Teach and earn by writing interactive stories. Online courses don’t have to be video playlists!

Featured courses 🦄

In this interactive course, you’ll participate in my life stories, and learn data science tricks for optimizing your day-to-day life. You’ll make the perfect glass of lemonade using Thompson sampling. You’ll lose weight with differential equations. And you might just qualify for the Olympics with a bit of statistics!

In 2021, I wrote the book Everyday Data Science. This year, I’ve teamed up with Jim Fisher to transform the book into this course. Each chapter is an interactive tale, like a conversation with a storyteller. 📜 Here’s the first chapter to show you what we mean!

An illustration of a beaver writing numbers on a very long roll of tape

Busy Beavers!

An interactive intro to Computability Theory

What can computers do? What are the limits of mathematics? And just how busy can a busy beaver be? In this course, you and I will take a practical and modern approach to answering these questions — or at least learning why some questions are unanswerable!

The only prerequisite is that you’re comfortable coding. I prefer code like f(x) instead of math squiggles like $F_{x}$ . Less $γ$ s, more gs. I try to use modern concepts (strings) instead of the original hacks (Gödel numbering). I do examples first; abstraction later. I emphasize real-world languages (mainly JavaScript) rather than Turing Machines and pseudocode.

Dear writer –

I’m Jim, founder of TigYog. Like you, I have fond childhood memories of learning from books.

But they said that video was the future of learning. That today’s kids won’t read. I believed them, and lost months with green screens and video editing tools. Perhaps you did too.

Well, they were wrong. The video course sucks. It’s just a digitized lecture hall with blurry slideshows. The ultimate passive learning environment! At least with the book, you could decide when to think and when to turn the page.

I believe writing is here to stay. But it needs modernizing for the way we teach and learn today.

With TigYog, I’ve spent one year reimagining the textbook. It’s less PDF, and more online course. Less end-of-chapter testing and more in-chapter puzzle-solving. Less one-way broadcast, more two-way conversation. Your readers will love you for it.

And I think you’ll love it too. Creating a course here is like writing in Word or Notion. So let’s put away our green screens, and get back to our keyboards. Because the book is not dead. It just needed an upgrade.

Jim Fisher, 2022

What is TigYog? 🤔

It’s like writing a book with ...

A WYSIWYG editor just like Notion or Word. Type / to do anything.

Screenshot of editor, using / to insert something

BETA!

Markdown and git for writing, if you prefer that to WYSIWYGs. Read the docs.

Beautiful text and typography. Writing is humanity’s best invention. Fire can’t hold a candle to it.

Images for diagrams and illustrations. Supports SVGs. Optimizes images. Advanced dark mode.

Screenshot of a diagram between some paragraphs

Beautiful math with

L A T E X

notation. (We even support macros!)

... only, it’s an interactive book with ...

Buttons for questions, choices, and conversation. (Trust me, you only need multiple-choice! Tedious essay forthcoming.)

Screenshot of buttons between paragraphs

Responses show in response to buttons. Explain an answer, or take the reader down a different path.

Screenshot of editing responses to buttons

By default, a button is neutral. But you can mark it correct or incorrect with colors and sounds.

Screenshot of editing button correctness

No code. You’re writing, not programming. No variables or debugging.

BETA!

Seamless iframes let you build any other interactivity. Code runners? Visualizations? Musical staves? Go wild! Read the docs.

... and with the best bits of online courses:

User management with social sign-in gives you a list of learners that have bought or subscribed.

Screenshot of a button, "Sign In As Jim"

Progress bars on each chapter and course. TigYog remembers and syncs readers’ answers. (And no, editing doesn’t break it!)

A landing page to describe and sell your course. Pre-sell your course before you actually write it.

Feedback from learners: they can select anything and send you a private comment.

Screenshot of selected text, with a button under it labelled "Send feedback"

Analytics show you where learners get stuck, bored or confused.

Screenshot of buttons in editor showing number of readers that have clicked each button

Coming soon

Certificates let your learners show off their progress on their CVs, etc.

Coming soonish

Flashcards help your students remember using spaced repetition. Flashcards are embedded in your writing, not in a dislocated deck.

TigYog’s publishing platform gives you

Hosting for everything: text, images, payments, users, etc. You just write.

Payments to your bank account using Stripe. Five-minute setup.

A flexible paywall to control how much of a chapter to show for free.

BETA

An email newsletter to contact your readers about new chapters or other updates.

Your own subdomain like math.tigyog.app gives your course a memorable home.

Screenshot of URL bar showing busy-beavers.tigyog.app

Coming soon

Custom domains like math.edu or docs.company.com. Make your course stand out — or blend in with your other work.

And last but not least, there’s

BETA, please report bugs

Jim could be TigYog’s best feature. I’ll try to help with anything, even writing and promotion.

People seem to like TigYog

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Lots of platforms wanted to convert my book Everyday Data Science into a course. But nothing felt right … until TigYog came along with this fun unique format that perfectly suited my writing. Since then, Jim has helped at each step. He built features as I needed them, advised me writing, and helped with promotion. Now readers message me all the time saying how much they love the fun, interactive format. Oh, and I’ve earned thousands of dollars doing it! And it’s still early days!”

— Andrew Carr, author of Everyday Data Science

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“I find myself irritated by how effective this method of instruction is. I’m not sure which is more annoying: going through years of education without these kinds of tutorials, or not having come up with this method myself, when it’s so close to the dumbed-down edutainment software of the 90’s. [I think that’s a compliment? — Jim] Every university course should start with at least a day of instruction written in this style.”

— StrictDabbler, on Hacker News

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“We usually teach math so horribly wrong. I vote for the TigYog way: teaching with storytelling between the content and the learner. It feels like stacking Brilliant.org components on top of each other. I used to explain Thompson sampling to people by using an Excel model, but from now on I’m just sending them to TigYog!”

— Kurt Dicus, Portable Consultants

Occasionally Asked Questions

What’s the pricing? How much does it cost? Any hidden fees?

If you charge for your course, TigYog takes a 20% commission. Other than that, you can use all features and hosting for free, forever. No hidden fees: we only make money when you do. Get in touch to discuss other pricing options.

Can I move my course elsewhere?

If you wrote it, it’s your intellectual property, and you can move it at any time. I will help you export your course content.

What does ‘TigYog’ mean? It sounds like a sketchy TikTok clone.

My mother says ‘tigyog’ is what I called yogurt when I was a child. I chose the stupidest possible name for my side-project. Of course, that side-project is now my full-time work. What’s the lesson here? You decide!