I'm not so sure about the spaced repetition side of things. Out of curiosity I've just opened MathAcademy after not doing any lessons for a little over two weeks and all choices I have are for new lessons. I expected to see an ocean of reviews instead, since surely I'm on the verge of forgetting a lot of what I've learned.
Other than that, I have very high hopes for the future of MA. It's by far the best platform I've found for actually learning math.
I recognize myself a lot when he talks about the feeling of losing knowledge acquired years ago. I would be very interested with MathAcademy if it can help me fight this! I am also wondering if it can help me learn new knowledge, especially new topics in maths I have never learned before?
Also what is the difference between MathAcademy and Brilliant? I have read many skeptical opinions on Brilliant, so it would be interesting to have a comparison.
Khan Academy use to have a cool knowledge map made with google maps api, it helped with identifying knowledge gaps.
Does anyone have an opinion about MathAcademy vs KhanAcademy ?
I agree with the observations of the author. I have found MA much more engaging than any book I've crossed paths with. Going from a pile of math textbooks to MA was going from good intentions to good results; it's quite amazing how much I've relearned over the past few months. This is the future, as far as I am concerned, with only refinements needed.
Also: I too really hope they expand into physics.
at 50$/month it can be interesting if you have an economical incentive to do it, but hard to justify if you just want to refresh your knowledge (not a critic, just a comment)
I struggle with my math courses at university (computer security), so much so, that I currently think about hiring a personal teacher for a couple hours a week before giving it another try.
I think my main problem (at least last time) is my inability to stay interested - I like having a real-world use case for the things im doing. It probably also didn't help, that my ADHD wasn't diagnosed last year.
Since MathAcadamy seems to address this problem (somewhat) I will try it for a couple weeks and report back. Might be interesting for some of you to get an entirely different perspective than the author's one.
A question for anyone with experience with MathAcademy: how does it handle proofs for the ideas it teaches? If my aim is to understand the mathematics, not just to solve equations, is this the right kind of tool?
My biggest complaint about the maths I've learned in the UK is that it was always taught mechanically. e.g. matrices were just taught as a set of rules for which numbers to add/multiply etc to get the right result, with no mention of why it all worked or the proofs behind it.
I've had a similar experience. I've now done math with Math Academy for 349 days in a row as of today. I'm not going as fast as I'd like due to other higher priorities like my kids and my startup, but Math Academy helps me make the most of the time I do have. I highly recommend it.
I also documented my experiences when I hit the 100 day streak mark here: gmays.com/math
MathAcademy is exceptional for dedicated students who can commit daily blocks of time to self-study. It was far better than my attempts at learning via textbooks. I largely agree with this author's conclusion that it's worth the money.
It's not perfect, though, and my experience differed a little:
> MathAcademy excels at identifying exactly what you need to work on, zeroing in on your weak spots and areas for improvement.
It doesn't excel at this yet. It claims to have an "adaptive diagnostic assessment [that] will identify the correct starting place for the student" but this didn't work very well for me. I ended up sitting through many questions that felt insultingly easy (e.g. number lines) without a way to skip them. You have to answer the questions quickly and correctly to prove you understand them, which is probably a defence against students clicking "I understand this" for everything when they don't, but it felt very tedious.
If you get a lot of questions wrong on a subject it ends the topic early with a (somewhat discouraging), "ending your session early due to poor performance" (why not just, "let's come back to this later"?). But if you get lots of questions right quickly it doesn't seem to have a similar, "lesson ended early due to great performance" or "ok, it's clear you already understand this" — it just continues to drill you, which feels very tedious.
> For less than the cost of a single hour with a private math tutor, MathAcademy provides you with 24/7 access to what is essentially a tireless, expert math tutor.
It's less like a tutor and more like a choose-your-own-adventure textbook with tests, spaced repetition and guided pathfinding. And that's great! But I missed things I'd get from a tutor, like the ability to ask for clarification. MathAcademy uses terms in questions or descriptions that it hasn't defined or explained previously (or perhaps it had defined those terms in earlier lessons it skipped?). I ended up looking things up from outside sources or taking a 30-minute detour into YouTube to fill in the gaps. Which is fine when it's occasional, but annoying when it's every other session. Sure, it's "adaptive" but it's not responsive like a real tutor.
The overall tone is that of the forever unimpressed tutor — quick to penalise and very light on encouragement. Full gamification with gold stars and badges and weapons upgrades would be annoying, but I'd like something more than "you scored x". (For example, immediately show me how my recent result has affected my overall understanding of the subject as a progress bar.)
The UX of the site is tedious when drilling questions daily. The slow round-trip before seeing if your answer was correct becomes grating; if this can't be done client-side I would love to see improved performance server-side.
On the whole, though, yes, it's worth checking out if you're serious about maths improvement.
If someone wants an idea, something like this for ds/algorithms would do wonders
Can I get it for free?
Is going through MathAcademy as an adult done for the sake of learning? Is it done as a hobby? What benefits are there for someone who may not be in a math related field to go through MathAcademy?
It's the best way to self-study math really.
I was previsouly trying using Susan Rigetti's "So You Want to Study Mathematics..." guide. It has been posted here a few times, but it's so easy to get lost in doing tons of problems that are too easy or too hard for your level, especially when you already know quite a bit of math, but there are some things that you never really mastered and some things you've forgotten, but you don't know what. Identifying those areas can be really hard, but MathAcademy helps you do it.
I don't really like their gamification system, somehow the way they deal XP points feel non-rewarding when I get points and it feels like I get punished when I answer something wrong, maybe that's just me, but the gamification of other online learning apps like Brilliant feel more rewarding, but those apps are just much less efficient and complete overall.
I also wish the mobile experience was a bit better. I need to keep the phone in landscape mode just to see the page. It would also be nice with an "on the go" feature that would show only problems that can be done mentally, to make it easier to do some 5 minute session on the go when you don't have pen and paper nearby.
It's really a must for anyone who wants to self-study math to fill in gaps, learn machine learning, physics or just for fun, especially if you want to master it and not just learn it on a superficial level.