behold the beast! the magnificent 2d matrix! behold the beast! the magnificent 2d matrix!

I used to believe mathematics was discovered, not invented. Mathematics was the elegant language the universe was written in! Yeeeeeah. That changed when I first learnt about matrices, coz sure, they're useful, but oh my god are they ugly like a carnival freakshow. Who would wanna write a universe in this crap?!

Several years later, I was coding a videogame, when I bumped into matrices again. These matrices were transformation matrices, which affected the size, position, and rotation of my game's images. Now, when I changed a matrix, I could actually see what the matrix did. I could actually see what a matrix was! It was intuitive. Kind of charming. A majestic creature, finally freed from its n x m rectangular cage.

So, I made this little matrix toy. Hopefully this helps someone else figure out matrices, or maybe everyone else except me already found matrices intuitive. At the very least, I made this as a tribute to you, 2D matrix...

...you beautiful, beautiful bastard.

this was an explorable explanation! golly! this was an explorable explanation! golly!

A bunch of peeps, including me, are making things that help others learn by doing. We call 'em Explorable Explanations. We're a loose & informal "movement", and if you'd like to play with more interactive edu-things, check out ExplorableExplanations.com!

This was a side project, just to get something out while I'm working on my bigger project, I'd Like To Be A Machine. Coming soon-ish. It's an Explorable Explanation on neurons & anxiety - hopefully it helps people on a deeper level. It also features a baby dinosaur. If you'd like to keep up with my work, here's my Twitter. And if you'd like to support me making free/open-source ed-stuff, you're awesome, and here's my Patreon!

Oh! Right, almost forgot to say, this thing is open source. Public domain, specifically. In fact, all my work is public domain, so teachers can use it freely in their classrooms, and others can dissect and build upon this. You can fork this project's repo on Github.

Welp, that's all I got for today. Thanks for reading!