I recently turned 40 myself and I'm working through their Foundations courses (made to help adults catch up) before tackling the Machine Learning and other uni courses.
Math Academy does what every good application or service does. Make things convenient. That's it. No juggling heavy books or multiple tabs of PDFs. Each problem comes with detailed solution so getting them wrong doesn't mean looking around on the internet for a hint about your mistake (this is pre ChatGPT era of course, where not getting something correct meant putting down MathJax on stackexchange).
> better than just prompting ChatGPT/Claude/etc
The convenience means you are doing the most important part of learning maths with most ease: problem solving and practice. That is something an LLM will not be able to help you with. For me, solving problems is pretty much the only way to mostly wrap my head around the topic.
I say mostly because LLMs are amazing at complementing Math Academy. Any time I hit a conceptual snag, I run off to ChatGPT to get more clarity. And it works great.
So in my opinion, Math Academy alone is pretty good. Even great for school level maths I'd say. Coupled with ChatGPT the package becomes a pretty solid teaching medium.
Their marketing website leaves a lot to be desired (a perk since they are all math nerds focused on the product), but here are two references on their site that explain their approach:
- https://mathacademy.com/how-it-works
- https://mathacademy.com/pedagogy
They also did a really good interview last week that goes in depth about their process with Dr. Alex Smith (Director of Curriculum) and Justin Skycak (Director of Analytics) from Math Academy: https://chalkandtalkpodcast.podbean.com/e/math-academy-optim...
What I didn't like about the content is I often had questions about it but there was no-one to ask the questions from. Whoever wrote that material was no longer around. It's a frustrating feeling when you can't really trust what you're studying is factually correct, or is misleading.
I assume AI will have a huge improvement in this respect.
Anything in the soft sciences, or biology/organic chemistry, or comp sci. I know there are a lot of courses for the latter especially, but I'm looking for accredited ones.
at least, i think i heard alt samman say so.
you plebs and proles better shell out the $50 a month, increasing by $10 per day, to keep dis honest billionaires able to keep on buying deir multi-million dollar yachts and personal jets.
be grateful for the valuable crumbs we toss to you, serfs.
Years of martial arts ingrained that sense of being a life-long learner. I was taught the mantra of "Progress comes to those who train" and "Practice makes permanent" and even though those phrases were focused on learning to beat someone up, I've carried them on into other parts of my life.
Me too. High five!
> My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major).
But why? Wouldn't it make more sense to go for a master in computer science? Are you going to use it for work. Otherwise, aren't you going to "lose it" anyways? Also, is your job paying for the degree or are you paying out of pocket?
This YouTube playlist was invaluable for me: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmM_3MA2HWpYYo7QExaRvor_u...
Maybe it's standard in lots of places, but I've mostly seen study guides where they just list a ton of topics and that's it.
The main thing is there are no surprises or tricks. The exams are straightforward and EXHAUSTIVE. I do all the assigned homework twice. Once when we cover the material and again before the exam. Let’s hope that strategy pays off again.
Good luck!
Best of luck on your pursuit.
It was insane how much better the courses were in the community college. Tiny class of 15. $300 or something. Amazing professor that you could ask questions to like you could in high school. Normal 20-30 question textbook homework where you just work basic problems and build confidence that you know the material.
Meanwhile UT was the opposite. I think I paid $1400/class/semester (and that's a bargain). Lecture halls where you couldn't possibly ask a question. Weird math/physics homework that was like 3-5 super hard questions that I often couldn't figure out, demoralizing. Often a TA that could barely speak English. It's actually quite insulting.
I sometimes think about enrolling in a local college for fun, the experience was that good.
Had this experience at an elite uni as well for math courses. At the time I felt like it pushed me to really grow, and it was absolutely necessary to do well in that specific course (tests often had questions that ~required you to know how to do all the uber-hard homework problems), but I wonder what the research actually says about this sort of homework vs your more standard variety.
From what I remember, the university course also had some rote exercises for homework so it isn’t like everyone is only focusing on working the trickier exercises.
This also reminds me of the story Donald Knuth has around working every exercise in the book for a calculus class.
I found out I can't stretch my brain to truly understand the fundamentals, so I stopped after a bachelors and don't use my degree at all. I don't mind. It takes truly special people to push the limits, and a lot of not so special people to keep the world running for them.
Is the course about learning the material at hand, or laying the foundation for graduate level courses in the same subject? About teaching the most efficient way or getting a student used to deriving equations when there's not a plug and play formula.
I'm sure we can draw similar parallels between csci college courses, big tech interviews, and professional software development. Even though it's all the same pipeline, each stage/stakeholder has different goals, motivations, etc... If you're having a discussion about the pros and cons of an approach, you have to make sure the goals are aligned else you'll just be talking past each other.
I have a vivid memory of one of the question on a final being basically “sketch the outline of this important thing we studied”. I couldn’t do it. I took the class but didn’t see the forest for the trees.
Later I met people who talked about things with each other, including the big picture. That’s the community I was missing when I took the class solo.
In retrospect, I could have gotten something more out of those problems that I thought were so hard.
Which would be a non-issue if the US simply had single-payer or universal healthcare.
The only negative for me was that the students were pretty checked out.
I didn't put a lot of thought into where I went to school but if I could do it over again this is something I would have considered when I applied. The school I ended up at did not have many serious students. It was a night and day difference taking courses with even one or two students who were similarly engaged with the material, but most of those students ended up transferring to better schools after a year or two.
You also run into the issue later on that the people you went to school with wash out of industry (or never work in it to begin with) at much higher rates in comparison to those who went to more serious schools.
Whereas in big universities the professors really don't much want to teach they want to accomplish scientific breakthroughs, themselves.
The tech school considered it a boast that it had more graduate students than undergrad. It was clear where the professors' emphasis was. I recognize the lecture halls where you couldn't ask questions, and the barely-anglophone instructors. (Everyone in the EE department, in particular, seemed to come "fresh off the boat" from China bringing precious little English knowledge with them. The prof for my introductory EE course mumbled on top of it.)
Then I went to state school. Ho-lee shit. Complete difference. The bad profs were incompetent chucklefucks who couldn't cut it in real academia. The good profs actually cared about teaching undergrads.
I learned a lot about choosing a college -- a few years and a few tens of thousands of dollars too late.
UT is research focused. Depending on the department, they make the professors teach classes, which is often not aligned with their interests at all. Sometimes I think they are actively trying for bad reviews from students to incentivize the university from making them take on course load.
a lot of big universities have people there for research. there is money to be made, grants to be given, and degrees to be minted. and you can feel that too.
source: got out of the military and went to one, then the other.
1. Community College 2. Probably a tie between the R2 and grad school. However, that grad school focused a lot on grad students, so it's possible the undergraduate experience isn't quite as good. ... 3. After a very large drop off the R1 state school.
You obviously can't extrapolate too much from my personal experience, but it does seem to line up with man others.
> My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major).
Why not get a masters degree?
Edit: answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43282629
> Wish me luck!
You don't need it. :)
Do colleges usually let you do this when you're adding to a degree you earned 20 years ago?
I'm doing something similar: I just turned 50 and have been taking graduate ML classes where I work (at Carnegie Mellon). When I finish the graduate certificate program in generative AI and LLMs that I am enrolled in, I will be only two semesters away from earning a full masters degree.
I hope people don't take away the negative side of the article, brain slows down, but the positive side: brain gets better with usage. Its uncomfortable, I can churn out programs as complex as programs I've already written and go to review meetings and planning meetings without much effort. But being able to solve PDEs reasonably quickly and accurately, I cannot, or have not without a great deal of practise. It's unconfortable in some weird mental but physical sense. But I'm sharper in everything else I do.
One interesting thing about software as career followed by math classes is that there's no compiler - you can type any janky thought into LaTeX and if you don't detect that it's bogus, nothing will, until you show it to a professor.
Also, the information density of maths notation is way higher than (good) code. We want code to be readable by some that doesn't know it; a lot of math seems to be readable when you sort of 80% already are familiar with all the prereqs. So no just skimming and then hitting compile/test/run (whatever validation you do). It's typing letter by letter and taking the mental effort to actually see and decipher the letter (at least, for me in my current stage; I'm trying to do novel research, but my demonstrated understanding of the details of the previous research is embarrassing low).
Also, weirdly, I still have the same fear of professors that I did as a young person. I manage it better with my decades of maturity (really) but it is still a part of my social interactions.
No one - young or old - does well in math without a great deal of practice :-)
The formal proof community is very interested in exactly this problem! It's not my specialty, but I believe that Lean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_(proof_assistant)) is one of the very active communities.
One of the best things about entering an underpopulated space is that you can become one of the leading experts very quickly. If it's something that appeals to you and fits your skill set, it might be worth investing the time to learn!
(Again, I say this as someone who's always been interested in formal proof, but haven't investigated it much myself, much less explored the merits and demerits of particular systems—so this is not an endorsement of Lean specifically, though it does seem to be one of the most active communities, which is important when you're trying to get into a topic.)
It's funny, at the end of each lecture I just want to yell... "NO! Don't stop! I must see how this ends!"
Very similar to when I stop our children's movie and tell them to go take a bath.
I will look into Lean that is mentioned here.
you can learn everything with latest llms
Prompt:
I have padlocks that I use to lock up my tools, or my bike, etc. The problem is, I often go several months without using some of them and forget the combinations. So, I decided to write down their combinations, but then I always lose the sheet. Being the math geek that I am, I decided on the following solution. I choose a 3 × 3 matrix and multiply this matrix by the combination and write the result on the back of the lock. For example, on the back of one lock is written “2688 − 3055 − 2750 : Birthdays,” indicating that the 3 × 3 matrix that I chose for that particular lock is the matrix whose rows consist of the birthdays of my brothers and me (from youngest to oldest). My brother Rod was born on 7/3/69, I was born on 7/28/66, and my older brother was born on 7/29/57. What is the combination of the lock?
Now, technically the LLM didn't quite know how to parse "2688 − 3055 − 2750" and ran the calculation with "[2688;-3055;2750]" and produced a response of, "These values are clearly not typical lock combinations, which suggests a potential issue with the encoding process."
Smart, kind-of. I reran with a more explicit prompt and it calculated the correct combination.
Overall though, I'm impressed with using ChatGPT as a linear algebra tutor. I wouldn't hesitate to use it in the future.
I graduated high school in the early 2000s and graduated college with major in computer science and a minor in math. My goal is 5-8 more classes for a second degree in math (major).
Wish me luck!
[0] Study guide: https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Tests/Test%202/te... Course: https://course1.winona.edu/bperatt/M311S25/Administrative/M3...