Synapse is an interconnected graph of micro-tutorials. Each node teaches one concept — with interactive visualisations, mathematics, and worked examples. Nodes link to their prerequisites, so you can always go deeper or skip ahead based on what you already know.

How it works

Three edge types connect the nodes:

• Prerequisites (directed): “you need A before B.” These define learning paths.
• Expansions (optional): “struggling? Here’s a gentler dive into part of A.”
• Related (bidirectional): “A and B illuminate each other” — for compare/contrast (e.g., PCA ↔ Factor Analysis).

Click “Learn this” on any node and Synapse computes a personalised path — all the prerequisites you haven’t completed yet, in topological order.

Personalisation

Click the 🎯 button (top right of any page) to set two preferences:

Depth — How deep do you want to go?

• Conceptual: Analogies and intuition, little math. Shorter learning paths — some prerequisites are skipped because they’re only needed for the math.
• Working: Formulas and worked examples. The default.
• Rigorous: Proofs and formal prerequisites.

Depth changes both the content shown on each page and the prerequisites in your learning paths. A conceptual learner reaches PCA in 4 nodes; a working learner needs 9.

Domain — Which fields interest you?

Examples are tagged by domain (linguistics, medicine, ecology, music, physics, economics, astronomy). Your preferred domains are highlighted; others collapse to a single line but are always one click away. The underlying concept is the same — only the illustrations change.

All preferences are stored locally in your browser. Nothing is sent to any server.

Who made this

The content is written by VINCENT and James Tauber. The site is built with Ryland, D3.js, and MathJax.