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Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

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Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#81

Post by voidhorse »

I’m in a very similar boat. I didn’t find math interesting in any capacity until I read Frege’s foundations of mathematics when I was about 21 or so. Unfortunately, at that point my skills had degraded so much that I could barely get through basic geometric and algebraic problems. Since then, I’ve managed to greatly improve my understanding through self-directed learning to the point that I’m able to use mathematical concepts to make sense of other domains.

My approach is a bit less structured than what others have recommended. I typically start by gathering tons of materials on the domain, say, digital signal processing. I then read things carefully, accepting that I won’t understand everything right away. Whenever I encounter something I don’t understand that seems important, I’ll sit down with a pen and paper or open vim and quite literally go point by point and try to write an explanation of the concept and make sense of it for myself. This method has served me pretty well for learning about new things.

I think one thing you cannot get around, which others have also mentioned, is that the process is necessarily slow. trying to come up with detailed explanations for yourself takes time, as does rereading material, practicing, and learning to apply what you’ve learned. I think the biggest mistake autodidacts can make is rushing through things. It can be hard to resist the temptation to go fast sometimes, but it’s really important to dwell on things and go slowly

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#82

Post by chongli »

SubuSS wrote: post #65
rg111 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an A+ student up to Sophomore year in HS. I downgraded to A or B+ student after I knew how much fun actual learning is. Before that, all I was doing was memorizing and practising heuristics to get A+. I actually started learning Science since 11th grade. I grew and grew. And my scores tanked. Got only 6.xx/10 in college as well. But no regrets. Learning Math properly gave me a super solid foundation to learn De…

Fwiw it is not necessary to throw your college scores to actually learn as well: they just feel orthogonal sometimes. You can do both!

It depends where you study and what courses you take / who teaches you. Sometimes the professor will drive a ferocious pace of instruction and assessment and you will simply not be able to meaningfully keep up unless you sacrifice the depth of your learning in exchange for getting everything done. I have been in that position and watched my grades tank. Then, a year later, I watched my peers struggle with follow-up material that seemed to make a lot more sense to me.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#83

Post by dieselgate »

Not sure if learning from scratch as an adult would be much different than learning it from scratch at any other age. Learning math always took a lot of intentional work and focus for me and I would presume it’d be the same for a student of any age. There’s no silver bullet to learning a topic but I saw Khan Academy mentioned which is a good way to receive condensed “lectures”

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#84

Post by netaustin »

I'm restarting my own math education from the point of Calculus 1 so I can learn more about AI/ML, and want the college credits so that if I decide to do more graduate school, I will have solid prerequisites. I searched pretty exhaustively and settled on NetMath (https://netmath.illinois.edu/) which is a UIUC program. Most classes are self-paced and use Mathematica extensively, but you can go amazingly far in the program. I hope to get through their Calculus-based probability by about a year from now.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#85

Post by DeathArrow »

You have most of the mathematics needed to understand ML in one free book, Mathematics for Machine Learning [1].

It covers just about anything you need.

It would be better to study algebra, calculus, some trig and then statistics, it will give you a better knowledge, but this is a more condensed and a faster way to put you on track.

If you have time, you can go through it in one month.

[1] https://mml-book.github.io/

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#86

Post by inetknght »

I've never been to high school or college. The last school grade I completed with 7th -- or really just 6th. I can go into that in more detail if you like but there's a lot of personal drama that is irrelevant.

I will say that math is one of those things that you don't need to go to school to learn if you are persistent and passionate enough to learn on your own. There are tons of ways to learn.

First is to determine where you are. For that I highly recommend taking some of Khan Academy's free math courses. They start at the very basics. You will get bored of those.

But after that... I would say to take some things in your life and determine how to apply math. Create your own questions and try to answer them.

When I was 26 I was at the tail end of a janitorial job. I had applied (and learned) math to determine how much cleaning stock would likely be in use each week. Sometimes the math was "wrong" in so much as cleaning stock would be used more frequently or less frequently depending on what events there were that week. But it was a good exercise.

I'd also been writing some software on the side. Software and math are like two peas in a pod. A lot of people will tell you that you don't need to learn math to write software and they might be right for certain kinds of software. But even if you don't need math for software, it will certainly help. I now write software to fly drones and geometry is one of the core requirements.

Beyond the basics are Khan Academy there are plenty (!) of youtube videos from mathematicians who describe some of the simple [0] and more complex [1] concepts. Those have also been handy to me. All you need to do is search one math term that involves what you think you want to learn. A lot of the videos will include links to other videos that are prerequisites. Almost all of them will mention math words that will be new to you and if you search for those math terms you are likely you find other useful information.

Ten years ago I would have recommended that you search Google. Now? Don't do that. Google is full of trash and shit that want to take your money. Use Wikipedia, youtube, and reddit.

I've found 3blue1brown's lessons [0] [1] to be quite insightful for myself and have successfully used knowledge learned from his videos.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDNPOjrT6KVl...

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#87

Post by tomrod »

justsomeuser wrote: post #79
zerohp wrote: post #28

I was a C student in high school. I never took a math class beyond basic algebra. I started from Khan Academy's first exercise when I was 33 years old. It seems silly looking back that I was solving problems on the number line as an adult. At that time, around 10 years ago, Khan Academy had excellent coverage through trigonometry and single variable calculus. Once I reached that point I went to my local community col…

What kind of job do you go into with a math degree?

Math degrees open an amazing numbers of doors.

Data science, analysts, strategy, legal research (or research in general), many CS jobs, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#88

Post by elliekelly »

blagie wrote: post #70
elliekelly wrote: post #64

I've done this and would echo the good advice you've already gotten about Khan Academy but I think the comments in this thread are skipping over the most important part: pace. Work slowly. Don't move on until you really "get" the concept you're working with. Some topics might "click" right away and others might take weeks of bashing your head against the wall until your brain makes sense of it. That's okay. It can de…

I'll just mention: From a scientific perspective, this is absolutely the wrong advice. If you couldn't understand something yesterday, that's very good evidence you won't make sense of it today. You should work hard, go deep, and try hard problems, but if you fail to understand something after putting in the effort, just move onto something else. Learn a few unrelated things, and come back. Much of the time, if you c…

Care to share the science? This sounds more like a learner's internal/external locus of control. If you believe you are capable of figuring something out you're probably right and likewise if you believe you can't.

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#89

Post by moosedev »

rg111 wrote: post #56
zerohp wrote: post #28

I was a C student in high school. I never took a math class beyond basic algebra. I started from Khan Academy's first exercise when I was 33 years old. It seems silly looking back that I was solving problems on the number line as an adult. At that time, around 10 years ago, Khan Academy had excellent coverage through trigonometry and single variable calculus. Once I reached that point I went to my local community col…

I was an A+ student up to Sophomore year in HS. I downgraded to A or B+ student after I knew how much fun actual learning is. Before that, all I was doing was memorizing and practising heuristics to get A+. I actually started learning Science since 11th grade. I grew and grew. And my scores tanked. Got only 6.xx/10 in college as well. But no regrets. Learning Math properly gave me a super solid foundation to learn De…

> Now I do my semi-dream job as a Deep Learning Research Engineer building actual products with Deep Learning.

> I have a truly realistic chance of getting my dream job within the end of this calendar year.

So what’s your dream job? :-)

Re: Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?

#90

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jp0d wrote: post #45
zerohp wrote: post #28

I was a C student in high school. I never took a math class beyond basic algebra. I started from Khan Academy's first exercise when I was 33 years old. It seems silly looking back that I was solving problems on the number line as an adult. At that time, around 10 years ago, Khan Academy had excellent coverage through trigonometry and single variable calculus. Once I reached that point I went to my local community col…

Mate, you've no idea how much I could related to your story. I've a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering. Looking back at those subjects, I feel like I didn't have the maturity needed to appreciate the depth and meaning of it. I was too busy just passing exams and working to get a degree and eventually land a job. I did that and I have no regrets. But those concepts taught to us are the foundations of almost eve…

Yes - imagine inventing Fast Fourier Transforms without a computer.

Or the original continuous Fourier Transform, with just a pen and paper.

Or Heaviside's simplification of the Maxwell equations. Or calculating planetary orbits with perturbations.

Incredible leaps of imagination.

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