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Comment by jorgesborges | Hacker News Reader

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 obligation to do work that keeps me on it.

Ultimately my plan is to get enough transfer credits for university and spend this decade slowly working toward a bachelor of science in physics.

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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.

I actually find the immediate feedback from khan academy exercises better than school actually. The feedback loop is much more tighter instead of waiting an entire week later for results and not really getting another go at it. I also tend to zone out or miss something in the lecture, and that missed thing is what builds the entire foundation for everything else and then the entire lecture is pointless. With video based lectures, I can pause, go back, play 2x speed, look at multiple well produced explanations, etc. Ultimately I don't find face to face all that valuable a various amount of subjects.

Replacing lectures with video lectures is fine, even an improvement. But not such much for exercises/problem-solving/practical classes.

100% Agree. Im a big proponent of developing self-thought skills and making the best of e-learning, but I think math (alongside languages and other) are one of those areas where the real time feedback makes traditional education still worthwhile.

It's hard to replace it with just books and online courses. Not impossible but harder.

Funny. As a college student I found face-to-face interaction was much more important to studying social sciences and humanities than to studying math or theoretical physics or computing which could pretty effectively be studied in a book.

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.

> It was fine but meandering?

I think that's a good point you sound like me I need to be pushed. I sued to read a lot of magazines and books on all kinds of subjects. Then came the Internet it has everything available but for me structure is missing.

> 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?

You could get a PhD in physics, and if you time it right, you will die right after graduation, the moment when all of your classmates realize they're staring down 40 years of software engineering. The tombstone could read, "I figured it out."

Some things are enjoyable in themselves, without needing a “so that”.

Then you will have gained insight into how the world works on a fundamental level. Isn't that something in its own right?

I can only speak for myself, and did go on to get a PhD, but even on a bachelor level, studying physics changed how I see the world and how I think.

It is, which is why I was interested in the first place. But physics the way it is taught is pretty rigorous and study is intense for someone with a passing curiosity. And idk if there is a way around the math for some of the stuff.

Videos are good to get some barebone knowledge, but are too superficial or unstructured to replace classroom settings, with graded exams and homework.

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