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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.

#61

Post by realitygrill »

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 tend to like the historical approach, too. So did Bohr? "Just as many sports players go through warming-up exercises before entering the arena, so Bohr would relive the struggles which had taken place before the content of quantum mechanics was understood and accepted. I can say that in Bohr's mind this struggle started afresh every single day." -some book on 20th century physicists I don't recall

..but reading the original papers? I can't imagine ever deciphering Newton or Maxwell (before Heaviside fixed up the equations, it was some horrific mess of like, 20 equations with 20 unknowns). There are great benefits in a clean, logical development.

On the other hand, I hear Dirac's papers were remarkably clear. Maybe reading the originals is easier for math?

"..if one wishes to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils" -Abel

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

#62

Post by pixcavator »

pyre wrote: post #55
pixcavator wrote: post #22

I like the style and I appreciate the idea. In fact, I’ve been working on something in the same direction. So, here are a couple of things that I prefer to do differently. First, these are video lectures but without actual students present. As a result, he is essentially talking to himself. I noticed that this causes him to skip some details that students might be wondering about. I prefer to start with actual lectur…

One thing that video has that HTML doesn't: single-file archive ability. Sure you can have a single HTML file as long as you keep it text-only, but most of these topics are going to be diagram (and math figure) heavy. There's just no good way to archive the content for later perusal. (Granted YouTube doesn't want you to directly download the videos, but it's not like it's that hard to circumvent -- and once you have…

Well, the site runs on MediaWiki, so you can save the printable version of each article. Even if you print the whole thing, the end result wouldn't be that much different from a bunch of video files for each 15-min lecture.

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

#63

Post by pbhjpbhj »

GFischer wrote: post #58
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OLPC + Khan Academny videos = win.

Only if they were in Spanish - here in Uruguay we have the OLPC deployed for all schoolchildren, but most students don't have the level of English required :)

Well your Spanish is good ...?!

It's not a huge stretch to imagine someone sitting and redubbing one of these though is it?

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

#64

Post by GFischer »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #63
GFischer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they were in Spanish - here in Uruguay we have the OLPC deployed for all schoolchildren, but most students don't have the level of English required :)

Well your Spanish is good ...?! It's not a huge stretch to imagine someone sitting and redubbing one of these though is it?

Well, it sounds like a long project to me :) .

It would be a nice project, though, maybe I'll propose it (and contribute to it).

Guess the first step would be contacting Khan.

PD: Spanish is my mother tongue.

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

#65

Post by pbhjpbhj »

GFischer wrote: post #64
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well your Spanish is good ...?! It's not a huge stretch to imagine someone sitting and redubbing one of these though is it?

Well, it sounds like a long project to me :) . It would be a nice project, though, maybe I'll propose it (and contribute to it). Guess the first step would be contacting Khan. PD: Spanish is my mother tongue.

Good on ya!

I was thinking more akin to having a site that would facilitate the redubbing allowing you to upload a dub via the site which would then be patched onto the video. You'd need some verification and voting on best dubs.

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

#67

Post by GFischer »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #65
GFischer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it sounds like a long project to me :) . It would be a nice project, though, maybe I'll propose it (and contribute to it). Guess the first step would be contacting Khan. PD: Spanish is my mother tongue.

Good on ya! I was thinking more akin to having a site that would facilitate the redubbing allowing you to upload a dub via the site which would then be patched onto the video. You'd need some verification and voting on best dubs.

You're right, I'm dumb :) .

Even some subtitles might help, and that's a much smaller project :)

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

#68

Post by JoshCole »

NyxWulf wrote: post #24

For most people, they come out of high school not just poor at math, they come out "Math Broken" as one of my friends puts it. The second you mention anything to do with Math, their eyes glaze over and their brain completely disengages. I think there are a lot of things that contribute to that, but generally Math is not taught in a very approachable way. The KhanAcademy is I think a very good start in solving that pr…

Would you mind sharing the resources that your using for problem sets?

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

#69

Post by pyre »

pixcavator wrote: post #62
pyre wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that video has that HTML doesn't: single-file archive ability. Sure you can have a single HTML file as long as you keep it text-only, but most of these topics are going to be diagram (and math figure) heavy. There's just no good way to archive the content for later perusal. (Granted YouTube doesn't want you to directly download the videos, but it's not like it's that hard to circumvent -- and once you have…

Well, the site runs on MediaWiki, so you can save the printable version of each article. Even if you print the whole thing, the end result wouldn't be that much different from a bunch of video files for each 15-min lecture.

The point being that as long as there are external files (css,images,etc) in the page you will have to save it as 'Webpage (complete)' (or the equivalent in your browser) which saves the HTML file and creates a directory for the external files. If you are saving a bunch of sites/pages this way you end up with a lot of directory/html-file pairs. And were you to ever move these around, you would need to make sure that the directory/file pair moved together. It makes much more sense to have it all in one file (and as with MAFF a file that doesn't necessarily need a browser to extract the contents).

Linking to this to the subject matter, most of the lessons have to do with math and science, in a way that requires diagrams and specific notations. Both of which cannot be represented in plain-text or HTML without external files.

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

#70

Post by eru »

Slashed wrote: post #51

My math skills were always bad. I mean, even though I had one of the best scores in school, I could never explain why it works, e.g. why 9^1/2 is the same as sqr(9) . Since I want to self-study the Quant Finance , I decided to refresh and develop my math skills up to the Calculus. This website is amazing! Not only it's a good refresher, it's the best source of knowledge created by one man.

Interesting. I usually learn best by explaining / teaching.
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