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Ask HN: A math study program?

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Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#41

Post by gorilla0 »

equilibrium wrote: post #22
gorilla0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to recommend this. I completed my bachelors in mathematics back in 2003. However, recently I am thinking of going back to school to study graduate level mathematics or higher, and possibly do a PhD in a related field. My tentative plan over the next couple of years is as follows 1) Art of Problem Solving - all of the books to review mathematics at middle/high school level 2) Roughly follow the plan mentione…

I purchased the pre-algebra course a couple of weeks ago and I'm planning on working through the books as well. Would you be interested in some sort of study group?

Ok. I am based out of India though, so not yet sure if we can make the time zone work. You can reach me in Whatsapp or Signal - my 10 digit mobile number is 10^10 - 119214203 (excluding country code).

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#42

Post by gorilla0 »

jayro wrote: post #38
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #6

IMO, the clear choice for this is Math Academy. It was started by a very, very early Uber contractor who built the early versions of their dispatcher, their profiler and also the grid system that helped them scale and pretty much saved them during new year's in 2013. Since becoming wealthy from Uber's IPO, he's been pouring money into hiring experts and building the curriculum. The first step was a non-profit program…

Good morning, HN! It's Jason (the founder). My wife (co-founder and co-conspirator) just woke me up to alert me to a sudden spike in demo requests, so I'm a little blurry-eyed at the moment (was up late last night trying my best to get the marketing site functional), but I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

My biggest worry with these kind of programs is that the questions are invariably multiple choice ones. How would we practice proofs or questions where the answers are not "seen"?

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#43

Post by jayro »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #32
ecshafer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "High School" Curriculum is basically an undergraduate mathematics degree.

I can't tell if they believe they have cracked the code that makes learning these concepts accessible or if they are suffering from a severe case of expert syndrome, totally unable to put themselves in the shoes of a novice.

Through trial and error and the application of some rarely employed, but highly-effective educational strategies like active learning, distributed practice, mixed review, mastery-based learning, interleaving, layering, etc., you end up with a pace of learning that's a little shocking. I realize it's hard to believe -extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that, but that's what got us started having our 8th-graders take the AP Calculus BC exam as as an outside, objective measure.

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#44

Post by yamtaddle »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #32
ecshafer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "High School" Curriculum is basically an undergraduate mathematics degree.

I can't tell if they believe they have cracked the code that makes learning these concepts accessible or if they are suffering from a severe case of expert syndrome, totally unable to put themselves in the shoes of a novice.

Opt-in educational programs of all sorts are usually heavily selection-biased toward students that are well-motivated and generally exceptionally easy to teach—good support from home, probably above-average SES, above-average IQ, et c.

Which doesn't mean such programs are useless, just that they're typically far less effective if you try to apply them to a representative slice of the overall student population.

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#45

Post by jayro »

gorilla0 wrote: post #42
jayro wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good morning, HN! It's Jason (the founder). My wife (co-founder and co-conspirator) just woke me up to alert me to a sudden spike in demo requests, so I'm a little blurry-eyed at the moment (was up late last night trying my best to get the marketing site functional), but I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

My biggest worry with these kind of programs is that the questions are invariably multiple choice ones. How would we practice proofs or questions where the answers are not "seen"?

We started with the multiple-choice format as it's a good 90-10 solution in terms of technology, but we now have free=response questions that are automatically evaluated and can handle fairly complex mathematical expressions - man, was that a lot of work!

But we've found the concern over the multiple-choice format to be overblown. People like to believe they can outguess a multiple-choice question by being clever, but that's not reality on our system or elsewhere such as the AP exams, the AMC exams, or the GRE Mathematics Subject Exam.

Later this fall we're going to be introducing a UI for constructing proofs that's looking really cool and should take things up a notch for the more abstract subjects like Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis. Teaching university-level proof techniques is extremely challenging and time-consuming process (most never really get it) even for undergraduate math majors at university, but I think our new tech will make it much less painful and with a much higher success rate.

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#46

Post by jayro »

yamtaddle wrote: post #44
Workaccount2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if they believe they have cracked the code that makes learning these concepts accessible or if they are suffering from a severe case of expert syndrome, totally unable to put themselves in the shoes of a novice.

Opt-in educational programs of all sorts are usually heavily selection-biased toward students that are well-motivated and generally exceptionally easy to teach—good support from home, probably above-average SES, above-average IQ, et c. Which doesn't mean such programs are useless, just that they're typically far less effective if you try to apply them to a representative slice of the overall student population.

It's true that the students in the school program are high-aptitude, but something like 70% of the students in the middle school where this all started are on the federal free and reduced lunch program (low SES) along with a couple of the top kids in the original cohort, who I taught personally and they were amazing.

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#47

Post by gorilla0 »

jayro wrote: post #45
gorilla0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest worry with these kind of programs is that the questions are invariably multiple choice ones. How would we practice proofs or questions where the answers are not "seen"?

We started with the multiple-choice format as it's a good 90-10 solution in terms of technology, but we now have free=response questions that are automatically evaluated and can handle fairly complex mathematical expressions - man, was that a lot of work! But we've found the concern over the multiple-choice format to be overblown. People like to believe they can outguess a multiple-choice question by being clever, bu…

> free=response questions that are automatically evaluated and can handle fairly complex mathematical expressions - man, was that a lot of work!

Wow, that's excellent. I can imagine that would have been a lot of work.

> People like to believe they can outguess a multiple-choice question by being clever

Personally I think it adds a bit more complexity and toughness if I can't see the answer in advance. But that is purely my individual style and opinion and I have not seen any research either proving or disproving my hypothesis.

Re: Ask HN: A math study program?

#50

Post by equilibrium »

gorilla0 wrote: post #41
equilibrium wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I purchased the pre-algebra course a couple of weeks ago and I'm planning on working through the books as well. Would you be interested in some sort of study group?

Ok. I am based out of India though, so not yet sure if we can make the time zone work. You can reach me in Whatsapp or Signal - my 10 digit mobile number is 10^10 - 119214203 (excluding country code).

I've tried to reach you via whatsapp. Shoot me an email - email is in my profile
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