Series, drawn by Nib

Short pages you can play with.

Pick a question. Read it, drag its numbers, or press play and Nib reads it with you.

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Why is the sky blue, and sunsets red?

One rule about light and air explains both

▶ Play with NibRead it

Why the world works physics, the sky, the seasons

  1. Why is summer warm?and why it has almost nothing to do with how close we are to the Sun
  2. Why is the sky blue, and sunsets red?One rule about light and air explains both

How machines learn language models, from tokens up

  1. Why can’t AI count the r’s in “strawberry”?Because it never sees the letters. It sees tokens.

Algorithms, drawn every step runnable

  1. How can 20 guesses find one number in a million?Binary search: one of the simplest ideas in computing, and famously easy to get subtly wrong
  2. What is dynamic programming, really?Work each small question out once: how forty billion steps become ninety-nine

How history turned turning points, with the evidence

  1. How did the printing press take over Europe in fifty years?It didn’t spread like a ripple. It jumped.