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#BecomeACritter · This month

Invent a math critter.

Sigma

Right. There are eight of us. That is not enough.

Every critter has a mathematical rule it can never break. Summy always adds the same way. Rollie has never repeated himself once. Bella is shaped by her own math.

So invent the ninth.

Five things, and you are done

A few sentences is plenty. You do not have to draw anything — we make the artwork and the animation.

  1. A nameShort enough to shout.
  2. A math conceptMode, median, mean, remainder, prime, probability, ratio, slope. Or something nobody has thought of.
  3. A rule it can never breakThis is the whole critter. Everything else follows from it.
  4. A personalityWhat does it do that nobody asked for?
  5. A weakness caused by its own mathThis is where the good ones come from. What is it brilliant at, and what does it get completely wrong?
Like this
“Modo only tells you the most common answer. Give him a pile of numbers and he shouts whichever one turns up most and ignores everything else. He is the mode — so he gets completely stuck when there is a tie!”

Modo is made up, so you have something to look at. Yours would be real.

These symbols are not decoration

Every critter is a symbol that turns up in the actual mathematics behind machine learning. Open the code for a neural network and these are on the screen. Learn the creature, and you have already met the notation.

Where you meet them again
Σ
Sigma
Sits in every loss function, adding up how wrong the model was
∑p
Percy
Probability. What the model actually outputs, every time
μσ
Bella
The normal distribution. How weights are initialized
∠
Angli
The angle between two vectors. How a model measures similarity

The symbols are not the hard bit. They are shorthand for something a creature could act out.

Show how you worked it out

Optional, and the best entries do it. A silent screen recording of you figuring it out — thirty seconds or less, no face, no voice, just the work. Worked it out on paper? Hold your notes up at the start. That counts.

One of the critters narrates it when we publish. Your work becomes a scene in the show instead of a clip beside it. Upload it as unlisted on your own YouTube and paste the link below.
The screen check
  • Do Not Disturb on. Notifications ruin more takes than anything else.
  • Close mail and messages. One clean window, just the thing you are showing.
  • Check tab titles, file names and wallpaper for your full name or your face.
  • Watch it back before you upload. All of it.

We watch every second before anything is published, and we will just ask for a new take if something slipped through. Nothing goes up by accident.

Here is one we made

Example

Modo, by Maya R., 14

Maya recorded her screen while she counted how often each number turned up in a list. Twenty seconds, silent, no face.

We added Bella, some sound and her name. That is the whole job — she did the thinking. Maya is made up so you have something to look at. Yours would be real.

What the winner gets

The winning critter joins the family. We animate it in the house style, it goes in the Field Guide, and it is posted on the channel with your name on it.

Next month: solve a problem for fun.

Make something clever, funny, strange and completely mathematical

Sigma is waiting.

Send it to Sigma

A parent or guardian needs to say yes before anything goes up. We email them once, they reply, that is the whole process. Sigma is strict about this.

We email them to confirm. We never publish this address.
A few sentences. Tell us what it is bad at too.
Thirty seconds maximum, silent, no face. Upload it to your own YouTube as unlisted and paste the link. Please do not email files.

Questions? dsjthecritters@gmail.com

What we do with this. We collect your first name, last initial, age and a parent's email so we can ask permission. Nothing else. If your critter is chosen we publish it as "Maya R., 14" and nothing more specific than that. No school, no town, no full name. Your screen recording may be published as a short video on our YouTube channel and social accounts, with a critter narrating over it. Videos must be silent and must not show your face. We do not sell or share anything, ever, and you or your parent can ask us to take it down at any time by emailing us.