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1. Make sure you understand the concepts
2. Mark what you dont know clearly
3. Write down what you know
4. Use 3 to find out 2.
Oh gee, thanks!
This is a more realistic approach.
1. Have a reasonable amount of mathematical talent
2. Study materials appropriate to your current level and mathematical maturity.
3. Work hard at it.
4. Ask for help when you are stuck
There.
Bad rules. My suggestions ask yourself the following all the time 1) Do I ~really~ understand what the definition / theorem is supposed to tell me. 2) A proof is just a reason why something is true in maths. Do you understand ~why~ a statement is true? 3) Exercise all the time. You won't learn math by memorizing definitions, theorems and proofs.
How is this disagreeing with the OP? It specifically says that memorizing e.g. theorems is bad.
I would love to get back and really learn math. I was really interested back in High School with Geometry and Algebra. But my interested totally burned out with poorly taught and punishing Calculus classes in College.
What would anyone recommend to someone who really only had high school math[0] to get up to speed on enough math to handle more advanced computer science concepts? I’m really interested but all the material I can find is either for kids (which just isn’t sufficiently stimulating for an adult) or aimed at college kids with a decent background in math that is fresh [0]: not even calculus just what they called technical…
You may want to pick a book on writing proofs to familiarize yourself with the concepts first, such as "How to prove it" (either the one by Velleman or Polya). Another good one for getting to some intuitions might be "How to solve it" by Polya.
Then, you might pick up any elementary book on Real Analysis, Linear Algebra, as well as Graph theory/some Algorithms. Most of these should be self-contained. These 3 areas should lay a very firm mathematical foundation, and other parts of mathematics will become a lot more accessible with them.
Just be mindful that you'll probably need a long time going through these books, and that's normal. If you gloss over things, you'll quickly miss important bits. It's not like other books where you can kinda grok things out of context if you just continue reading, at least for me. I wouldn't do more than max 2h per day, but be consistent if you want to see progress.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you spend most of your time in class, when do you have the time to do the assigned work? That’s what I struggled with.
If you have other significant demands on your time then school is going to be hard no matter what strategy you choose and might just take a lot of years to finish (please vote for UBI to help change that status quo). Assuming you can commit to school full-time though, it's less of an issue: - You can finish a typical bachelor's degree in 5y by devoting 48h/week to school (12h for classes, 36h for assigned work). That…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you spend most of your time in class, when do you have the time to do the assigned work? That’s what I struggled with.
In all seriousness, I stopped going to lectures* and studied at my own pace. My learning isn’t linear, so there will be some topics that are easy that you can move quickly on. Other topics take more time. Sometimes you can take a detour and dive deeper kn interesting topics. Going to lecture, sitting in lecture, waiting around, etc. provided very little information per unit time for me. I can’t learn math or anything…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you spend most of your time in class, when do you have the time to do the assigned work? That’s what I struggled with.
How much class did you have? My first year at university had three hours of tutorials and ten hours of optional lectures per week. Subsequent years had less. There was plenty of time.
I am going to be honest, these kind of articles are useless. 1. Make sure you understand the concepts 2. Mark what you dont know clearly 3. Write down what you know 4. Use 3 to find out 2. Oh gee, thanks! This is a more realistic approach. 1. Have a reasonable amount of mathematical talent 2. Study materials appropriate to your current level and mathematical maturity. 3. Work hard at it. 4. Ask for help when you are…
I was bang average at high school algebra(computation) but untouchable at geometry/trig.
At uni linear algebra was a breeze but Calculus II was a nightmare.
What does mathematical talent mean?
Also, use computers! I use SAGE extensively to get a feeling for lots of mathematical objects! 1. Grobner bases: http://bollu.github.io/computing-equivalent-gate-sets-using-... 2. Localization: https://github.com/bollu/bollu.github.io/blob/8cd335687ff3ef... 3. More broadly, an answer on math.stackexchange on how to debug math: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1769475/how-to-debu... 4. (WIP) continued fraction…
You might enjoy Ideals, Varieties, and Algorithms: An Introduction to Computational Algebraic Geometry and Commutative Algebra by David Cox.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you spend most of your time in class, when do you have the time to do the assigned work? That’s what I struggled with.
In all seriousness, I stopped going to lectures* and studied at my own pace. My learning isn’t linear, so there will be some topics that are easy that you can move quickly on. Other topics take more time. Sometimes you can take a detour and dive deeper kn interesting topics. Going to lecture, sitting in lecture, waiting around, etc. provided very little information per unit time for me. I can’t learn math or anything…
If I had reviewed the material beforehand lectures were often extremely valuable for gaining new intuitions about a subject at hand that could be gleaned by an instructor's choice of explanation. And being able to ask questions in real-time was also quite valuable.
Also, use computers! I use SAGE extensively to get a feeling for lots of mathematical objects! 1. Grobner bases: http://bollu.github.io/computing-equivalent-gate-sets-using-... 2. Localization: https://github.com/bollu/bollu.github.io/blob/8cd335687ff3ef... 3. More broadly, an answer on math.stackexchange on how to debug math: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1769475/how-to-debu... 4. (WIP) continued fraction…