I'm coming in a little late here, but I really did mean it was just an indicator. Visualizations are still important. In fact, a moving graphic might mean that the kid on the kindle is, in fact, using a visual aid to conceptualize how back propagation works with neural networks.

I also don't want to come off as knocking video games. I had an Atari in the 80s. Super fun. I would have played that thing 8 hours a day if my parents had let me. They put a cap on it, along with a rule that I also spend some time with this odd object involving black letters printed on a series of white pages if I wanted to play the video game.

The Atari is long gone (though you could say it's as present as ever, in a greatly enhanced form). But those black letters on white pages are still pretty excellent, and are identical to how they were 30+ years ago.

What, because all the good ones were written before scientists could afford books with pictures? :-p

Check this out:

https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Complex-Functions-Introduction...