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Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

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Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#81

Nothing beats having a (good) teacher. Self-learning, no matter how smart you are, is pitifully slow without a teacher. Half an hour with a good teacher can save you weeks of table head-butting. (But obviously you can't rely only on the teacher.) As for books, it's not a spectator sport: you gotta do it yourself. Read a sentence, then work it out yourself with pen & paper. You can't get it just from reading alone. Fi…

I disagree with the general statement that leaning maths is "pitifully slow without a teacher". So long as one has structure (e.g. some kind of syllabus) and has access to google, then learning can proceed very efficiently indeed. In addition, by being able to work through difficulties independently you can "be your own master" so to speak, earning the confidence to solve new and difficult problems without assistance…

An author of a book is still a teacher... we’re just debating the personalization of the teaching at this point.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#82
post #19

Ok, I'll take a crack at this: Up to high-school level: 1. Precalculus: Precalculus: A Prelude to Calculus - Axler 2. Calculus: The Calculus Tutoring Book - Ash. College: 3. Preparation for Collegel-level maths: 3a. General prep for high level maths: How to Study as a Mathematics Major - Alcock 3b. Proof writing: How to Prove It - A Structured Approach - Velleman OR Book of Proof (2nd ed) - Hammack (it's free!) 4. Ma…

I find there are things I’m missing. Does the precalculus stuff cover geometry and polynomials?

Precalc basically covers algebra and trigonometry. From my experience as a CompSci major, euclidean geometry is not really necessary.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#83
I know people are recommending a lot of books here but I want to say this, I know a lot of you guys might going to shit on me but telling someone about 5-6 book in order to self-learn maths is never going to help. I see that when someone people ask for help instead of relating what he is really asking for that he wants to understand and learn math people start telling the names of these books that they knew about not thinking about the effect that straight up throwing 6 book titles will do no good to the person. So now I have defined the problem I will tell you only one resource I know its bit of understatement but I think Learning math from Khan Academy would be sufficient for you. And once you find something on Khan Academy and you are done with it. I will recommend you this site www.brilliant.org And if you still want to practice just search for test question papers and cheat sheet on the topic you want to practice. Print the cheat sheet beside you, and do as many questions you can with the help of cheat sheet.

To the person who is asking the question and people who are writing the answers I just want to say that knowing a lot of good resources to go through, is not the learning. Now I see this thing happening everywhere, people want to know about the process so much that instead of doing what needs to be done they kind of start storing this metadata of the process and this thing is happening a lot on the internet. People know a lot of resources, a lot of tutorials and video and a shit load of things. But when it comes to execution and practice I can hardly say only a very few might have gone to complete what they have started. I am saying all this because I have gone through this cycle myself I have wasted 2 years of my life. Collecting resources related to ML, web development, Math, Psychology, Philosophy you say whatever you find interesting I will tell you some famous book or MOOC course on that. So I will ask everyone this question take a look on 1 back of your life, if you guys were trying to learn anything do a retrospective whether you really have learned anything, write things that are going right, right things going wrong and start doing things, making project, solving problems really doing the things not just trying to perfect the process. I can go on but I think I have made the point if I keep writing more I think I will contradict myself that it's not about what and how info you get it's about you get something actionable out of something. If some 2-minute video gives you something actionable to do rather than going through a 2-hour chapter in textbook there is no point of going through 2-hour chapter. Knowledge is all about applying not learning the facts and saying it around to your friends I know it feels good but nothing comes out of it in real life.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#84

Nothing beats having a (good) teacher. Self-learning, no matter how smart you are, is pitifully slow without a teacher. Half an hour with a good teacher can save you weeks of table head-butting. (But obviously you can't rely only on the teacher.) As for books, it's not a spectator sport: you gotta do it yourself. Read a sentence, then work it out yourself with pen & paper. You can't get it just from reading alone. Fi…

>Half an hour with a good teacher can save you weeks of table head-butting. That says more about the poor quality (or bad fit) of the book/video/material than it says about the skill of the teacher. I guess online courses where students can post comments and talk to each other partially address this. These comments may help point out the parts that the material failed to convey properly (and in an ideal world, such f…

Yes, the quality of the material you use is important.

A good teacher can quickly direct you to appropriate materials for your personal needs.

A novice learner is generally unable to identify what is or isn't poor quality (hence the OP's question).

[Edited to add: This forum has recommended certain materials, but we have no idea whether they suit the OP's needs. There has not been enough two-way communication with the OP, even if the OP has made a good effort to clarify their question.]

Using a teacher to bypass this step of identifying materials is way more efficient and... saves you weeks of table head-butting.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the general statement that leaning maths is "pitifully slow without a teacher". So long as one has structure (e.g. some kind of syllabus) and has access to google, then learning can proceed very efficiently indeed. In addition, by being able to work through difficulties independently you can "be your own master" so to speak, earning the confidence to solve new and difficult problems without assistance…

An author of a book is still a teacher... we’re just debating the personalization of the teaching at this point.

But then this recommendation becomes vacuous. No one is recommending learning math by deriving everything yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#86

Nothing beats having a (good) teacher. Self-learning, no matter how smart you are, is pitifully slow without a teacher. Half an hour with a good teacher can save you weeks of table head-butting. (But obviously you can't rely only on the teacher.) As for books, it's not a spectator sport: you gotta do it yourself. Read a sentence, then work it out yourself with pen & paper. You can't get it just from reading alone. Fi…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#87

Nothing beats having a (good) teacher. Self-learning, no matter how smart you are, is pitifully slow without a teacher. Half an hour with a good teacher can save you weeks of table head-butting. (But obviously you can't rely only on the teacher.) As for books, it's not a spectator sport: you gotta do it yourself. Read a sentence, then work it out yourself with pen & paper. You can't get it just from reading alone. Fi…

> Half an hour with a good teacher can save you weeks of table head-butting.

I spent a year and change trying to teach myself calculus from a textbook. Eventually I signed up for a class at a community college and learned more in a month than I had all year. I think this says more about my learning style than anything else, though, but my experience was shared (on other topics) with lots of other people.

I think you benefit a lot from having other people working on the same thing, and you benefit a lot from having a teacher/mentor who can interactively explain to you where you are going wrong. You can definitely find some hard-ass who taught themselves measure theory in a cave, but...

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the general statement that leaning maths is "pitifully slow without a teacher". So long as one has structure (e.g. some kind of syllabus) and has access to google, then learning can proceed very efficiently indeed. In addition, by being able to work through difficulties independently you can "be your own master" so to speak, earning the confidence to solve new and difficult problems without assistance…

An author of a book is still a teacher... we’re just debating the personalization of the teaching at this point.

Maybe, but I think people do mean a literal human, and I do think books were always available, and if that alone were the key... then I hesitatingly make the simple argument that it would've already been done. One might make a similar argument about why Khan Academy isn't a blowout success in the US.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#89
Rather than simply give you a list of resources or textbooks, I’d like to give you a broad “map” of the various domains of mathematics, this way you understand what you’re working towards. I’d also like to recommend how you can maximally optimize your self-study, as someone who mostly self-learned enough mathematics to be active in research. I think this meta-direction is just as important as the resources you choose to learn from.

Mathematics, in my opinion, can be divided in two very major ways ways as concerns pedagogy. First, most mathematics computation-based or proof-based. Math research in general is about proving things, and most “serious” math books after a certain level are almost exclusively about proving properties instead of calculating results. On the other hand, most applied mathematics is computationally inclined, and uses methods derived from research. Here is a simple example: I can ask you to calculate the square root of 2 or I can ask you to prove that it’s irrational.

It’s important for you to know what you want. Do you, for example, want to achieve theoretical mastery of linear algebra that subsumes e.g. solving linear equations, or do you just want to be able to execute the computational methods proficiently? As you get into higher mathematics the line here blurs, but different resources may still emphasize one approach or the other.

Now let’s talk about the domains of mathematics. Broadly speaking, we can divide them into algebra and analysis. More accurately, we can divide their methods into algebraic or analytic. Algebra is concerned with mathematical structures and their properties, like fields, groups, rings, vector spaces, etc. Analysis is concerned with functions, surfaces and continuity. I like to say that in algebra, it’s difficult to identify what you’re studying and whether it’s worth studying it, but once you do there is a lot of machinery that’s relatively straightforward to prove. On the other hand, in analysis it’s easy to find things worth studying, but difficult to prove interesting things about them. For example, if you can prove that what you’re studying satisfies all the conditions of a field, you immediately can prove many other things about it. On the other hand, the toolbox of analysis is widely applicable to many things, but it often seems like you’re trying a hodge podge of techniques, and the proofs can look kind of magical at first. For a concrete example, try to prove that 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + n = n(n + 1)/2.

Now let’s take a tour of mathematics at the undergraduate level. In theoretical (but not necessarily pedagogical) order we have: set theory, calculus, analysis, topology and probability theory on the analytic side; and set theory, linear algebra and abstract algebra on the algebraic side. Analysis can be further subdivided into real analysis, complex analysis, functional analysis, harmonic analysis, Fourier analysis, as you move from foundational material to specialized material. Similarly abstract algebra divides into group theory, ring theory, finite fields, Galois theory, etc. Probability breaks down into discrete versus continuous random variables, measure theory, statistics (on the applied side), etc.

Here is my concrete advice regarding learning the material. First, internalize the idea that mathematics is “not a spectator sport.” You learn it by doing it, not just by reading it. Every time you’re sitting down with a textbook, attempt every exercise in good faith, and take an author’s lack of a proof as an invitation to prove it yourself. The first time you read a chapter, read it briskly, skipping over what you don’t know to get to the end of the chapter. Let that material percolate in your mind a bit, even though you won’t understand much of it. Then read the chapter again, but slowly. Write down every definition, theorem and proof. Try to prove each theorem yourself before reading the author’s proof. For anything unclear, search for different examples of that concept or for different proofs of that theorem. Then attempt at least half of the exercises at the end of the chapter. You will struggle a lot, and you will be demotivated a lot. It will feel frustrating and you will be humbled continually. But I can promise you that if you keep challenging yourself this way you will continue to improve. It’s not enough to find the right textbooks or the right resources, you need to study them the right way - in an active, focused way.

That brings me to my second piece of advice. There are many good books and resources for any given topic. Different people respond more favorably to different types of exposition. Sometimes you’ll receive a book suggestion and realize it’s not for you - that’s fine! It might still be a good book. For example, I rather like Rudin’s Principles of Mathematical Analysis, but please don’t try to learn from it without a teacher! For any given topic, find four or five strong suggestions, preferably all at your level of capability at the time. Then read the preface and the first 10 pages of the first chapter in each book. Look at the table of contents to understand not only the coverage of topics, but the pedagogical arrangement of topics. Proceed with the book you have the strongest affinity for, and use other books when the author is unclear.

Finally, now I will give you textbook suggestions:

1. Set Theory: Naive Set Theory, Halmos.

2. Calculus: Single Variable Calculus, Stewart; Multivariable Calculus, Stewart; Calculus, Spivak.

3. Linear Algebra: Linear Algebra and Its Applications, Strang; Linear Algebra Done Right, Axler; Linear Algebra, Hoffman & Kunz; Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces, Halmos.

4. Analysis: Analysis I, Tao; Analysis II, Tao; Understanding Analysis, Abbott; Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Rudin.

5. Abstract Algebra: A Book of Abstract Algebra, Pinter; Abstract Algebra, Dummit & Foote; Algebra, Artin; Algebra, Hungerford; Algebra, MacLane & Birkhoff; Algebra: Chapter 0, Aluffi.

Start with that, and once you've gained sufficient mathematical maturity look for more targeted and specialized resources. I also recommend that you read Concrete Mathematics by Graham, Knuth, Patashnik; and Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by Kolmogorov, Aleksandrov and Lavrent'ev. These two, especially the latter, are good for covering a variety of mathematics at once. They are good for both learning and mathematical "culture."

I can't stress this enough: it's important that you really optimize the way you're studying and what your goals are, instead of trying to collect as many book recommendations as possible.

Re: Ask HN: How to self-learn math?

#90

I know people are recommending a lot of books here but I want to say this, I know a lot of you guys might going to shit on me but telling someone about 5-6 book in order to self-learn maths is never going to help. I see that when someone people ask for help instead of relating what he is really asking for that he wants to understand and learn math people start telling the names of these books that they knew about not…

I fully agree, and especially for mathematics the key is definitely practise, practise, practise. That's why it's so hard to learn mathematics without a teacher, it's all about exercise and you really need someone to explain to you how to solve a certain problem when you're not able to solve it for more than 3 days or even weeks.

If you know someone who can explain yet-unsolvable problems to you, then you can get far with self-learning, but my overall experience is similar to yours. I've got books on machine learning, physics, and all kinds of interesting topics, but as long as I don't have the time and energy to seriously work through all the exercises, they will at best only give me cursory overviews of what's going on in the field and what I could learn.

What you can do yourself is to get into new domains once you already have some solid background or to check papers and theorems that use math you already are familiar with. But that's not learning math, of course, that's just applying existing skills.

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