I am just about to begin a part-time open university mathematics degree (mature student) as part of a process to get over my fear of mathematics. I have a GCSE in higher mathematics but sometime between being a school kid and starting a PhD I got the fear. I messed up 2 attempts at AS level, mostly due to other priorities of being a 17 year old, I mucked up my PhD due to the fear (who would have thought robotics & vision needed maths huh?) ignoring important papers simply because they were impenetrable to my maths reading skills. I am currently spending 2 hours a night reading through GCSE, AS & A level revision guides to prepare for the start of the university course, however any additional help would obviously be superb.
Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#12Please record these sessions and upload them to YouTube, so they'll help more than just one person. Thanks for volunteering.
Thanks for the suggestion, and I share the sentiment, but I'm not going to do that. I'm happy for the student to record them and later upload them if (s)he wants to, but I don't want to commit to broadcasting because:
1) I'd rather not have the distraction of thinking "is this going on YouTube?" permeating the lesson and changing the student's (and my) responses. You'd be amazed how much harder it is to think when you suspect the entire internet may get to hear your answers.
2) Things that come up might not be interesting to other people; I take an extremely interactive approach, ideally with the student doing about half the talking.
3) Given the audience, it's possible people might want to ask me about how to apply some mathematics to their business. They may not want relevant information published.
That said, if at the end of the lessons it turns out that they might be a useful resource, and the student agrees, I'll be happy to do this.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I upvoted you. Thanks for posting clickables, I'm actually not sure how (do you just put HTML tags in the text?) So, hope that cancels out.
You can't make clickable links in submissions - it would be too easy for spammers. URLs in comments automatically get linked, and there's a long tradition of adding a comment to a submission to make the URLs clickable. From: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html How do I make a link in a question? You can't. (This is to prevent people from using this method as a way of submitting a link, but with their comments in a pr…
Thanks again.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#14On behalf of all of HN, thank you for the kind and generous offer of
your time and expertise. Though a lot of people excel at learning on
their own, many human beings are trained to learn better through
courses. The examples, direction and structure provided can really help.
I never bothered to take calculus in school (distant decades ago), and never bothered to seriously study on my own (e.g. dedicated learning working through an entire book), but I have managed to learn various, incomplete chunks of it. In short, I just learned the parts I needed to know at various times to do something, and admittedly, I've probably forgot most of them. It's somewhat unfortunate to publicly admit only remembering random, disjointed chunks of calculus (and also lambda calculus for that matter), but I'm certain I'm not alone.
Being that you've worked as a math and physics tutor for a decade, you've most likely seen quite a number of calculus texts being used in courses and possess an extremely valuable opinion on the merit of various tomes. You're possibly even familiar with on-line courses such as MIT Open Courseware and similar.
Since there's no way you'll be able to tutor everyone, would you provide your opinions on books and courses for the self-starters?
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#15I am just about to begin a part-time open university mathematics degree (mature student) as part of a process to get over my fear of mathematics. I have a GCSE in higher mathematics but sometime between being a school kid and starting a PhD I got the fear. I messed up 2 attempts at AS level, mostly due to other priorities of being a 17 year old, I mucked up my PhD due to the fear (who would have thought robotics & vi…
I'm doing this right now - MST121 and MS221. I'm finding it a pleasant challenge without having done anything more than GCSE maths. It's finding the time to do the study that's tricky. Say hi if you've got any questions about the course - doing the revision you've mentioned sounds a great idea.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#16Clickables: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2737510 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Further_Mathematics ======== ADDED IN EDIT: WTF - I got a downvote for this?!? From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. (breathe deeply - calm - don't complain - does no good - breathe dee…
Colin, don't let the down-votes get you down... if you pardon the pun. Some people mistakenly think clickables are just karma whoring because they don't realize it is (intentionally) impossible to put clickable links into a submission. Additionally, they're also probably not thinking beyond their own use-case, where the (intentional) annoyance of copy-paste is painful on mobiles.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#17Clickables: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2737510 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2811818 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Further_Mathematics ======== ADDED IN EDIT: WTF - I got a downvote for this?!? From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. (breathe deeply - calm - don't complain - does no good - breathe dee…
Colin, don't let the down-votes get you down... if you pardon the pun. Some people mistakenly think clickables are just karma whoring because they don't realize it is (intentionally) impossible to put clickable links into a submission. Additionally, they're also probably not thinking beyond their own use-case, where the (intentional) annoyance of copy-paste is painful on mobiles.
tl;dr - thank you.
It's just that there are days when I get depressed by the fact that so many people on the 'net and using sites like HN have a sense of entitlement - insisting that they really understand everything and that - God Damn It - they'll impose their own way of working and thinking and voting, without taking the time to become enculturated.
At least, that's how it feels. I just need to take another break. I'm finding that my breaks from HN are getting longer and longer, and then time back before I need another break are getting shorter and shorter.
It's said that a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until eventually they know everything about nothing, whereas as generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more until eventually they know everything about nothing.
I'm getting more and more irritated and annoyed by the actions of a small minority who just spoil my enjoyment of HN. Maybe I've just outgrown it, but I really hesitate to say that because there's always more to learn, and there are some great people here.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't make clickable links in submissions - it would be too easy for spammers. URLs in comments automatically get linked, and there's a long tradition of adding a comment to a submission to make the URLs clickable. From: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html How do I make a link in a question? You can't. (This is to prevent people from using this method as a way of submitting a link, but with their comments in a pr…
Thanks again.
NP. You might want to put contact details in your "About" field in your profile. The "email" field isn't visible to the world, only to HN admins.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#19I am just about to begin a part-time open university mathematics degree (mature student) as part of a process to get over my fear of mathematics. I have a GCSE in higher mathematics but sometime between being a school kid and starting a PhD I got the fear. I messed up 2 attempts at AS level, mostly due to other priorities of being a 17 year old, I mucked up my PhD due to the fear (who would have thought robotics & vi…
I'm doing this right now - MST121 and MS221. I'm finding it a pleasant challenge without having done anything more than GCSE maths. It's finding the time to do the study that's tricky. Say hi if you've got any questions about the course - doing the revision you've mentioned sounds a great idea.
You mention that your doing both 121 & 221 at the same time. When I was reading up about the course they recommended only doing this if you had A level (or above) and could commit 16 hours per week. How does that stack up to your experience? Does the course have a good staring gradient? I spend my life coding (in the finance industry) and am un-fazed by the mathematical challenges it throws up daily but am utterly petrified of starting out on the course (maybe combined?) and being presented with a sheet of impenetrable symbols and vast amounts of expected ability, knowledge of processes, terms etc... It's the notation and vocabulary, the superior knowledge of superior men, that worries me the most.
Re: Offer HN: Free Maths Lessons
#20On behalf of all of HN, thank you for the kind and generous offer of your time and expertise. Though a lot of people excel at learning on their own, many human beings are trained to learn better through courses. The examples, direction and structure provided can really help. I never bothered to take calculus in school (distant decades ago), and never bothered to seriously study on my own (e.g. dedicated learning work…
"Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus Thompson (updated by Martin Gardner).
http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/d...
(And you probably know this, but "Calculus" isn't the same as the "Lambda Calculus" - your comment makes it appear that you've confused or equated the two.)