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Relearning math as an adult

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Re: Relearning math as an adult

#81

Post by ammasant »

MrVitaliy wrote: post #80
dcw303 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOPS audience is gifted high school kids, so it doesn't get up to the college level. The core texts are: - Prealgebra - Intro to Algebra - Intro to Counting & Probability - Intro to Geometry - Intro to Number Theory - Intermediate Algebra - Intermediate Counting & Probability - Precalculus - Calculus

I think it's a weird way to learn math, and I learned it this way in school. Most of these courses just teach information memorization and recall. sin(x)^2 + cos(x)^2 = 1, etc. I would start with something like Elementary Analysis: The Theory of Calculus, and work from there. You'll eventually arrive at the same place -- Calculus but from a much stronger mathematical foundation.

You learned using the AOPS books? Don't be fooled by the titles, these books exclusively use a proof-based approach to construct a pretty wide foundation around these topics.

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#82

Post by ajmurmann »

aoki wrote: post #61
mech422 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't say I remember 7th grade ... but we were doing proofs in Geometry in High School. I also lived in a semi-rural US neighborhood.

10th grade is the “on level” time to take geometry.

So US school kids don't encounter any geometry in school till they are ~16?

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#83

Post by jamestimmins »

jorgesborges wrote: post #28

I’m a thirty-something with an arts degree who decided to learn math. Basically I was tired of reading popular science and being fed metaphors to understand concepts. I wanted to “see” it for myself. I spent time online at Khan Academy and friends for a year or so on and off. It was fine but meandering? So I enrolled in community college! It’s great. I have a clearer path, immediate feedback, teachers, and an obligat…

That's awesome that you're working towards this goal!

Side note: community colleges are an incredible deal, and since starting a woodworking class at one, I could easily see myself taking one or two classes at a time basically for decades.

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#84

Post by [deleted] »

boxfire wrote: post #3

I may be biased as I am a trained Mathematician, but I always feel when someone says "Math is Hard", that is because they had bad teachers. Math is easy if you build up from fundamentals, not like physics education where you say "but lets delete everything before because it had an oversimplifying assumption", rather if you build your knowledge entirely sequentially from things you know or assume, you build up a toolb…

[deleted]

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#85

Post by instaheat »

This post couldn't be any more timely. I dropped out of school years ago (16 years ago to be exact) to take care of my sick mother when she was dying.

I never went back. I just started working.

I am happy to report I am back in school and will be FINALLY finishing my Computer Science degree but I have a very long 4 years ahead of me. Math is going to be hard.

What is encouraging is the thrill of when I get the answer right and most importantly knowing HOW I got there. It's (almost) better than sex.

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#87

Post by rtpg »

Self-learning is the sort of thing where you really want to be pointed to the right books. Some books are really good if you have people you can ask questions too, but those might not work at all without that. Meanwhile, others truly are a "lock yourself in a room for a couple of weeks and process it" thing.

One side thing I've been thinking of to try and tackle this is an autodictact's version of letterboxd: have people talk about books and resources they're using, offer help to one another, and maybe help people discover interesting things to poke at. At the very least it would help me track my own in-progress material

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#88

Post by wodenokoto »

jorgesborges wrote: post #28

I’m a thirty-something with an arts degree who decided to learn math. Basically I was tired of reading popular science and being fed metaphors to understand concepts. I wanted to “see” it for myself. I spent time online at Khan Academy and friends for a year or so on and off. It was fine but meandering? So I enrolled in community college! It’s great. I have a clearer path, immediate feedback, teachers, and an obligat…

Khan used to have something called "world of math", which would take you through the entirety of Khan academy "backwards". Eg., you would do problems, and only take lessons when you couldn't complete a problem.

While the first 1 or 2 weeks felt more like a case study on how to teach number literacy to children ("how many elephants are there in the picture?") it soon became real calculations and later on all the branches of math. I did it for a few month leading up to my masters, and it was great.

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#89

Post by Jtsummers »

ajmurmann wrote: post #82
aoki wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10th grade is the “on level” time to take geometry.

So US school kids don't encounter any geometry in school till they are ~16?

No. The formal geometry class is usually age 14/15 (first or second year of high school). They should have seen a less formal treatment of geometry before then, though they may not know it.

Re: Relearning math as an adult

#90

Post by tayo42 »

jorgesborges wrote: post #28

I’m a thirty-something with an arts degree who decided to learn math. Basically I was tired of reading popular science and being fed metaphors to understand concepts. I wanted to “see” it for myself. I spent time online at Khan Academy and friends for a year or so on and off. It was fine but meandering? So I enrolled in community college! It’s great. I have a clearer path, immediate feedback, teachers, and an obligat…

> working toward a bachelor of science in physics.

Thats cool, I kind of want to do that. But also Im stuck with wondering, I put all this work into that, what do I do at the end?

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