The MNKY Math Garden
MNKY Math is built as a digital garden, not a traditional blog.
A blog usually asks you to read what was published most recently.
A garden asks you to follow what is connected.
That matters because MNKY Math is not only a sequence of articles. It is a growing map of relationships between systems, behavior, measurement, incentives, participation, and outcomes.
Some pages are polished essays. Some are foundational concepts. Some are short definitions. Some are neighboring ideas from other fields. Some are early seeds that may grow over time.
The garden structure allows those pieces to connect.
You do not have to read everything in order.
You can start with a story, follow a concept, view or open a definition, preview a related idea, return through backlinks, or use the graph view to see how ideas cluster. Moving about with this type of relational freedom is what we call exploratory navigation.
Desktop and mobile
MNKY Math works on both desktop and mobile.
📱 Mobile is useful for focused reading and following directed paths.
🖥️ Desktop gives the garden more room to breathe. With more screen space, it is easier to use Explorer, Graph View, backlinks, previews, and Search together.
Hover previews are especially useful on desktop. With a mouse or trackpad, you can quickly preview linked pages without leaving your place.
Hover previews may also work on mobile, but the experience is usually less fluid than hovering on desktop.
If you want to wander widely, desktop may give you more freedom.
Mobile works well too — especially for focused reading, following links, and moving along one path at a time.
Explorer
The Explorer is the site’s visible file tree.
It shows the main areas of MNKY Math and gives you a way to browse by section.
Info
🖥️ The Explorer is presented in the left-side panel.
📱 On mobile devices the Explorer becomes the hamburger in the top-left corner.
☝️Use Explorer when you want a more structured path through the garden. It is especially helpful when you want to see what lives under major areas like About, Archive, Foundations, Tools, or The Neighborhood.
Explorer is not the whole garden.
Some reference pages may be intentionally hidden from Explorer because they exist mainly to support definitions, previews, and links from other pages. You may still encounter them while reading. These pages look and operate like normal pages so you needn’t worry if you find yourself on one.
Graph View
Graph View shows how pages connect to one another.
Each page appears as a node. Links between pages appear as lines. Over time, the graph begins to reveal clusters of meaning.
Info
🖥️ Graph View lives in the right-side panel at the top.
📱 On mobile browsers, Graph View moves to the bottom of the page.
Larger nodes usually indicate pages with more internal links to or from other pages in the garden. Links to external websites are not shown in Graph View.
Similar to how a browser can show visited links in a different color, Graph View will also show pages you have already visited in a different color.
Graph View is useful when you want to see which ideas are central, which pages are closely related, and where different parts of MNKY Math touch.
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A dense cluster may mean several ideas are working together.
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A distant node may be a newer idea, a specialized reference, or a page that has not yet been fully connected.
The graph is not a scorecard.
It is a way to notice relationships.
As a map, Graph View offers two perspectives.
Local Graph View
The local graph lives in the right-side panel.
It shows the pages that link to the current page and the pages linked from the current page.
The page you are viewing appears as the center node. Hovering over another node reveals that page’s name and highlights its connecting lines.
☝️ Use the local graph when you want to see the pages directly connected to the page you are reading.
Global Graph View
The global graph is opened by clicking the graph icon in the top-right corner of the local graph.
It shows all visible pages in MNKY Math’s digital garden and how they connect to one another.
The page you were viewing when you opened the global graph remains highlighted, though it may not appear at the center of the global graph.
☝️ Use the global graph when you want to see the larger shape of the garden.
Useful Graph View Characteristics
- The active page appears as a red dot.
- Pages you have visited appear as green dots.
- Pages not yet visited appear as gray dots.
- Hashtag collections appear as outlined circles rather than solid dots.
- You can zoom in and out in either graph view. Zooming in will begin to reveal page names.
- Hovering over a node reveals the page name and highlights its relationships.
- Clicking a node brings you to that page.
Backlinks
Backlinks show pages that link to the page you are currently reading.
Info
🖥️ Backlinks are in the right-side panel at the bottom.
📱 On mobile browsers, Backlinks move to the bottom of the page.
When backlinks are present they are indexed under the heading “Backlinks”. The Backlinks section will not display when there are no backlinks to index.
Backlinks help answer a useful question: Where else does this idea show up?
If a page explains a concept, the backlinks may show where that concept is referenced in essays, examples, tools, neighbors, or adjacent ideas.
Backlinks are one of the ways MNKY Math lets an idea become more than a definition. They show the idea in motion.
Previews
☝️ Many links in MNKY Math can be previewed before you fully open them.
Info
🖥️ On a PC, hovering over a link may show a small preview of the linked page.
📱 On mobile devices, previews may appear through a press-and-hold interaction and then selecting “preview” from an options list depending on your device and browser.
Previews are scrollable, so you can read into a linked page without leaving the page you are already on.
Links may appear inside a preview, but they are not active there. To follow one of those links, open the previewed page first.
Previews are useful when you want just enough context to keep reading without losing your place.
They are especially helpful for definitions, supporting concepts, and unfamiliar MNKY Math terms.
Search
Search is useful when you want to follow a word or phrase across the garden.
Info
🖥️ Search is located in the left-side panel under the MNKY Math logo.
📱 On mobile devices, Search is in the top band.
It returns a listing pages where your search terms appear, even if those terms are not used as links, hashtags, or formal MNKY Math concepts.
☝️ Search looks for the words you enter, not necessarily the exact phrase.
For example, searching for I have a banana may return pages that include that exact phrase, but it may also return pages where those words appear separately on the same page.
☝️ That makes Search especially useful when a word feels important, but you are not yet sure where it belongs in the framework.
Search results highlight the words that matched your search.
🖥️ On desktop, search results can include a larger page preview that you can scroll through.
📱On mobile, search results usually show the nearby text where a matching word first appears.
Use Search when you want to see where else an idea, phrase, or pattern shows up across MNKY Math.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs show where the current page lives inside the garden’s folder structure.
Breadcrumbs appear at the top of all content pages, in all lowercase, and in a light-blue text. They look something like this:
> about > how mnky math works > exploring the garden
They are useful when you land on a page through Search, a link, a preview, or an external path and want to understand where that page belongs.
Breadcrumbs do not show every relationship a page has.
They show location.
Use breadcrumbs when you want to move upward from a specific page to the section or directory that contains it.
Main areas of the garden
MNKY Math is organized into several main areas. These are the directories indexed within the Explorer.
About
About explains what MNKY Math is, why it exists, what drives it, and how the site works.
Archive
Archive contains published essays and article-style pieces. These are often the clearest entry points into applied MNKY Math.
Foundations
Foundations contains core concepts, theses, models, and language that MNKY Math uses repeatedly.
These pages are more canonical than ordinary essays. They are where the framework becomes more stable.
The Neighborhood
The Neighborhood points to adjacent ideas, thinkers, fields, books, frameworks, and concepts that live near MNKY Math.
Not everything in the Neighborhood is MNKY Math.
But these pages help show what MNKY Math is in conversation with.
Tools
Tools contains practical methods, diagnostics, prompts, and ways of applying MNKY Math to real situations.
Reference
Reference pages are short supporting pages, often definitions.
This directory is hidden from Explorer. The pages contained within this directory are accessible through links from other pages. Many of these pages exist to support hover previews for content like definitions or margin notes. This helps make the garden easier to read by supporting this type of side-bar content without muddying core content pathways.
Tips for wandering without getting lost
You do not need to consume MNKY Math in a fixed order.
If you are new or it’s been a while since you last visited, here are a few useful ways to move through the garden.
Start with a story
Stories are often the easiest entry point because they show MNKY Math in a situation before naming the larger pattern.
If an idea feels abstract, start with an essay or example. You will find all of these within the Archive.
Follow one word
If a term catches your attention, follow it.
MNKY Math is built around connected language. A single word like system, outcome, incentive, agency, signal, or tradeoff can become a path into the larger framework.
Some key terms appear as hashtags. These hashtags become nodes in Graph View, giving you one way to see where a term belongs in the garden.
Search gives you a broader way to follow a word or phrase. It can find places where a term appears even when it has not been linked, tagged, or treated as a formal concept.
Use Search when a word feels important and you want to see where else it shows up.
Use previews before opening everything
Hover previews can help you understand a linked idea without leaving the page you are reading.
Use them when you want context, not a detour.
Check backlinks when something feels important
If a page feels central, look at its backlinks.
Backlinks show where the idea is being used elsewhere in the garden.
Use Graph View when you want the map, not the path
Graph View is helpful when you want to see how ideas cluster.
It may not tell you what to read next, but it can show which ideas are connected.
Return to the core content when you want stability
If wandering starts to feel too loose, return to the Archive or Foundations.
The point of the garden
The garden is not meant to make MNKY Math feel complicated.
It is meant to make relationships visible.
MNKY Math studies systems, and systems are made of relationships: between signals and behavior, metrics and meaning, incentives and outcomes, participation and consequence.
A linear site can explain those relationships one at a time.
A garden can let you move through them.
Wander, but notice what connects.
That is part of the practice.
How MNKY Math Works
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