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Comment by insane_dreamer | Hacker News Reader

is MathAcademy that much better that KhanAcademy (which also has a Linear Algebra course and covers eigenvalues of course), which is free? Considering it for my youngest kids, but my eldest (now finished college with a degree in engineering) used Kahn Academy as a high school supplement and it was quite good (this was about 10 years ago). (She didn't take the KahnAc LinAlg course -- not sure it was around at that time -- but she did take their calc course and it helped her ace her CalcBC AP test.)

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> is MathAcademy that much better that KhanAcademy

I'm using mathacademy and I will unequivocally say its better and worth the money. First it uses a assessment to test your knowledge and will send you modules to fill in the gaps. I finished foundations 1 and now I'm in the middle of foundations 2.

One thing I love about math academy is that you spend very little time reading and no time watching videos on the subject. You get a short walkthrough of how to solve a problem and then it gives you a few more problems building up the complexity. A few days later it gives you the problems again to test your knowlege. the interface is not as pretty as khan academy but you're basically learning by doing and its very effective. I wish it was around when I was in university.

MathAcademy really is fantastic. I've done 5300 xp so far (80+ hours), and am almost finished with their Math for Machine Learning. It's remediated a lot of things I've struggled with during my University ML classes. Seriously a wonderful pedagogical experience. I can integrate multivariate functions easily, know all my derivative trig identities, and I don't get confused by continuous random variables any more.

I'm working through Foundations specifically to do Math for Machine Learning and I'm very excited for that course. What were your thoughts on it?

Also, if they ever did a Math for Computer Graphics course I'd never cancel my subscription.

I think Math for ML is __fantastic__. And based on the curriculum Jason has published for ML, it seems very __very__ promising. I've done a fair bit of ML @ Cornell, so I've had exposure to a lot of the material he plans on covering. However, I glossed over a lot of the theory because some weakness in my math. I feel like this has been remediated with M4ML and ML should expand and solidify my understanding.

Edit: Wrt to computer graphics, going through M4ML and the ML sequence will really help you understand what's happening there. Convolutional Neural Nets, Gaussian Splatting, all rely on these same principles.

Is there another ML course besides Math for ML? If so can you share a link

I just started going through Math for ML and can also attest, it is amazing. Pedagogically revolutionary, and helping me fix up all sorts of gaps in my math background.

It’s just ok. Certainly better than watching some random yt videos or passively reading a tb. For context I did ~11k pts to finish M4ML. It’s a little frustrating to see them chase the money and make ML/programming courses while the core differentiator (lesson quality) is still lacking in the later math topics. There are persistent issues that annoyed me so much that by the end it was like pulling teeth go grind out the points every day.

It has you overfit on the style of questions they ask, and I never felt like I got a good grasp of lots of the later topics despite passing my reviews and quizzes no problem.

Can you go into more detail about your experience it’s difficult to find negative or critical reviews of MathAcademy. (Well except reviews in the same vein as Paul Lockhart’s A Mathematician’s Lament [1])

I’m taking their Math Foundations 2 now. So far my only two complaints are:

1. Everything feels like a random grab bag of “tricks”. There isn’t a coherent presentation of why this works or why it’s important. 2. Geometry lessons just suck. I don’t blame MathAcademy for this, since they basically follow what would be considered standard American high school geometry curriculum. But after having gone through Euclid’s Elements, everything here just feels empty by comparison.

Overall I’m still very happy with the product. They do largely deliver on their promises.

https://worrydream.com/refs/Lockhart_2002_-_A_Mathematician'...

I know this is extremely pedantic, but I think you mean in the same "vein" instead of "vain".

Updated. Thanks.

they do. in a ways, 90% of computer graphics is linear algebra and multivariate calculus. both are subjects you will find in mathacademy. once you learn those two, I recommend Peter shirley's book for a lesson on how to apply what you learned to computer graphics. https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Computer-Graphics-Steve-...

Yes, Math Academy is insanely good. It's a lot more intense, focused learning and less edutainment.

I'm an adult and not a kid, but wrote about my experience after 100 days of using it daily here: https://gmays.com/math

The Math Academy team (including the founders) are also active on X/Twitter: https://x.com/_MathAcademy_

And there's a Math Academy community on X here in case you want opinions from other users: https://x.com/i/communities/1833198423593431339

We homeschool our son and after a lot of trouble with an online course that used Saxon math, we landed on Math Academy. I found it much easier to use than Khan both for the parent and student. I do sometimes wish there was video content and discussion of application. But my son does it first thing every weekday and really seems to do good with it. Also worth noting it is accredited and lets you print a transcript.

yes if your kid loves math - my kid benefited from Math Academy (currently in college studying CS). Started with Math Academy as a HS freshman and finished BC Calc 2 years early with a 5 on the AP Exam. While he did Khan Academy for many years (which is a great resource) it didn’t really motivate him as much and seemed designed for a broader more generalist audience.

We also tried some other programs like Art of Problem Solving (great program, but required very synchronous classes which were hard to fit in)

My suggestion would be try it for a few months,

Yes. I use and enthusiastically endorse Math Academy. It is far and away the best self-learning educational resource I have ever tried; leagues better than Khan Academy.

I'm a self-motivated adult learner, so I don't know what it's like for kids. Though the program was originally designed for them, so I suspect their experience would broadly be similar to mine.

As other commenters have mentioned, you need to be okay with grinding through problem sets with no videos or UI pizzazz -- maybe this doesn't work for everybody. I'd compare it to the difference between trying to learn a language through scattered YouTube videos and Duolingo versus tandem and grinding on a good Anki set.

NB: I'm taking it for the Math for ML track and am currently most of the way through the Math Foundations III course. So I can only comment on the lower level courses.

Much better for anyone so motivated. There's considerably less handholding, the questions are a little "trickier" (without being unnecessarily cruel) and there's a more intense pacing to it since there's no videos. It's focused on learning-by-doing, which I love.

For many, I would recommend Khan Academy. It's a great resource, especially since it's free. But if learning math is about more than just passing a class, Math Academy is worth every penny.

If your goal is to practice and be able to pass tests perfectly - yes, it's much better. If you just want an overview of some area for a specific task, probably not. MA's approach is "you're going to learn it and you're going to learn all the foundations for it and you'll perfect the tests", which is great for many people - especially if you're actually going to be tested on things in the future. And being 99% practice, 1% reading really leans into that idea.

Math Academy has some "gamification" (using this term loosely) to push you to do your homework. That's actually great if you care about learning efficiently.

But as far as I remember, it hardly teaches you how to write proofs, so how much it actually teaches math is a bit questionable.

| it hardly teaches you how to write proofs

Proofs are coming, the site is a work in progress.

https://x.com/justinskycak/status/1835085776524394951

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