Grant Sanderson: commitment

Transcript context

…This is something I was really curious about ever since I learned about it. I watched many of the Summer of Math Exposition prize videos and it was shocking to me how good they were. Many of them looked like entire production studios were dedicated to making them. And it was shocking to me that you could motivate and elicit this quality of contribution given the relatively modest prize pool, which was like five winners, $1,000 each. What is your explanation of just running prizes like this? Why were you able to get such high quality contributions? Is the prize pool irrelevant? Is it just about your reputation and reach? I do wonder how relevant the prize pool is. We've been thinking about this because we did it first in 2021 and then we plan to continue doing it annually. If I was a mover and a shaker, I probably could raise much more if I wanted to get a big prize pool there. I don't think it would change the quality of the content because the impression I get is that people aren't fundamentally motivated by winning some cash prize. Certainly, they're not investing that time with an expected value calculation. If they are, that's a terrible, terrible plan. And if anything, a higher prize pool might be a problem. Let's say it was a hundred thousand dollar prize for each of the winners, then it would be a real problem where someone would, and people do, delusionally think that they're very likely going to be the winner and they might actually pour a lot of their own resources into it with the expectation of gaining it. And then that's just a messy situation. I don't want to be in a situation where someone asks “Why wasn't mine chosen as a winner?!” Because the whole event is not supposed to be about winners. Maybe for the listeners who don't know, I should describe the summer of math exposition. Actually, the history is a little bit funny because it started with an intern application where in 2021 I wanted a couple interns to do a certain thing on my website basically and I put out a call for people to apply. I got 2,500 applicants and somewhere in the application I mentioned that during the summer, in addition to the main task I wanted them to do, I'd give them freedom to do something relevant to math exposition online that was their own thing and that I'd be happy to provide some mentorship or just give them the freedom to do that one day a week. And I asked them to give me a little pitch on what their idea would be. As I went through all of the applications, which was a lot, I felt so bad because so often the person would have a little pitch and like what they would want to make. And in my mind, I think, “Cool. You should make that! You don't need me to do that. Just spend your summer making that.” Why not? And people were clearly inspired by the thought of adding something and like I said earlier, being a youtuber is the most common job aspiration among the youth these days. And so as a consolation of sorts to those 99% that I had to reject for the internship, I said we're going to host this thing called the Summer of Math Exposition where we'll give you a deadline. I'll promise to feature five of you in a video. And if you feel like the thing that you were going to do, like with me as your 20 project as an intern is something you're excited about, make it a hundred percent project. Just do it anyway and like I can give you this little carrot in the form of featuring it in a video and give you a deadline, which let's be honest is what actually makes the difference between people doing something and procrastinating on it sometimes. e carrot in the form of featuring it in a video and give you a deadline, which let's be honest is what actually makes the difference between people doing something and procrastinating on it sometimes. Brilliant.org said they would be happy to put some cash prizes in. So I said, sure, why not? I don't think the cash prize is super important, but it's nice. It shows that someone actually cared and put some real thought into doing something that wasn't just a made up gold star, but they put some material behind saying that you were selected as a winner of this thing. But all in all, it was never supposed to be about choosing winners. It was just to get more people to make stuff. And if anything, I'd actually I love it when I see stuff from existing educators and teachers where it's maybe not the youth who want to be youtubers pouring their hearts and souls into it, but it's the educator who built a lot of intuition over the course of their career for what constitutes a clear explanation and they're just sharing it more broadly. So, to your question on — What is it that caused there to be such high production quality in some of the entries there? Part of the answer might just be that like tooling is so good now that individuals can actually make pretty incredible things sometimes.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.