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Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

khanacademy.org

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Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#41

Post by tokenadult »

plinkplonk wrote: post #32
coffeemug wrote: post #15

I found that the best way for me to internalize a particular subject in hard science is to follow its history by reading the original papers. It's a hard way to do it, but it helps you understand the motivation, the progression of ideas, and the rigor that went into it. Anything else doesn't quite work for me - I feel like I "sort of" understand, but five minutes after I close the textbook (or the YouTube video) the…

"I found that the best way for me to internalize a particular subject in hard science is to follow its history by reading the original papers." I've often wondered why math programs (and books) aren't structured this way, explaining the historical context, reproducing the original papers (or explaining the arguments or proofs in the paper if the original happened to be in Latin or whatever), with a section on how the…

You would like Mathematics and its History by John Stillwell

http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-its-History-John-Stillwell...

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#42

Post by onoj »

morphir wrote: post #40

I feel the need to point out that when I submitted a link to khan academy, no one up-voted it. Why is this? ref. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911882

I did not see it that time? May also be the title given to the post. Humans are fickle. ( will up vote you now ;)

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#43

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

hexis wrote: post #39
jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #38

I make this comment every month: There needs to be a comprehensive site that aggregates all the educational videos on the net (lectures, conference talks, screen casts, simple instruction,etc.).

For better or worse, that site is google.com

It's a start, but there needs to be 1000x better organization and curation.

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#44

Post by mmelin »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #38

I make this comment every month: There needs to be a comprehensive site that aggregates all the educational videos on the net (lectures, conference talks, screen casts, simple instruction,etc.).

I think that http://academicearth.org/ does a good job, although they only aggregate courses from universities.

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#45

Post by lunchbox »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #38

I make this comment every month: There needs to be a comprehensive site that aggregates all the educational videos on the net (lectures, conference talks, screen casts, simple instruction,etc.).

Try http://nalandau.com/

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#46

Post by Tichy »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #9
chaosmachine wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. Any "real world" application would have been better than just theory. But games seem like a natural extension of math lessons, and who doesn't like games?

Well, just to provide a single example, my wife is totally disinterested in games. Absolutely doesn't care, to the point where if someone tries to motivate topic X via games she ends up feeling that topic X cannot have any value to her at all. By contrast, she is very interested in math, and wishes that at school it had been presented as other than a collection of facts to memorize and processes to learn and apply. I…

How do you motivate basic maths, though? Not everything can be directly connected to drug couriers and what not.

Ultimately I suspect the only way to succeed in maths early on is to consider it to be a kind of game. That is, puzzle solving for fun.

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#47

Post by teeja »

morphir wrote: post #40

I feel the need to point out that when I submitted a link to khan academy, no one up-voted it. Why is this? ref. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=911882

I'm guessing it was the word 'youtube' combined with 'educate'. (Youtube doesn't have much, uh, 'patina' for some of us.)

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#48

Post by teeja »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #36
plinkplonk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I found that the best way for me to internalize a particular subject in hard science is to follow its history by reading the original papers." I've often wondered why math programs (and books) aren't structured this way, explaining the historical context, reproducing the original papers (or explaining the arguments or proofs in the paper if the original happened to be in Latin or whatever), with a section on how the…

Frequently the historically motivated path is too long or creates too much baggage. It's not always the case, granted, and sometimes the historical development does give you the motivation, but you're still asking for a gifted teacher, and that's rare. A gifted teacher can teach with or without the historical perspective, and in my experience a clean, direct presentation with appropriate motivation and context is usu…

Agreed. I'd have appreciated physics more if it had been taught with a more historical approach. When I asked the profs why, the general answer was 'takes too much time'.

(I 'spect part of it is that history is a 'humanity' ... but also that it's because they didn't get the history either, and didn't have time to learn it well enough to teach it.)

The physics department (major US university) actually hired a history of science scholar, and I heard grumbling that he should be paid for by another department.

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#49

Post by bluesmoon »

plinkplonk wrote: post #32
coffeemug wrote: post #15

I found that the best way for me to internalize a particular subject in hard science is to follow its history by reading the original papers. It's a hard way to do it, but it helps you understand the motivation, the progression of ideas, and the rigor that went into it. Anything else doesn't quite work for me - I feel like I "sort of" understand, but five minutes after I close the textbook (or the YouTube video) the…

"I found that the best way for me to internalize a particular subject in hard science is to follow its history by reading the original papers." I've often wondered why math programs (and books) aren't structured this way, explaining the historical context, reproducing the original papers (or explaining the arguments or proofs in the paper if the original happened to be in Latin or whatever), with a section on how the…

Knowing the price of 1Kg of Potatoes, the street-side vegetable seller in my home town in India only needs to know how much to charge me for 3/4 Kg. He doesn't really care how innovations in mathematics resulted in fractional multiplication. This can be extended to the teaching of basic maths. Students who show an interest or an aptitude for grasping the finer and more insightful details can go on to read up on it, or ask their professors.

What we really need is professors knowledgeable enough to answer these questions or point the student to the right texts.

Re: Need to refresh your math skills? From basic algebra to calculus and beyond.

#50

Post by pgbovine »

coffeemug wrote: post #15

I found that the best way for me to internalize a particular subject in hard science is to follow its history by reading the original papers. It's a hard way to do it, but it helps you understand the motivation, the progression of ideas, and the rigor that went into it. Anything else doesn't quite work for me - I feel like I "sort of" understand, but five minutes after I close the textbook (or the YouTube video) the…

i think these videos are targeted mainly towards a much less technically-savvy audience than the folks here on HN.

I watched some of these lectures - they're excellent, but a bit too hand-wavy.

sure, but what more can you expect from 10 minutes? i don't care how great a 10-minute youtube video is, it can never provide the depth that sophisticated primary sources can. but then again, we shouldn't expect it to go nearly that deep :)

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