interactive.
Being an etherum fan, it was amusing to see only ethereum listed in the decentralized computing category (https://my.mindnode.com/mxFpyqEV2YXLGBoLgUBydSWkB1qdXqzvbqzQ...)
Being an etherum fan, it was amusing to see only ethereum listed in the decentralized computing category (https://my.mindnode.com/mxFpyqEV2YXLGBoLgUBydSWkB1qdXqzvbqzQ...)
This has been on my mind for a really long time and I'm trying to make basically the same thing except the focus would be on interactively building your own map rather than exploring others but now I got to see if I can add that to this rather than build my own.
If you do consider adding and improving this mind map, it would be amazing. Thank you for that. I want it to be a collaborative process where anyone can come in and propose a change.
Mind maps are interesting tools, and even overlapping mind maps can be useful ways of showing where multiple sources of understanding can work together...but I feel like this is just arriving at semantic graphs again. And those graphs are already very well trod.
You're not wrong by virtue of mind maps being an applied graph, but the motivations for the edges and clustering is meant to mimic the architecture of human memory as we understand it. A proper mind map can represent abstract and disjoint relationships between concepts using these tools. We can organize data into lists and tables of content, but that's not actually how humans process it.
Am I the only one that when I click on anything, the image just zooms and there's no link?
You have to click on the link with the mind map (http://bit.ly/learning-mind).
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Seems like a case for making mindmaps like this out of wikipedia
I find it interesting that most things lead to either Computer science, Mathematics, or psychology.
Finally! :)
Great work
Former teacher, have been thinking about knowledge graphs / dependencies for years related to project based learning. Reach out if you ever want to talk. My Twitter is the same as my handle.
This is so cool! What a great project. Awesome resources linked up too.
Nice graph-based menu.
AAPL only?
"anything" as long as it's within a narrow range of worthy® pursuits
In cases where you're presenting or recalling information, the more linear narrative of a Table of Contents is superior. Use your brain's natural triggered associations to tie subjects together or to recall related topics, and use hard-copy writing to commit concrete, factual and clear information to that 'external' memory.
There is a reason that we've been using TOC like structures much more than Mind Maps. Mind Maps are terrible. We use TOCs, concrete lists, tools like Universal Decimal Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification to organize information, because they work and cover up the weak areas that human brains have.
Google Image search "Mind Map". You will see colorful distracting pictures like this: https://www.mindtools.com/media/Diagrams/mindmap.jpg
If you want random associations, follow links on the web. Browse Wikipedia, open new random tabs. Learn new topics, discover new interesting things! Just don't use Mind Maps.