Ask HN: How can I learn and get better at maths on my own?

If you google “3blue1brown” you’ll get a youtube channel that has good visuals for building your intuition before deeply learning about a topic.

A huge part of math is learning how things work, how to look at things, when there’s actually an easier way to do things than that one formula you just learned. Even if a book can perfectly teach you this, you still lose a lot of perspective.

If you get a teacher, or at the very least someone who is helping you, or even just learning alongside you, you’ll learn far more efficiently, as what the other person thinks may be put in a phrasing, or use a tactic, or have some reasoning, the list goes on, that you could never have come up with on your own. Even if you’re smarter than Newton - well - Newton didn’t get to where he got without a little help throughout his life.

HOWEVER.

That’s not to say it’s impossible. If you really have a love for mathematics, there a loads of ways to learn more math. If you’re looking just to get some random math knowledge, then roaming YouTube is actually a pretty effective method of gaining some fun knowledge. Those guys are average joes just like you and I. They always have something fun to get your hands on.

If, however, you’re looking for a specific subject, or something that would otherwise replace a class, then get the best textbook you can find and get a tutor. Maybe you’ll be fine on your own, but two heads are still better than one, especially with education. Math builds on itself. If you just barely scrape by in Algebra, Calculus isn’t going to be fun. You need to have a pretty good understanding of everything. That’s why its so hard.

One last tip: pace yourself. If you think you’ve got a topic after reading it and working on a couple of problems, still take a day on it. You’ll find something you missed, find a shortcut, or something, and it’ll make the next topic just that much easier. And again, that’ll carry on.

It heavily depends, whether you want to use math as a tool or focus on math because math fascinates you.