[HN Gopher] Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair
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Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair
Author : gmays
Score : 88 points
Date : 2025-03-03 13:27 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mikelikejordan.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (mikelikejordan.bearblog.dev)
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Always great to hear from people on the far side of the valley of
| despair. I don't think it is pointed out enough that people who
| fall off of "mount stupidity" can sometimes get really really
| stuck. In my experience when they do that at work it is quite
| traumatic.
|
| Another good book for the author and others is "5 Elements of
| Effective Thinking" by Burger & Starbird. It thinks _about_
| thinking which can sometimes side step the depression of suddenly
| not thinking you know anything about anything that accompanies
| that big drop off mount stupid.
| financypants wrote:
| what do you mean by falling off mount stupidity, especially at
| work?
| brm wrote:
| Mount Stupidity relates to section two of the blog post where
| it references a concept related to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| It was discussed in the article, but to be more explicit,
| sometimes a person who is sure of their understanding of
| things learns a new thing and that new thing opens their eyes
| to a _huge_ amount of complexity they were missing. They go
| from feeling like they knew everything there was to know
| about a thing to feeling like they know little to nothing
| about the thing. (this is the "Falling off Mount Stupidity")
|
| Depending on how senior they are at work, that can be quite
| traumatic. A lot of people in tech sort of base their self
| image on how smart they perceive themselves to be with
| respect to their peers. When that perception inverts their
| own world model makes them feel worthless.
|
| In the two cases where people I was managing this occurred
| (that I knew of) their productivity dropped like a rock and
| they became seriously depressed. One I managed to get back on
| track, the other left tech and I have lost track of where
| they ended up.
| mikelikejordan wrote:
| Mount Stupidity is the peak of overconfidence greatly
| outpacing your competency level. So, falling off is
| essentially being humbled by expreiences that make you
| realize you do not know as much as you think you do, and your
| confidence takes a major dive as a result.
| mikelikejordan wrote:
| Thanks for reading my blog post! I'm going to pickup that book
| today and make sure to start reading it!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| For child, being precocious in a subject is usually a curse.
| Being bright and a generally fast learner is also a trap. Hitting
| the wall is inevitable for almost everyone, but until that point
| your self-image is built on forward velocity, and especially
| relative velocity -- you're just faster than your peers. Turns
| out there are faster kids, they just aren't at your school.
|
| Parents can make this worse but it's pretty hard to prevent it.
| tippytippytango wrote:
| Yep, we all have to hit the wall and that's where we find out
| what we're made of. It can be a valuable experience with the
| right people around to help.
| skyde wrote:
| Can you give more detail on what you mean by it can be a
| valuable experience with the right people around to help.
|
| My son (7 years old) is gifted in Math and as a parent I find
| it extremely hard to decide how much I should push him
| (register him to math competition, weekend math club ...) and
| how much I should just let him get 100% on exam and not
| accelerate the learning.
| thfuran wrote:
| I guess how easy it is to do depends heavily on the
| district, but why not have him skip some math courses and
| leave extracurriculars for if he's really interested in it
| rather than just good at it? I ended up skipping three
| years of math by the end of high school, though I never did
| any club or competitions.
| sebg wrote:
| It really depends on how much your son wants to do math.
|
| As you can imagine, there is a whole world of kids like
| your kid who love math and want to do nothing more than
| math.
|
| If you're interested I can chat with you or recommend
| resources here if you decide to help your kid do more math.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| In my experience as a parent, you can provide the resource
| but don't need to push. Love of math will happen if it has
| the right environment. For a 7yo I might suggest looking
| onto Epsilon camp, and Art of Problem Solving (which is on
| line).
|
| My own kid went to MathPath (middle school camp by same
| people as Epsilon Camp). Loved it. "Yes, dad really, I want
| to spent a whole month of my summer doing math." The social
| experience is great for kids to be with other kids that
| like math.
| gunian wrote:
| rich people stuff is so fascinating to me my family went
| on one vacation my whole life i wonder why jesus made us
| poor because i loved school so much
| mezzie2 wrote:
| If you're 'good' enough/identified a certain way as a
| kid, they'll bend over backwards to get you in things
| like that even if you're not well off. I wasn't from a
| well-off family, but test scores in the top 0.1% meant
| _somehow_ there were scholarships to make camps and
| programs accessible once /if I expressed an interest.
| Whatever amount was required to make it affordable.
|
| I'm a thoroughly useless adult, so it was a waste of
| money on their part, but it does happen. Or at least it
| used to.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| This might be the first time in my life I've seen someone
| with a similar experience. As a big fish in a small pond,
| opportunities just present themself to you. Free summer
| camp that provides college credits? Going to
| national/state competitions just because? It's all second
| nature once you're 'that kid'. Even bullying goes away
| because everyone knows you have the ear of the teachers
| and administrators and/or wants your help on homework.
|
| Of course you still hit the wall later. But I see all the
| reports of how terrible it is to be gifted and am so
| grateful that my experience was different.
| mezzie2 wrote:
| You get away with _so much_ , it's a terrible adjustment
| to be 'normal' after that. I still struggle frequently,
| and have to take a lot of steps not to come off as an
| arrogant prick. Luckily, I have a fair amount of
| charisma, and I used to be an attractive young woman,
| which conceal a lot of social sins, but it's still one
| hell of an adjustment.
|
| If I'm honest, I never ran into an _intellectual_ wall. I
| did choose a comparatively 'easier' path, but that was
| more because I had a wide breadth of interests and
| choosing something easier meant I'd have more time to
| indulge my various interests. I was still getting
| interviews for tenure track positions out of grad school
| and when I did try to work post-graduate school, my first
| position was at an Ivy where I was the only one on staff
| who _didn 't_ come from an Ivy League school. (I was too
| lazy/too absorbed in my own things to do what was
| required to go to one.)
|
| I ended up disabled in my last semester of graduate
| school - the 'wall' in my case is my body being unable to
| accommodate the social/networking demands of an academic
| or high powered private research career rather than my
| running into a topic I felt was beyond me. Particularly
| combined with being on my own in a HCOL area as that
| lifestyle required: Doing all your life management on
| your own with no safety net _along_ with running at that
| high of an intellectual level is near impossible when you
| have a severe disability. (I have MS.)
|
| I've been 'stuck' intellectually once in my life, and it
| was the result of a medication we tried for symptom
| management, and I found the feeling horrifying, if I'm
| honest. It was the first time I'd run into a problem
| where I had to sit there and think and still couldn't
| come up with a way to proceed, versus running into a
| problem and just being too damn lazy to bother. (Being
| able to see what I would do to solve the problem is very
| different from being _motiviated_ to do so.) Apparently,
| most people feel that way fairly often? It made me way
| more sympathetic to people who didn 't like school or who
| don't like learning.
| popularonion wrote:
| I got put into some "smart kid" activities in grade
| school, but as a poor kid with zero advice from parents,
| I really had no idea what to do with it.
|
| No one told me that math is really 90% about writing
| proofs, all those homework problems I did were just the
| weed-out stuff, the academic equivalent of Leetcode.
|
| So when I got put into some "real" academic math as a
| teen, I crashed and burned hard. I didn't have a tutor
| and it never would have occurred to me to ask for one, so
| that was that.
|
| When I was 18 years old in my first year of college,
| after my first semester grades came in, a guidance
| counselor set up a 1-on-1 with me to talk about the
| Rhodes Scholarship process and what my research interests
| were.
|
| My response was: 1) what the heck is a Rhodes Scholarship
| and 2) how could I possibly have "research interests" as
| an 18 year old college freshman.
|
| That was the final chapter of society considering me
| "gifted", but it was just as well, I couldn't imagine any
| greater success beyond getting a job and being able to
| afford my own apartment.
| mezzie2 wrote:
| I'm curious how old you are?
|
| Mostly because a lot of my personal interests/ability to
| self-develop was related to Internet access. (My parents
| made VERY QUESTIONABLE financial choices and opted to pay
| for Internet access instead of food or clothing so I
| might have been freezing and my clothes all had holes in
| them but I could go online to talk to other smart kids.)
|
| Also because I remember me + my parents being sat down
| when I was in elementary school and having my options
| talked about. In middle school once I was proven to have
| programming and math aptitude during the dot com boom,
| educational experts came to us and discussed specific
| gifted learning options (including things like private
| schools, skipping grades, or even pulling me out of
| school altogether for private instruction). None of this
| was initiated by my parents - it was brought to us. This
| was in the 90s.
| popularonion wrote:
| I was born in 1985, we got dialup around 1996 I think?
|
| I did teach myself programming in the 90s, after my
| friend loaned me his floppy disk with all his QBASIC
| stuff. Then dabbled in PHP, MySQL, etc.
|
| We had one computer programming class in high school and
| I never got to take it because I had too many other
| electives. I don't think it would have done much for me
| by the time I could have taken it.
|
| It never really occurred to me as a teen that I could use
| the internet for getting really good at academics or
| broader "self-development" - I guess I just cared about
| video games and making money. Parents' attitude was as
| long as I was getting As and going to college they didn't
| need to do anything.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Turns out there are faster kids, they just aren't at your
| school
|
| Moving from Slovenia to SFBA in my mid 20's (~2015) was ...
| super fun like that. Sooo many people here are that most
| brilliant super talented engineer/founder/whatever from their
| home locale. But here we are just the norm.
| gunian wrote:
| that's why you should teach your child to base their identity
| on our lord and savior jesus christ he never fails
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Accelerated advanced math at Purdue as a freshman flung me into
| that wall at high velocity. Nothing like a competitively graded
| class to make you hate a subject for life.
| nyeah wrote:
| This may be a great article.
|
| As an aside, all Dunning and Krueger showed is that everybody
| thinks they're in the top 1/3 to 1/4. (At least everybody in
| undergrad school at Cornell.)
| philips wrote:
| I have enjoyed the challenge of relearning mathematics with Math
| Academy as well. I find the format and reviews extremely helpful-
| it is so refreshing to end a lesson or review early if you are
| getting all the answers right compared to the drudgery of my
| schooling experience where you are getting question after
| question that isn't introducing a new mental challenge.
|
| My only desire is that their site worked on my phone- it would be
| nice to do a lesson when I have some free time and some paper.
| Exoristos wrote:
| That is known as "drill," and is vital to math success.
| dleeftink wrote:
| I'd wager there are not many skills or occupations were drill
| isn't vital to success.
| chrsig wrote:
| I'll call out 3b1b and khan academy for me. Especially over
| covid. Made math fun again.
|
| My middleschool principal thought it'd be a good idea to skip me
| over pre-algebra into alg 1.
|
| Turns out that doesn't work great, and I still have confidence
| issues because I have a hard time remembering the properties of
| addition & multiplication _by name_. I know the rules.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| My middleschool principal thought it'd be a good idea to skip
| me over pre-algebra into alg 1.
|
| Next time you read a novel, try this:
|
| 1. Read each sentence at half your normal reading pace
|
| 2. Skip every other chapter.
|
| Sounds ridiculous, right?
|
| That's my reaction when people propose grade skipping as the
| only solution for a child whose natural pace is 2x the
| 'standard' pace at which math is taught in school.
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| a lot of school is redundant, and the courses are often non-
| sequential
|
| skipping chapters of a novel doesn't work very well, but it
| works great for the encyclopedia, and pretty well for a lot
| of textbooks
|
| it's also not that hard to use khan academy or wikipedia to
| fill in the gaps, if you did miss something
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I'm thinking specifically about the USA math curriculum.
| It's pretty sequential until 8th grade or so.
|
| Filling in gaps is fine for people with good study skills,
| but that excludes the vast majority of elementary school
| students.
| harrison_clarke wrote:
| the "smart" kids do seem to have those skills, though.
| either that, or they're being tutored on the side, or
| they just require fewer examples to get it
|
| whatever the case is, i think the idea behind skipping
| grades is that the kid isn't learning much in the classes
| they're in. they may not learn much in the next level
| either, but it allows the school to test that they've
| learned what they were supposed to (from class or
| elsewhere), while wasting less of the student and
| teacher's time
|
| that said, testing out seems like it'd be better than
| forcing the kids to sit through yet another math class,
| even if it's one level higher. more time to touch grass,
| or read in the library, etc.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Yeah the smart kids may need fewer examples or fewer
| practice reps, but very few kids can skip entirely, say,
| 4th grade math, and not struggle to catch up. It seems
| unnecessarily painful, when instead they could be taught
| smoothly at double the pace.
| djeastm wrote:
| Yes, it's ridiculous. They should really only grade-skip in
| math after giving the student take-home exercises during the
| current year that will serve as a replacement for the skipped
| grade. It's irresponsible to do otherwise, imo.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Agreed, but I'd rank the choices in this order. #3 is still
| better than #4.
|
| 1) Allow the child to go at their natural pace.
|
| 2) Grade skip every 2 years, with take-home exercises.
|
| 3) Grade skip every 2 years, without take-home exercises.
|
| 4) Force the child to go at the same pace as the rest of
| their same-age peers.
| abstractbill wrote:
| Congrats on your progress!
|
| Over the past few years, while homeschooling my daughters, I've
| come to see the way math is usually taught as horribly
| pathological. In the US, where we live now, it's often seen as a
| competitive activity -- almost like a sport. In the UK, where I
| grew up, that wasn't the case but still it was taught as this
| huge body of knowledge and skills with almost no motivation.
|
| My daughters are so advanced in math and I really don't believe
| it's even mostly due to innate ability. It's because, just to
| take an easy random example, when we studied geometry our very
| first lesson was me pointing out that the word "geometry" just
| means "earth measuring", and it was useful for farmers to be able
| to do that. Or, when we proved the irrationally of sqrt(2), of
| course I entertained them with the tale of Hippasus being thrown
| into the sea by the Pythagoreans. For basically everything we've
| learned there are so many fun stories. It makes me sad that most
| students of math never get to hear them.
| pipes wrote:
| As a b and c grade student, who messed about, stumbled through
| a not very good info technology degree at university I
| definitely agree with this. The stories and lore are what makes
| me now so interested in programming and software engineering.
| I've pretty much taught myself everything programming related
| and that's what I work as too. I desperately want to learn math
| up to and including calculus as I feel like it's a hidden shame
| that I'm a programmer with not much math ability. I'm actually
| considering signing up for math academy.
| rcarr wrote:
| I really want to do Math Academy and even briefly tried it a year
| ago. It's absolutely great but it's also very expensive. I know
| that math skills are invaluable, it's far cheaper than schooling,
| and that long term the investment is likely to pay for itself but
| when you're skint $49/month is still a pretty hefty sum,
| especially if you live outside of America. For context in the UK,
| a basic gym membership (PS17/month) and a SIM only phone plan
| with unlimited data (PS22/month on a two year contract) only
| costs PS1 more in total than Math Academy (PS38/month). I can't
| help but feel that the people who would benefit from it the most
| are also the people least likely to be able to afford it.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| >It's absolutely great but it's also very expensive.
|
| I could use a couple of refresher courses. When I noticed the
| price, I next looked for an option to sample what I should
| expect for the money. Didn't find one. No trust but verify
| option?
|
| I quickly concluded that this 'personal experience' story is a
| carefully-constructed native advertisement.
| ABS wrote:
| you could check the website slightly less quickly and see you
| can cancel at any time within the first 30 days and get a
| full refund
|
| https://www.mathacademy.com/terms-of-service#cancellation
|
| It's what I did 10 days ago before deciding to try it out
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I don't trust those plans - it's easy to forget to cancel
| it, and most products are simply hoping that you will
| forget. If I actually think I will want to cancel it, I
| will not sign up for services with this pattern. It's a
| simple rule that saves a lot of mental overhead.
| ABS wrote:
| and that is fine, it's your choice but has nothing to do
| with the other party not offering an option to test,
| change your mind and not spend money.
|
| I personally just put a reminder in my calendar for all
| such things and be done with it.
| jv22222 wrote:
| That is not the case with MA they will refund you with a
| click of a button and it will cost them money since
| stripe keep their cut and don't refund it to MA.
| gen_greyface wrote:
| +1
|
| I wish there was PPP for the subscription, i tried for a few
| months but stopped the subscription recently.
| nsfmc wrote:
| my read as a US person is that math academy is optimized
| towards students who would otherwise be well served by an in-
| person supplemental math program. at the earlier grades for
| math academy (grades 4-5 etc) the main competition i've
| encountered are in person programs like AoPS, Russian Math, or
| Kumon. The prices for those range between $450-$100/mo and for
| a student or student and parent combo that may be looking to
| supplement their math classes or for somebody who needs to home
| school for a period of time, mathacademy at $50/mo is a steal.
| suncherta wrote:
| The way I come to look on such offers (monthly unlimited
| subscriptions) is not the net price itself, and not future
| supposed returns to it (who knows what they be, and they for
| sure will depend on many other things), but how many hours a
| week I am willing to spend on that service.
|
| If you can and willing dedicate on average 2 hours a day (a big
| commitment but I think I was able to hold it for several month
| with them) the cost of mastering, say, Linear Algebra will be
| ~4 less then if you subscribe and will be spending ~30 minutes
| a day.
| ohgr wrote:
| Go on eBay and buy the following Open University book sets.
| They go for around PS30-50 a pop: MU123 (basics), MST124 (more
| complex). 6 months worth of study in each book set. If you like
| it do MST125 (even more complex) and M140 (stats) after. That's
| the first year of a mathematics degree literally from the
| ground up through GCSE and A-level stuff. If you really like
| it, get a student loan and do the associated accredited degree.
|
| PS30 for 6 months is pretty damn cheap and you get to keep it
| forever!
|
| ebay example of the latest edition for sale:
| https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/197011707080
|
| On archive.org too if you are happy with PDFs:
| https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22The+MU123+Cour...
|
| First MU123 book A:
| https://archive.org/details/BookAMU1232ndedOU2014/MU123-Book...
|
| This is a proper accredited course developed over 50 years or
| so with its own textbooks and material from a respectable
| university, not a gamified subscription portal experiment put
| together by god knows who that can disappear in a puff of smoke
| at no notice.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I wonder if they could charge lower rates for people who live
| in poorer parts of the world.
|
| $49/month is almost nothing to me now, but it would be
| prohibitively expensive for a 15 y.o. me in freshly independent
| Czechia.
|
| I suspect it would also be prohibitively expensive for most 15
| y.o.s in the developing world today, and these are the guys and
| gals who stand to gain the most.
| criddell wrote:
| Did you try contacting them and asking for a discount?
| Sometimes all you have to do is ask.
| eps wrote:
| > very expensive
|
| I guess it depends on where you are at in the world, but in our
| neck of the woods $50/month is an absolute bargain compared to
| using a tutor. Not to mention you get to work at your own pace
| and to practice spaced repetition consistently.
| mikelikejordan wrote:
| Hey everyone! This my blog. Just made an account on here so I
| could comment. Thank you all for the support and reading my
| story! :)
| pona-a wrote:
| I am currently studying for our country's version of the SAT and,
| having tried Math Academy -- having been convinced there is
| nothing anywhere as polished and developed on the market -- I
| still had to cancel my subscription after the first month. The
| price just wasn't worth it; over a single year, it translates to
| a cost greater than one-on-one tutoring.
|
| Small companies have to understand the value of local pricing --
| nobody is willing to pay above h percent of their salary for a
| service X, and there's only so much that rule can be bent. I
| understand that, at the end of the day, the company still has all
| their expenses in USA prices, but for digital services with no
| manufacturing or logistic costs, it can be better to make a
| modest profit than none at all.
| chamomeal wrote:
| Wow that's a pretty glowing review of the service. Sucks about
| the pricing though.
|
| I haven't really looked at math academy, but I was in school
| (including college) I probably learned 40% of math from khan
| academy, 40% from textbooks, and maybe 10% from lectures.
|
| How does math academy compare to Khan academy?
| pona-a wrote:
| Math Academy uses spaced repetition for skills with tiny, to-
| the-point interactive lessons (typically following "theory,
| some exercises, theory, some more exercises" formula) based
| on an initial diagnostic test, where the skills are
| structured as a graph of dependencies.
|
| I didn't, at the time, appreciate how challenging a problem
| it was until I started researching Bayesian Knowledge
| Tracing. While their definition of a skill can be a bit
| narrow, thus putting more time into reviewing things I'd
| rather move on from, it does work from what I've observed.
|
| I recall they had a course on Abstract Algebra and other more
| advanced subjects, so if you're really interested, the great
| thing about subscriptions is that you can afford to try it.
| ABS wrote:
| I decided to try it 10 days ago exactly because of the pricing.
|
| It would be impossible for me to have one-on-one tutoring for a
| year at only EUR465 ($499 but I'm in EU). And that's regardless
| of the tutoring quality
| simplegeek wrote:
| Inspiring and well written. It resonated with me for I find
| myself in a similar position. I wonder how much time did the
| author commit on weekly basis. Nonetheless, I wanted to signup on
| Math Academy immediately but doesn't look cheap.
|
| Are there any other recommended websites for learning math (apart
| from Khan Academy, Math Academy)?
| mikelikejordan wrote:
| Hey! This is my blog post thanks for reading! At my peak I
| spent roughly 4h a day on math academy because I wanted to get
| 100+ XP. I've brought it down to about 2h a day since I'm also
| teaching myself python for my goal of being a MLE in the
| future.
| BinaryMachine wrote:
| Great post! It's always interesting to see the experiences of
| fellow peers going through Math Academy.
|
| It took myself 2 1/2 months to complete Mathematics for Machine
| Learning on Math Academy last year (2024) working through reading
| material, taking notes, and completing all the exercises took all
| day everyday I loved it, this was after I completed Khan Academy
| (starting from the beginning of mathematics negative numbers, to
| the end differential equations) because I kept putting it off for
| years when I got to busy.
|
| The main thing for me was learning not to get too frustrated when
| getting an answer wrong. If I made a mistake, I focused on
| understanding what went wrong, looking up youtube videos on the
| topic if it was confusing, and then trying again.
|
| At the end of a lesson I wish I had someone to bounce questions
| off of but thats when I used chatGPT.
|
| Congrats!
| mikelikejordan wrote:
| Thanks for reading my blog! M4ML is the next course for me
| after I complete MF3. What are you doing now on math academy!
| tptacek wrote:
| Math Academy is awesome, I'm fully hooked, but, repeating
| something I wrote elsewhere: it is a bleak existential
| confrontation with your ineptitude with fractions.
| plutosmoon wrote:
| you and me both buddy
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm signing up like, oh, I have a lot of gaps I can fill in
| with calculus, and it's like, no, you got a lot of gaps you
| need to fill in with simplifying cube root expressions. The
| best is every once in awhile it double checks to make sure I
| still know what multiplication is, with like Dick and Jane
| bought 10 apples problems. I have given it no reason to
| believe otherwise! But I trust the algorithm.
| tptacek wrote:
| Also, I go too fast through them and do stuff in my head
| that I should write down and make dumb mistakes, and when I
| get the "Incorrect" I'm like, yeah, I see exactly the dumb
| thing I did, let's move on, and it's like, no, let's do a
| next problem that's real nice and easy to make sure you get
| this and I'm like "stop patronizing me motherfucker".
| golly_ned wrote:
| I tried math academy about a year ago since I wanted to finally
| get a strong grasp on linear algebra.
|
| But I gave up during the diagnostic test. It was very, very long,
| and didn't seem to be adjusting in difficulty, and asked similar
| questions. I'm normally a fast test-taker, but after about a
| third, I figured it would take me an hour and a half or two hours
| more.
|
| I hope they've updated it by now.
| MisterTea wrote:
| $50/month? I know people with children who can't afford the NYC
| mandated trash cans which cost the same...
| bost-ty wrote:
| I read this article because I wanted to learn more about their
| Math Academy experience, but I found the preamble and backstory a
| little long, which caused me to skim.
|
| Re: Math Academy, I used the service for ~3 weeks last year from
| a post here on HN by the guy responsible for the AI/ML knowledge
| graph behind the platform (I believe his first name is Justin). I
| was "only" doing about 30-60 minutes a day (a little bit higher
| than their guidance, but low for someone not doing math otherwise
| IMO).
|
| N.B. Due to substandard early instruction combined with being
| "gifted and talented", I was placed by the test into Math
| Foundations 1 (or 2?). For example, I still don't have an
| active/working mastery of the unit circle. So if you're a real
| whiz, YMMV.
|
| I found Math Academy effective at showing me my weaknesses and
| sharpening those skills in the short term, but I probably didn't
| do it for long enough to benefit from the spaced repetition
| effects. I found the UI/UX better than Khan Academy (sans AI),
| and much less tedious (when I demonstrated understanding, the
| questions moved on or increased the complexity vs. doing the full
| problem set no matter what).
|
| When I cancelled within the first month to receive my refund (see
| other commenters mentioning the high price), I was surprised to
| see my support email and refund request email both went to one of
| the founders (or owner?), Sandy Roberts, who was emailing me
| while also attending her daughter's college orientation (or
| helping her move, can't recall right now).
|
| Cancelling was painless once I realized I was getting a response
| from someone at the platform --- so if you're interested in
| trying it, I can recommend giving it a shot. Maybe there's some
| sort of economy for them if more (adult) people sign up, because
| 50 USD still feels a bit steep.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| "other commenters mentioning the high price"
|
| I understand that everybody has different financial
| circumstances, but personally I find it so odd how people
| prioritize their spending. $50/mo to level up your math game?
| Too much. 8x $6 lattes per month - totally worth it. $200k+ for
| a university education after which you STILL won't know basic
| math (or much else useful for most majors) - super totally
| worth it.
|
| For me I'm just willing to pay a lot more than other folks are
| to learn interesting skills. Math, sailing, music,
| leatherworking, perfume making, whatever - to me that's such a
| good use of money.
| djaouen wrote:
| A rare, insightful post from someone who _didn't_ do well in
| maths in high school. A true HN treat!
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Side note: An absolute pet peeve of mine is how the Dunning-
| Kruger paper is being misrepresented, to the point of abused,
| like the graph included in this blog post.
| Denzel wrote:
| In what specific way did this post misrepresent or abuse the
| Dunning-Kruger concept? (Btw, the graph used is the same one
| used on the Wikipedia page for DK.) If you're able to explain
| what you understand to be misrepresented, you can clear up the
| misconception for others -- like me.
| cleandreams wrote:
| I am going through Math Academy and I like it very much. I have
| done advanced technical work in my field but my math background
| had weaknesses from my public schooling in a large urban area and
| some experimental math instruction in high school. The ability to
| do it over is oddly exhilarating.
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