Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

neilwithdata.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–216 of 216 posts

Re: Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

#211

Post by sn9 »

golergka wrote: post #207
sn9 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would use Khan Academy. Start at a level that feels too easy, even if it's elementary school math. The key to learning anything is to start at a level that feels too easy and gradually increase difficulty. As you finish a subject, see if there's a corresponding book in the Art of Problem Solving store [0]; you can revisit the subject at a deeper level that will strengthen your foundation. The AoPS books will also e…

> The key to learning anything is to start at a level that feels too easy and gradually increase difficulty. Is it though? In this particular case, for this particular person, may be. But personally, I always found myself bored and ADHDly switching to something else in 5 minutes if I wouldn't drop myself right in the deep end. And from my interactions with different software engineers over the years, I doubt I'm the…

I didn't say it was the only way.

More like the most foolproof way.

Re: Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

#212

Post by sand33pn »

dotancohen wrote: post #113
sn9 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would use Khan Academy. Start at a level that feels too easy, even if it's elementary school math. The key to learning anything is to start at a level that feels too easy and gradually increase difficulty. As you finish a subject, see if there's a corresponding book in the Art of Problem Solving store [0]; you can revisit the subject at a deeper level that will strengthen your foundation. The AoPS books will also e…

++Anki Myself and my daughters use Anki every day. It has been the defining factor in turning my mediocre job into a career. And Ankidroid on Android is open source.

A big shout-out to both Anki and Ankidroid. I wish there was a way to donate to them.

Re: Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

#213

Post by dotancohen »

zuzuleinen wrote: post #126
dotancohen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

++Anki Myself and my daughters use Anki every day. It has been the defining factor in turning my mediocre job into a career. And Ankidroid on Android is open source.

Can you tell me what type of cards did you use for your career? I'm thinking to start using Anki, but not sure how to structure the cards. Thanks!

Lots of cards for Linux commands, programming gotchas, and client-specific details like "Foo prefers H:i:s date formats".

Re: Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

#214

Post by wyqydsyq »

ducaale wrote: post #190
wyqydsyq wrote: post #58

As someone who dropped out of highscool after 10th grade and never went to university/college one great way I've found for learning mathematics without any foundational basis is trying to learn CG/3D programming. I always felt like maths was too abstract to keep me engaged, but when the output of your work is immediately observable visually it becomes a lot more engaging. There's just something so much more satisfyin…

This is why I love to do game development without using a game engine. It gives you a reason to learn math, optimize your code down to the metal, all while having fun playing your game.

Yeah I've been self-learning 3D "the hard way" and have been really enjoying it.

Keeping it as low-level as possible, I'm using CycleJS for dataflow management and Regl.js for drawing via a CycleJS-Regl.js driver.

All state is explicitly managed observables/streams in CycleJS, which maps out to Regl.js draw commands, which are basically raw frag/vert shaders with some bindings mapping my state from CycleJS to appropriate uniforms/attributes.

I probably would be able to produce some usable output much faster if I used an engine like Unity or a framework like Three.js, but I feel like I would have missed out on gaining so much knowledge by only working with high-level abstractions and never having to even touch GLSL code.

Re: Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

#215

Post by dorchadas »

nubb wrote: post #37
dorchadas wrote: post #33

I think it's great that people are posting book links like this, however, what I've found most helpful is actually having someone to help guide you. I realize how lucky I was that I found a Discord server ran by a math PhD graduate who is willing to help us guide our learning. From this, I've started learning Algebra and Analysis (just starting with the latter). It's nice to have someone to discuss problems with when…

Could you share the discord server? Thank you.

I'm not the owner, and it's a small server, so I don't feel comfortable. Sorry. I think I found the owner through /r/math, so you might be able to find his old post there though.

Re: Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner

#216

Post by inimino »

TheTrotters wrote: post #117
chobytes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn proofs well and you get pretty good and knowing when you’re right. Enough for almost any problem you’ll be likely to encounter in a math textbook anyway.

I strongly disagree. It's a little like saying "learn programming well enough and you'll know if some piece of code works as expected without running it."

> "learn programming well enough and you'll know if some piece of code works as expected without running it."

That is 100% true.

Obviously the code needs to be self-contained (not calling into other unknown code) but so do mathematical proofs.

Post reply on HN