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Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

math.cmu.edu

141–150 of 153 posts

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#141
post #139

With that title and reception I can imagine people bookmarking this for „later“ and feeling good about it. But who reads that stuff really? To each their own, but 700+ pages for material that is done in my experience in the first 2-3 weeks of undergraduate math is more disheartening than empowering for a student, in my opinion. If you can open a math book anywhere in the last 20% of pages and just start reading, you…

> With that title and reception I can imagine people bookmarking this for „later“ and feeling good about it.

I'm in this comment and I don't like it.

> If you can open a math book anywhere in the last 20% of pages and just start reading, you are looking at pop science and not lecture notes.

What do you mean?

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#142
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Math Academy ( https://mathacademy.com ), we created a series of courses, Mathematical Foundations I, II, & III, that will take a student from basic arithmetic through calculus and prepare them for university-level courses like Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calculus, Probability & Statistics, etc. You can jump in at any with an adaptive diagnostic that will custom fit the course to you based on your individual str…

600 USD a year is definitely worth it to learn any highly technical topic: mathmematics, physics, chemistry, CS, engineering, etc. BUT... I'm highly skeptical of any online math course that claims many students have mastered 3-5 years of math in a year. How many hours of study in what subjects? How was mastery measured... did they take the grad school math GRE and ace it? Mastery takes continued practice... I'm highl…

Hi, I'm Alex, the curriculum director at Math Academy.

I can completely understand the skepticism and agree that many online courses are paper thin. That's where we're different.

For example, our BC Calculus course comprises 302 topics, each containing 3-4 knowledge points, so ~1060 knowledge points in total. Students must master each knowledge point to move on to the next. Our spaced repetition algorithms ensure that students are repeatedly tested on the material (we have quizzes every 150 XP or so). If they fail a question on a quiz or topic review, the system requires that they retake the failed topic. Students _cannot_ complete a course without mastering the entire thing.

Each knowledge point is connected to key prerequisites in the same course and lower courses. If a student stumbles on a particular knowledge point, our system can determine the most likely point of confusion and refer them to the associated key prerequisite topic (which they must pass to continue making progress).

We also have a couple of dozen multistep questions, similar to those you'd find on the BC exam (although the BC exam has about 4-5 parts per question, ours have about 9-10).

Regarding results, we had an 11-year-old sit the BC exam recently, and it looks like they will get a 5, the top mark. (For those that are unaware, students usually sit the BC Calc exam at the end of high school in the US, so 18). I admit that's an extreme case, but it's not isolated. I could reel off many success stories of students achieving real results on real tests after self-studying using our curriculum. We also have an associated school district program in Pasadena, California, where dozens of 8th-graders have achieved 4s and 5s in the BC exam, mostly learning using our system.

In terms of the required effort - provided you have no issues with the necessary prerequisite knowledge, you can get through our entire BC Calculus course by committing 40-50 minutes per day, five days per week, for around 5-6 months. Of course, if there are gaps in the prerequisite knowledge, then it'd take a little longer - but thankfully, our algorithms can detect missing knowledge and fill the gaps. That’s one of the advantages of having an intelligent, interconnected system comprising over 3000 topics!

As for our higher-level courses - some of these are still in development. However, our linear algebra course is comparable to several high-quality books on the subject (I like Lay, Anthony & Harvey, and Axler, though we use others). It currently has 176 topics, but many foundations are laid out in our Integrated Math III / Precalculus courses (vectors, matrices, basic determinants, inverse matrices, linear transformations in the plane), so the real number is around 200.

https://mathacademy.com/courses/linear-algebra

(click on the "content" tab to get a complete list of topics).

Could one of our students ace the GRE? That's a great question. We still need content on several key areas required for the GRE (e.g., Abstract Algebra, Real Analysis, Complex Analysis, and Graph Theory). These courses are still in development - we already have a lot of this content behind the scenes. That said, I'm confident that our students have the necessary tools to succeed in the parts of the GRE we currently cover. We don't "teach to the test," not even with BC Calc, but equipping our students with the necessary knowledge and skills to go from 4th grade math right the way up to acing the GRE (just as we've done with BC Calc) is one of our medium to long-term goals.

Happy to answer any further questions about the curriculum you may have.

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#143
post #65
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, I'm in doubt that a significant proportion of us would have the discipline for this. One reason why some things are pretty much only learned in university is that they provide the necessary motivation.

I collect interesting problems and learn the math that can solve them. I do best by directly connecting fun and learning.

You may enjoy signal processing in the context of submarines.

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little concerned that the majority of this 3-month-old account's posts are Mathacademy rave reviews.

Also as someone with a physics degree, it's difficult for me to think of taking courses beyond sophomore year that didn't involve SVD to some extent or were using proximal solution strategies (solid but not crazy tough public state school, late aughts). It's not something skipped for time, it's a basic tool used in multiple branches of physics/math. I'll need to look further to validate some of the content/capabiliti…

What can I say. It simply wasn’t taught at our university. Instead the advanced linear algebra course focused more on abstract function spaces to prepare us for quantum mechanics. This was before the machine learning revolution.

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#145
FWIW, Barr and Wells in a well respected reference on category theory [1] use a different definition of a function than the one in this book. Essentially they avoid insisting on the concrete model of a function as a set of ordered pairs (which they call its graph), and would regard two functions having identical graphs as being nevertheless distinct if they have different co-domains (section 1.2). IMO their definition is better thought out and ultimately less troublesome when it comes to reasoning about functions. The definition of a function is always the first thing I check in any book about math for a rough assessment of whether reading the rest of it might make me dumber or smarter.

[1] https://abstractmath.org/CTCS/CTCS.pdf

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

600 USD a year is definitely worth it to learn any highly technical topic: mathmematics, physics, chemistry, CS, engineering, etc. BUT... I'm highly skeptical of any online math course that claims many students have mastered 3-5 years of math in a year. How many hours of study in what subjects? How was mastery measured... did they take the grad school math GRE and ace it? Mastery takes continued practice... I'm highl…

Hi, I'm Alex, the curriculum director at Math Academy. I can completely understand the skepticism and agree that many online courses are paper thin. That's where we're different. For example, our BC Calculus course comprises 302 topics, each containing 3-4 knowledge points, so ~1060 knowledge points in total. Students must master each knowledge point to move on to the next. Our spaced repetition algorithms ensure tha…

Well... it really does sound impressive. I'll probably check it out at some point.

You would probably get more traction if you offered a free month up front because so many platforms before you have failed to deliver on the hype.

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#147
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks great and was ready to sign up but I surely wasn't expecting that price! I am not saying it is not worth that, but as someone who has tried to start learning math on my own only to quit afterwards for whatever reason, it's a big risk to take.

Hi Gerard. Math Academy does not charge your card for the first 30 days. If you find it's not a good fit for then you can cancel within this period and you won't be charged. 30 days hopefully gives you enough time to determine whether it's a good fit or not.

My colleague informs me that, contrary to my previous message, you get charged immediately, but you get an automatic refund if you cancel within 30 days.

Apologies for any confusion.

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#148

FWIW, Barr and Wells in a well respected reference on category theory [1] use a different definition of a function than the one in this book. Essentially they avoid insisting on the concrete model of a function as a set of ordered pairs (which they call its graph), and would regard two functions having identical graphs as being nevertheless distinct if they have different co-domains (section 1.2). IMO their definitio…

Indeed. The question "given a function as a set of ordered pairs, write code to decide if it is injective" has an answer, but replace that with "surjective" and suddenly you need to drag the codomain along as an extra parameter or the question makes no sense. This asymmetry bothers me.

EDIT: to be clear, "code" only works if your set is finite, but the principle of "does this question even have an answer" remains "yes" for injective and "no" for surjective without the codomain being named explicitly.

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#149

is there a service that can print, bind and mail PDFs with as many pages as this? It'll be useful for some of the manuals I have to read too

https://www.lulu.com/ I used lulu.com to print a copy of OnLisp [1] What I got was one of the best bound paperback books I've ever held. I wish all publishers would just sell eBooks (and publish settings like "optimal paper size") so that I could print my own copy using a service like lulu. One of my biggest gripes with hardcopy books nowadays is that the paper stock they use is so thin that the ink on the other side…

I've used lulu few times as well. Really like it. Whats your process for preparing a pdf for it?

Re: Everything you always wanted to know about mathematics (2013) [pdf]

#150

Does anyone know of an entry level book that could take someone through say, high school math to college alegbra / calculus? This is my singular biggest hurdle in going back to school to finish my degree and I'd love to fill the gaps I have around mathematics so I can not only finish my degree; I'd also like to participate in some more advanced computer science that rely heavily on underlying computation.

try khan academy first?
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