I noticed this problem with other images too. Sometimes animations change too fast, you see points moving, you look at them, but at the same time the formula changes, and you miss it. Especially bad when the formula is written under the image, far away from moving points.
Basically, you should not have several things changing in different places at the same time because human can only focus at one point. Maybe it would be better to add pauses in the sequence, animate one thing, wait a little, then animate other thing. Let the user stop and think a bit about what he/she have seen.
For example, in the image "Repeated addition of a point P" the points and lines are constantly moving, and I don't have time to look at the formula. I see that it is changing, but I cannot read it while looking at the animation. Maybe it would be better if the points stopped moving for a while, then the formula would change, then you give some time to read and comprehend it and then points continue moving.
Or maybe you could write all the formulas on the side, and have a box or selection moving over them. This way the viewer can see how the formulas are related to each other and doesn't have to remember previous ones.
Also, in the image "Point addition is associative and commutative" formulas seem to be random and do not illustrate anything. For example, I see 5P + P = 6P, then 2P + P = 3P, then 6P + P = 7P. So what it should mean?
Maybe a better way to illustrate these laws would be to have two images that produce the same result, for example P + 6P = 7P and 3P + 4P = 7P. It is easier to compare images side-by-side.
Instead of percent sign it might be better to use "mod" as percent sign is understood only by programmers but not by people familiar with mathematical notation.
To illustrate addition you might use a circle (or an ellipse, or even a square, why not) instead of a straight line. This way the wrapping behaviour would be more obvious. To illustrate multiplication, you could draw several sequential arcs (so that the multiplication is represented as several additions). And for negation, two arcs extending in the opposite direction from zero.
I don't understand how to illustrate inverse numbers though. Maybe several arcs that start at zero, end at 1 and number of them is the inverse value?
For the last illustration it definitely would help if it had some key points on the side, showing what we have done and what we are doing now.
I can imagine that play/pause/step buttons could help a lot (for all of the animations), so each reader could "slow it down" manually and take all the time they need.
Ah, hmm. Every animation on the page does have a play/pause _except_ the exchange demo (laugh). I’ll play around with having it pause itself at key points and/or giving it a step button.
- Alice computes A
- Bob computes B
- there’s a 3? second delay
- Alice and Bob simultaneously compute the shared secret by multiplying their private key by the others’ public key