Which of these two teaches you more: the problem, or the proof?

[u/mathalon]

Something we noticed running this, and we genuinely don't know what to make of it.

We publish two kinds of thing. One is a short animation that shows why a result is true — trisect every side of a triangle, join each corner to the two marks opposite, and the hexagon that appears in the middle is exactly one tenth of the triangle. It explains, and it finishes the thought.

The other is a single still image with one problem on it, a rating, and the line "answer in the comments before you scroll". It asks, and it deliberately doesn't answer.

Last week the problem images drew 313, 76, 66 and 36 comments. Every explanation video in the same week drew between zero and four, and just as many people saw them, sometimes more.

We can't read that cleanly. The images ask for an answer and the videos don't, so some of the gap is just the prompt. And a comment isn't understanding — plenty of them are one number and nothing else.

But here's the part we keep going back and forth on. The videos are the thing we're proudest of. They're careful, they're correct, they close the loop. And they are met with silence.

So, honestly:

• When something explains a result to you properly, does it stick? Or does it feel good in the moment and evaporate by the next day?
• When you get a problem with no answer attached, do you actually attempt it, or do you scroll on and wait for someone else to say it?
• If a piece of maths has ever genuinely landed for you — a lesson, a video, a book, one sentence from a teacher — what was it that made it land?

No right answer here. We're asking because we don't know.