Improved Sidebar And Easier Browsing On Brilliant

Some of you might have noticed a few new things about your upper left sidebar. We have made some recent changes that we hope will:

Allow a greater diversity of problems and notes on Brilliant to find an audience.
Provide more power to our members to arbitrate on what is good and what is not.
Allow posts on Brilliant to self-organize and be more discoverable.

The topics in your sidebar have been changed to their corresponding tags. Instead of only being able to easily access posts that fall within our official topics, you can now save any tag to your sidebar. Whenever you tag a problem, note, or set, it appears in that tag and the page of any other tag that you designate.

To add a tag to your sidebar, you can visit any tag page and click the "add" link next to the tag header:

Imgur Imgur

Your sidebar can have whatever you want in it!

This is what my sidebar looks like:

sidebar sidebar

There are a few different ways to view a tag page. You can filter your problems by the level of your choice, and you can also choose to view by popular, or all.

popular popular

All displays everything within that tag, while popular only displays notes, problems and sets that have received significant likes and reshares.

You will notice that you can only get ratings in the main topics, as opposed to in all tags. The "official" tags look like this:

officialtag

While all other tags look like this:

Justforfun

Unfortunately, we will probably never let you level up in the tags #IntroduceYourself or #JustForFun. However, if Brilliant grows to host lots of problems in something like #MicroEconomics, we would consider letting ratings apply to it. In the future, we intend to make suitable tags into official tags as communities blossom around them. Currently we have #Chemistry and #Biology in the "official tags" section, but you cannot get a level in those tags yet as there is not quite enough activity in them to make having a level meaningful.

The explore section still exists where you can see the full river of everything new coming into Brilliant. Remember, liking and resharing plays a crucial role in determining what problems get solved on Brilliant. So please everyone, don't be shy about liking and resharing the things you enjoy on Brilliant. It helps the community identify what problems people similar to you should solve and helps our creators find audiences for their ideas.

Let us know what you think about the new sidebar, as you start to play with it's possibilities.

Markdown

Appears as

*italics* or _italics_

italics

**bold** or __bold__

bold


- bulleted
- list

bulleted
list


1. numbered
2. list

numbered
list

Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

[example link](https://brilliant.org)

example link

> This is a quote

This is a quote

    # I indented these lines
    # 4 spaces, and now they show
    # up as a code block.

    print "hello world"

# I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"

Math

Appears as

Remember to wrap math in $ ... $ or \[ ... \] to ensure proper formatting.

2 \times 3

2 \times 3

2^{34}

2^{34}

a_{i-1}

a_{i-1}

\frac{2}{3}

\frac{2}{3}

\sqrt{2}

\sqrt{2}

\sum_{i=1}^3

\sum_{i=1}^3

\sin \theta

\sin \theta

\boxed{123}

\boxed{123}

Easy Math Editor

This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments should further the discussion of math and science.

When posting on Brilliant:

Use the emojis to react to an explanation, whether you're congratulating a job well done , or just really confused .
Ask specific questions about the challenge or the steps in somebody's explanation. Well-posed questions can add a lot to the discussion, but posting "I don't understand!" doesn't help anyone.
Try to contribute something new to the discussion, whether it is an extension, generalization or other idea related to the challenge.
Stay on topic — we're all here to learn more about math and science, not to hear about your favorite get-rich-quick scheme or current world events.

Markdown	Appears as
`italics` or `_italics_`	italics
`bold` or `__bold__`	bold
- bulleted - list	bulleted list
1. numbered 2. list	numbered list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
paragraph 1 paragraph 2	paragraph 1 paragraph 2
`[example link](https://brilliant.org)`	example link
`> This is a quote`	This is a quote
# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"	# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `$` ... `$` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$

Comments

@Peter Taylor, I can't add some tags like #JEE, #TorqueGroup, etc. Can you please show me the way?

Ameya Salankar - 7 years, 1 month ago

For me, go to the search bar and type in the tags you wanted. Then, go to a random note/problem(solved) and below them has some tags, just click into it :)

Christopher Boo - 7 years, 1 month ago

@Christopher Boo, Thanks!

I think it so useful, an easier way to organize problems and notes

Mardokay Mosazghi - 7 years, 1 month ago

This is great! But I hope I can manually adjust the tags position, just to make it neat. For example, my tags positions now are Algebra, Calc, Combinatorics, Computer, E+M.... Looks kinda messy, doesn't it?

I see what you mean. We will look into allowing more flexible ordering in the future. I believe right now they are just ordered alphabetically.

Peter Taylor Staff - 7 years, 1 month ago

I think also for the tags we should have a way to filter between problems and notes and sets, because right now all of it is jumbled up and it is hard to find problems

Yan Yau Cheng - 7 years, 1 month ago

Wait... so I can level up in #Finn?! EPIC! :D

Finn Hulse - 7 years, 1 month ago

Please read carefully.

Unfortunately, we will probably never let you level up in the tags #IntroduceYourself or #JustForFun.

Calvin Lin Staff - 7 years, 1 month ago

Dude, that was just a joke! :D

@Finn Hulse – Calvin does have a sense of humor.... but he DOES NOT joke around when it comes to leveling up. :D

Jackie Steck - 7 years, 1 month ago

@Jackie Steck – HAHAHAHAHAHAHA yeah I'm sure. :D

@Finn Hulse – I just added #Finn to my sidebar :D

Yuxuan Seah - 7 years, 1 month ago

@Yuxuan Seah – Haha, awesome. :D

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$