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mkltoday at 3:56 AM1 replyview on HN

> When Illustrating a mathematical idea, the first thing you need to decide is the scale.

I have spent much of my life illustrating mathematical ideas, and scale is never the first thing I decide. Most commonly it stays abstract and there is no scale; it's flexible and I can zoom in and out at will. Sometimes I will choose a scale partway through or towards the end of an explanation, if I want to use a specific analogy, but I can comfortably rescale it to something else - the scale is never fixed.

Interesting to see such a different view.


Replies

seanhuntertoday at 5:33 AM

Totally agree. I really enjoyed the article, and the illustrations are really cool but scale is just something I don’t even consider. Even the very first question baffled me, when it said “Picture a torus. Is it big or small?”

I answered an unambiguous “yes”.

Also, we haven’t defined measure yet here have we? What does it even mean for something to have scale without measure?

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