[HN Gopher] Show HN: I wished for a site with a growing list of ...
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Show HN: I wished for a site with a growing list of math problems,
I built it
Good math problems are hidden inside textbooks and online
documents. To keep up with all the sources in the world is hard.
For someone who just wants to continuously solve problems, finding
and going through all the sources feels like a hassle. I wished for
a website that could just dump all the math problems available in
the world out there. And if I could filter the problems by topics,
that would be beautiful. teachyourselfmath is a side project that
was born out of this need. At its core, it is a math PDF extraction
engine. The engine has some machine learning going on behind the
scenes to extract math problems in LaTeX from any image or
document. A little bit about me: I am Vivek, a software engineer
based out of India with a diverse set of interests including math.
This project is close to my heart for many different reasons and
nothing would make me happier than finding people on the internet
who would find this website to be useful. I'd love to hear your
feedback on this. Thanks!
Author : viveknathani_
Score : 339 points
Date : 2024-01-24 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (teachyourselfmath.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (teachyourselfmath.app)
| fragmede wrote:
| This is great but those are some really hard questions!
|
| Some links to math textbooks to help figure out answers would be
| great.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| I am working on exposing the difficulty for every problem. With
| a larger problem set and an ability to filter by difficulty,
| this problem can be solved I think.
|
| One of the ideas that came up in feedback is that I could have
| an AI driven experience to walk a user through the question's
| topic and give enough pointers to eventually arrive at a
| solution. I am still thinking about the best way to approach
| this problem in general.
|
| Thanks for the feedback!
| alexpetralia wrote:
| I actually did exactly this, plugging the questions into
| Google and seeing the step-by-step answer. I found this
| useful.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thanks, this gives more conviction to the idea! also, what
| type of questions are you interested more in? there are
| many topics I could cover over time but I am looking to
| prioritize which ones to do first.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Personally I am studying linear algebra lately so I was
| scanning roughly what % of the problems I could solve.
|
| Though, I also went a bit into the other areas to see if
| I still recalled other areas of math that I haven't
| studied in years.
| nilsherzig wrote:
| I tried to teach myself my current math course at university
| like this. Turns out gpt4 really isn't capable of doing that
| yet.
|
| When asked to solve and explain something it produced a right
| answer to a problem with a solid explanation I could easily
| follow. (Or ask more in depth questions about it).
|
| When asked to push me to the right solution by asking me
| things / walking me through the steps, it got "confused" and
| more often than not produced a wrong answer.
| AzuraIsCool wrote:
| Very interesting!
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thank you!
| ilikegreen wrote:
| Hello! Thanks for sharing. This seems like a great resource, and
| I love that it is open-sourced; I could find myself wanting to
| help develop this further, as I also have some appreciation for
| math, and also cherish the idea of having somewhere to find good
| exercises to tackle.
|
| Not in the spirit of spoiling the fun or bring any unnecessary
| tension, I can't help asking: considering that these exercises
| are being scraped from .pdf sources, would you consider having
| the source for any given exercise? Of course, it brings problems
| of exposing possibly copyrighted material. I'm just wondering
| what your stance is on that.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| > I could find myself wanting to help develop this further, as
| I also have some appreciation for math, and also cherish the
| idea of having somewhere to find good exercises to tackle.
|
| Glad to hear this!
|
| > Of course, it brings problems of exposing possibly
| copyrighted material. I'm just wondering what your stance is on
| that. Given that problems are anyway discussed on the internet
| in various forms, I wouldn't see this as a copyright concern.
| And I intend to keep this list free. Aggregation shouldn't be a
| problem, hopefully :)
| ilikegreen wrote:
| I see. I still feel this must be carefully thought out,
| because although exercises are being discussed online, this
| platform could potentially outright distribute them all at
| once in a centralised manner. And it can be a source of
| tension, specially without attribution (I've grown a bit more
| sensitive to this issue after realising how much effort goes
| into producing good exercises, like Advent of Code for
| programmers).
|
| I think there would be value in knowing a given exercise
| comes from chapter X of book Y; it might even help track
| knowledge dependencies, so to say (to solve exercise Z,
| student probably needs exposure to all chapters between X-3
| and X). And it could also be possible to build thorough
| different levels of exercises in different areas: a set of
| basic computation exercises (invert this matrix; solve this
| simple integral) - and these exercises, as you probably know,
| can be generated easily; some intermediate exercises of
| theorem applications; and then groups of higher difficulty
| material (which are probably somewhat more creative
| exercises).
|
| Anyway, this is really an inspiring project and I hope it
| brings you lots of joy! and, in case it helps anyone, I've
| found a good trove of mathematics resources over at
| https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| > And it can be a source of tension, specially without
| attribution understood, thanks for sharing your concern
| here. i agree with the general sentiment that coming up
| with good problems/content is a hard job. let me see what i
| can do.
|
| > and these exercises, as you probably know, can be
| generated easily; Yes, this is on my todo list. To do
| problem generation instead of problem sourcing.
|
| thank you for all the feedback!
| ethanwillis wrote:
| Why don't you actually put effort into actually writing out the
| problems?
|
| I'm not going to do your work for you and I'm not going to pat
| you on the back for scraping good content in a sloppy way. So
| here's a really good example of the problem with what you're
| doing.
|
| https://teachyourselfmath.app/problem?id=18
|
| I really hope to see this improve because the _idea_ is good. The
| execution is _not_
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| hey, each problem in itself is intended to be a complete
| entity. while picking up from the PDF, it is extracting all the
| text written for that problem. if this is not happening for
| every problem already, that is something to be fixed I believe.
| i would rather spend my time in making this better instead of
| curating every problem manually. i could also spend time in
| picking up better sources that have more complete problems in
| general.
|
| thank you for your feedback!
| ethanwillis wrote:
| A thought. If you're set on automation it could be that you
| could try automating the opposite of this approach as well.
| Detecting incomplete problem definitions when they happen.
|
| In either case, you're welcome. I don't mean to be rude :) As
| I said I think it's a good idea. I just know that poor
| execution on this will limit the potential a lot.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| yep - a cleanup job running at a set frequency seems like a
| good idea! and no worries, i am taking all the feedback
| positively. thank you for taking the time to share your
| thoughts!
| oneepic wrote:
| I don't see what's upsetting about the problem you linked. If
| you don't know what a "greatest common divisor" means, why not
| search it or put it into GPT? That's the simplest statement of
| the problem.
| ethanwillis wrote:
| He fixed it, which is good.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| What's wrong with this problem?
| ethanwillis wrote:
| The problem seems to have been fixed? Another poster under my
| top level comment posted a similar one that is missing
| crucial information.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Makes sense, I was confused.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Because that's arguably the next step. Why doesn't he solve
| them while he's at it? Efficiency is lost here!
| grenoire wrote:
| I see that he's getting downvoted, but there are minor errors
| indeed. Problem 31
| (https://teachyourselfmath.app/problem?id=31) doesn't list the
| problem inputs, for example.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| hey! thanks for pointing this out, checking this.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| an update: this is fixed
| dotancohen wrote:
| > I really hope to see this improve because the idea is good.
| The execution is not.
|
| The scraping and storage is simply a search engine. This site
| would be very valuable if it just presented the information as
| a search engine - with links to the original documents.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| that is a very cool tangential idea imo! thanks, i will
| consider this.
| TrAnn3l wrote:
| What about Project Euler? https://projecteuler.net/
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| i love project euler but most of the problems listed here
| require you to do some sort of programming which is great but i
| want to expand beyond just doing that in math. also, project
| euler is curated by its authors while teachyourselfmath just
| picks problems from whatever PDFs are available.
| anthk wrote:
| I solved these with Common Lisp in a really easy way :D
|
| Basically you mirrored Math's metodology on chained functions
| :D
| desi_ninja wrote:
| Cool project. I was lowkey hoping for it to be called Maths
| instead of math given it is made by an Indian
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| hahaha, thanks! i just like it better with "math" :)
| belkarx wrote:
| Note that the math stackexchange can also do this if searched
| correctly
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| i agree, given the fact that math stackexchange has been
| running for many years, it must have accumulated enough
| problems from its users. it will require some data cleanup but
| yeah the search could work.
|
| i am also intrigued by the idea of enabling search here as
| pointed out by someone else here [0]
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39114852
| wdutch wrote:
| This is a nice idea, in the past I worked as a maths tutor and
| was always on the lookout for good problems for students. (Maybe
| this is possible, I didn't make an account but ...) Seems like
| the scraped problems are a great starting point for a social
| platform where users can submit their own problems and
| upvote/downvote ranking mechanics like reddit, HN etc
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| if you are interested in checking out the codebase[0], you will
| find that i did make provisions in the database to account for
| upvotes/downvotes but i wanted to see how many people are
| interested in the first place before i build more user-driven
| features.
|
| thank you for your feedback!
|
| [0]:
| https://github.com/viveknathani/teachyourselfmath/blob/maste...
| metflex wrote:
| this is great, i just wish there were solutions! I personally
| (and i think many other students agree) rather to invest my study
| time only on problems which have solutions. i think an approach
| like stackoverflow.com would be a nice idea, where anybody can
| ask question and then have the privilege to flag the correct
| answer. or maybe a reference to the textbook which problem
| originally came from could be provided if you are planning to
| only create the problems yourself in the future.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| a stackoverflow-like website for math already exists.[0] but i
| agree with the general sentiment of most people that the actual
| solution should somehow be easily accessible. i will work on
| this bit.
|
| thank you for your feedback!
|
| [0]: https://math.stackexchange.com/
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| It would be good to have the problems sorted according to
| difficulty or other user-defined criteria.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| difficulty as a feature will be out soon, thanks for the
| feedback!
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Needs LaTeX support for comments
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thank you for the feedback. adding support for this soon!
| bagels wrote:
| I awkwardly typed a solution on my phone, and submitted. Then it
| told me I needed to log in. Wasted effort. Should tell you sooner
| (when you start typing?) or not require login.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| yeah that must have been a bad experience. will fix this.
| criddell wrote:
| What is the account needed for? I assume you track progress,
| but are there other reasons for it?
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| for now, the account is needed to be able to post a comment
| bagels wrote:
| But, why is it needed? To prevent spam?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >At its core, it is a math PDF extraction engine. The engine has
| some machine learning going on behind the scenes to extract math
| problems in LaTeX from any image or document.
|
| I would like more to see curated hand picked math problems
| instead of mass imported problems from various sources. Along
| with solutions and detailed explanations and links to the theory
| needed to understand and solve the problem.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thank you for the feedback, i will see if some sort of curation
| as a feature is possible.
| icepat wrote:
| This explains why some of them have missing information. Such
| as this one:
|
| > Suppose that one digit, indicated with a question mark, in
| each of the following ISBN-10 codes has been smudged and
| cannot be read. What should this missing digit be?
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| https://projecteuler.net/
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| this is different from project euler. explained here[0].
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39115376
| clbrmbr wrote:
| But those are problems that usually require writing and running
| some code. OP's problems are intended for pencil and paper.
| revskill wrote:
| Let me ask chatgpt to solve
| bodantogat wrote:
| Very cool. Made me realize how much I used to like math as a
| student, and how much I've forgotten.
| max_ wrote:
| Thank you very much for this. This is so good.
|
| I wish you had a feature that allowed for bookmarking problems &
| comments like HN.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thank you so much! feedback of bookmarking is taken into
| consideration. i will see what i can do. thanks!
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I just recently started doing UW contest math problems with my
| middle school aged kid-- they're definitely not "core" material
| but are excellent for enrichment and building lateral thinking:
|
| https://cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/past_contests.html
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| seems like an interesting resource, thanks for sharing this!
| calebkaiser wrote:
| I've thought about building something similar 100 times. So happy
| to see someone do it! I have a daily habit of doing math
| problems, just to keep the various branches I've studied somewhat
| fresh in my mind, and finding good problem sets that can be
| accessed easily has been a surprisingly hard challenge.
|
| If you're interested in open sourcing it so collaborators can
| help contribute to some of the future features you've discussed
| in the thread here, let us know! I'm sure there are plenty of
| people who'd like to pitch in.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thank you for your words! although, teachyourselfmath is
| already an open-source project -
| https://github.com/viveknathani/teachyourselfmath/
| soegaard wrote:
| Pdf-extraction?
|
| Technically it is an interesting problem.
|
| But ... just stating the obvious ... you need to be careful with
| copyright. Make sure to clearly indicate the source of each
| problem.
| circadian wrote:
| It's a really nice idea and very good to see a familiar and
| simple interface, I'm definitely keen to look at this when I'm
| "idling"!
|
| Two suggestions that I don't think have been mentioned:
|
| 1. It might be nice to at least acknowledge the source of the
| problems PDF-wise, no doubt somebody put effort into developing
| then and the supplementary information (assuming the PDFs are
| open source) would be useful for learning
|
| 2. Supporting information for learning the context subject
| material around the problem would be good: this relates to other
| comments about curation. This doesn't feel like "teach yourself
| math" so much as "test your math", which is still really helpful,
| but if you don't know the material there's nowhere to turn too
|
| Great foundation for an amazing platform, nice work!
| bo1024 wrote:
| Strong agree on (1). I don't mind the copyright violation
| personally, but as an academic who develops these types of
| problems, attribution would be the polite thing to do.
| mindcrime wrote:
| > I don't mind the copyright violation personally, but as an
| academic who develops these types of problems, attribution
| would be the polite thing to do.
|
| Is there a copyright violation? Totally not a copyright
| lawyer (or any kind of lawyer) but I thought basic facts,
| mathematical relationships, etc. were not eligible for
| copyright. At least for something like:
|
| Find the derivative of X^2 + 2x + 3
|
| I think the problem and the solution aren't subject to
| copyright.
|
| I guess a complex word problem might be though, since the
| prose part would normally be subject to copyright anyway? Not
| sure being part of a math problem would change that.
|
| I dunno. I could be totally wrong about this. Any copyright
| experts around to chime in?
|
| Google's Generative AI feature says the following, but not
| sure how much trust to put in that.
|
| ---
|
| According to Bytescare, mathematical formulas, problems,
| proofs, and theorems are not copyrightable. This is because
| math is considered a "truth" and is not necessarily invented
| but discovered.
|
| However, the content of a math book, including diagrams, word
| problems, and illustrations, can be copyrighted. According to
| the Copyright Advisory Network, word problems may fall under
| copyright, but problems containing only numbers and symbols
| probably do not.
|
| ----
| terribleperson wrote:
| I don't disagree that attribution would be polite (in fact I
| think a lack of attribution is impolite), but I don't believe
| mathematical problems are generally copyrightable.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| 1. sources of problems will be out soon. 2. that is an
| interesting idea. i have been meaning to work on the general
| problem of letting users work their way through a problem on
| the website itself.
|
| thank you for your feedback!
| gillyb wrote:
| Love the very clean UI
| nydev wrote:
| Great idea, I would use something like this. Would be helpful to
| add tags/categories with grade level/difficulty if students want
| to use this for studying at their level.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| categories for all problems are already available. is that not
| what you are looking for?
|
| difficulty of problems will be out soon. though, not in a way
| where users will be able to assign the difficulty on their own.
|
| thank you for the feedback!
| the_arun wrote:
| Very nicely done & useful. I do see folks in Twitter/X posting
| problems. This is a better solution instead for those hobbyists.
|
| Is there a way to share a single math problem as a link in social
| platforms?
| rrishi wrote:
| Could you please post links to twitter profiles posting
| problems?
|
| I'd rather see these problems than all that the algo throws at
| me currently.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| hey - yes! on the homepage, you can tap on the "discuss" link
| on any problem which will take you to the problem's page. that
| link is unique to that problem which you can share.
| jcalx wrote:
| In a more brainteaser/puzzle direction there's wu:riddles [1].
| For a site that hasn't been updated since 2009 (!) it's very
| functional and holds up surprisingly well, aesthetically.
|
| [1] https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/intro.shtml
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| this is very cool! thank you for sharing this!
| ayyhunt wrote:
| Please include the source file.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| this will be out soon!
| notpachet wrote:
| > I wished for a site with a growing list of math problems
|
| Hey, you should work in ecommerce!
| mixedmath wrote:
| You wanted a thing, it didn't exist, and then you built it. Kudos
| to you!
|
| I don't know if part of the goal is to have a growing list of
| math problems _and their solutions_ or not, but I see that
| mathjax is loaded to display the questions. It might be a good
| idea to note this and have a page where answerers can (if they
| choose) see how to write their responses in mathjax too.
| viveknathani_ wrote:
| thank you for your words! support for comments in LaTeX will be
| added soon.
| debo_ wrote:
| > I wished for a site with a growing list of math problems, I
| built it
|
| Now you have two problems.
| dustfinger wrote:
| It would be really valuable to add a challenge rating to each
| problem. I am sure there are some criteria that could be used to
| auto score these. Then, viewers would be able to select a
| category and challenge rating so that they can focus on topics of
| interest at their level.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Great work!
|
| As a follow up, I'd suggest a clear separation between comments
| and solutions, and then possibly within types of solutions. In
| particular, I'd be interested in solutions via Lean4 code.
| anonimo37 wrote:
| This is a great resource. I'm slowly relearning my engineering
| maths from 30 years ago. It is good to have source of problems to
| work through.
|
| A couple of suggestions.
|
| 1. It would be nice to be able designate one of the comments as
| the best answer rather than have to wade through a lot of
| comments to find the solution.
|
| 2. I find the name "Teach Yourself Math" a bit misleading. The
| names suggests that the site provides a structured introduction
| to math much like a textbook, not a bunch a math problems that
| require some existing knowledge to work on. Some of this
| expectation comes from associating the "Teach Yourself" name with
| the Teach Yourself series of books intended for self learners.
| cprogrammer1994 wrote:
| Amazing site! Please make a password reset form. When submitting
| signup with a generated password, it does not get saved as the
| register flow is not recognized as such. Now i cannot login or
| register again.
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