Resources to get good at math?

43 minutes ago, MarcusAseth said:

So I was wondering, there is any resources online you know of that maybe trough good teaching or exercises to the user really gets me to understand all of in and see it as abvious? Or is like my brain is just not meant/equipped to work with numbers and formulas?!

Even though you have a dislike of Khan Academy (just be aware you are greatly limiting the number of excellent resources for arbitrary reasons), I would still recommend it.

Even if you ignore all the videos (which I think is a bad plan), there are also exercises that build in complexity. At the very least, they can help pinpoint places where your math skills need improving, so you can search for that specific topic elsewhere.

The exercises can be found here, starting at basic things like "Count with small numbers" up to more complex topics like "Finite geometric series in sigma notation":

https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/math

EDIT: There are also online courses like Udemy and Coursera, but I don't have any experience with them when it comes to math courses.

Would agree with Lactose that Khan academy do tend to do a good job of actually breaking down and explaining the areas so its a great resource even if it annoys you ;p

In terms of other ways to learn there are a bunch of apps like Math Theory that cover most of the areas you would need, its literally just a bunch of text about each area (no exercises) so its not the ideal, but it does explain things in a fairly easy to understand way.

Outside of that it would just be a case of grabbing some books on whatever topics youre struggling on, not understanding matrices look up some more books on them, its mostly about finding one that explains it well in a way that you understand, though its hard to say what book / resource would do that for you... plus you can never have too many books ya know

I was hoping there where online alternatives to Khan Academy, seems really strange/hard to believe that it is the only site teaching math and proposing exercises...I mean, math doesn't seems something "so exotic" that noone else would attempt a site like that, right?!

This is really the current 2017 situation regarding learning math online?

If there are no choices, I'll give Khan Academy another stab, though if there are alternative similar to it, let me know

2 minutes ago, MarcusAseth said:

.I mean, math doesn't seems something "so exotic" that noone else would attempt a site like that.

But setting up a site that covers that many math subjects, with video explanations & interactive exercises on every one, set in a structured framework takes a lot of time, effort and skill.

Go to YouTube and you'll easily find someone trying to explain almost any math subject, but most of them will be fairly horrible.

Khan Academy is by far the best. Sorry you don't like it! Set the speed to 1.25x if you find it drags a bit too much. Also, the practice sessions between videos are essential.

Coursera and the like are basically just university professors who've dumped their undergrad courses online - you get minimal support, few useful exercises, and little attempt to really explain the concepts from base principles.

4 minutes ago, Kylotan said:

Khan Academy is by far the best. Sorry you don't like it! Set the speed to 1.25x if you find it drags a bit too much.

Well is not I don't like it, I mean, it annoys and distract me from the math point of the lesson when the host go full OCD with color matching, interrupt to change color, erase to write with the proper color etc..., but I recognize the worth of the extensive explanation and the color thing is nothing I can't get past I guess.

I didn't mentioned it in the first message but I've watched 361 videos on Khan Academy, and still feel like I didn't really picked up that much given the amount of material, so my true concern would be that Khan Academy is somehow not doing it for me or maybe has the wrong pace...

anyway I'll go back to it then.

3 minutes ago, MarcusAseth said:

I didn't mentioned it in the first message but I've watched 361 videos on Khan Academy, and still feel like I didn't really picked up that much given the amount of material, so my true concern would be that Khan Academy is somehow not doing it for me or maybe has the wrong pace...

Do you also do exercises related to the video topics once you've watched the videos?

Like Kylotan mentioned, actually using the math in addition (math pun!) to just watching is critical.

5 minutes ago, Lactose said:

Do you also do exercises related to the video topics once you've watched the videos?

I do those when the site prompt me to them, which is usually every 5 videos

If you know exactly what you need : why not ask someone who can do the math for you.

30 minutes ago, the incredible smoker said:

If you know exactly what you need : why not ask someone who can do the math for you.

Because then I would not be learning the math...and I would have to rely on who can do it, forever. And in the long run, the one that is needed is the one that actually can perform the task and not the one that goes asking someone else to do it for him...

Math is no good for your head.

I,m lucky my brother can do and still studys complicated maths, i,m better at programming ( its not the same ).

Difficulty doesn't really classify as a reason to not try and learn something, at least for me.

In the end nothing is difficult, it just require more time to be acquired as opposed to something else, I realized this while studying japanese, which looked sooo difficult and misterious at the time.

Difficulty in trying to study something while you dislike the subject, that is true difficulty. But except for what you dislike, everything else is easy (while possibly time consuming to acquire).

Ask great artists, they will tell you (Feng Zhu will tell you for sure) that ANYONE can become a pro artist if he/she draws for 10.000 hours. The question is if you enjoy it enough to commit that much time to it

It sounds like you already know what you need to do to "get good". I know you said don't recommend Khan Academy, but it's my favorite math resource for self learning. I point people at that and if they're still having problems I'll work with them on understanding the concepts. If the math of a particular lesson is completely going over your head, maybe you don't really understand the previous lesson? And the instructor isn't just writing in different colors because he feels like it, he's writing in certain colors to show what's related. When graphing X-Coordinates might be blue and Y-Coordinates might be red (for example).

Wikipedia usually has detailed entries on math concepts, but sometimes it goes a little too deep for a novice. The internet in general is a great resource. Math text books have gotten pretty decent over the years. They're not just a big book of problems and actually teach the concepts in each section. Math teachers (if you're still in school) like teaching math so you can ask for help from them. Math tutors can be hired for a price. Friends who are good at math can be leaned on.

What math in particular are you having problems with?

12 minutes ago, Eck said:

IIf the math of a particular lesson is completely going over your head, maybe you don't really understand the previous lesson?

That's probably exactly what was hindering me on that site, I noticed yesterday I had between 10-20% completition on basically every math subject, the resoult of jumping from a topic to the other instead of following the videos in order, and thus I struggled with knowledge given for granted from previous lessons.

So in an attempt to fix that, since yesterday I'm going full ocd watching all the video IN ORDER starting from the kindergarten ones (but at 2x speed) , blazed trough more than 1 hundred videos and did all exercises, completed 100% kindergarten ( ) 1st and 2nd grade, and now I am at 41% of 3rd grade, just blazing trough, still 2x speed.

If I really encounter some obstacle, I'll make sure to ask here, thanks

Btw, yesterday I ended up trying to port my c++ code into JS code on khan accademy, never used JS so I'm proud it actually worked, but probably I shouldn't since it's so similar...

give my app some thumbs up guys -> https://www.khanacademy.org/computer-programming/3d-rotating-cube/5789123067707392

5 minutes ago, MarcusAseth said:

That's probably exactly what was hindering me on that site, I noticed yesterday I had between 10-20% completition on basically every math subject, the resoult of jumping from a topic to the other instead of following the videos in order, and thus I struggled with knowledge given for granted from previous lessons.

So in an attempt to fix that, since yesterday I'm going full ocd watching all the video IN ORDER starting from the kindergarten ones (but at 2x speed) , blazed trough more than 1 hundred videos and did all exercises, completed 100% kindergarten ( ) 1st and 2nd grade, and now I am at 41% of 3rd grade, just blazing trough, still 2x speed.

If I really encounter some obstacle, I'll make sure to ask here, thanks

It might be boring, but I think going about it this way is actually a really smart idea. Good luck!

- Eck

2 hours ago, MarcusAseth said:

That's probably exactly what was hindering me on that site, I noticed yesterday I had between 10-20% completition on basically every math subject, the resoult of jumping from a topic to the other instead of following the videos in order, and thus I struggled with knowledge given for granted from previous lessons.

I always have had the same problem when learning something new like this. The lessons tend to drag on and when you skip them you almost always skip important stuff.

Alternatively you could always try and fill in gaps of understanding using Google/wikipedia. I majored in math for my undergrad and even did research and I highly reccommend Wikipedia, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ and math stack exchange. Wolfram has an article on nearly every topic and is really well categorized.

In terms of what to focus on the most important subject is definitely linear algebra. Calculus and especially Vector calculus kind of help too but I would really focus hard on linear algebra. In particular try to really understand the following topics. These have definitely gone the longest way for me.

• What a normal vector to surface is
• Dot product
• Cross product
• Transformation matricies (mostly rotation matricies)
• Really understand how to use linear transformations hierarchically. (i.e. local position/rotation/scale as opposed to global position/rotation/scale)
• Bezier curves.
• Frenet-Serret formulas (useful if you're making wonky paths like roller coasters).

That's a nice list, I'll definetly pay attention to those (matrix rotation is what got me prompted to learn more math in the first place ) thanks

Got 100% in 3rd grade (my brain is hurting for how easy this is), today I probably get 100% in 4th grade and start 5th, though probably things will stay boring until 8th.

Anyway I have a specific question this time

So in this video https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-fourth-grade-math/cc-4th-measurement-topic/cc-4th-area-and-perimeter/v/length-and-width-from-perimeter-and-area

we have a rectangle and we know the perimeter is 20 and the area is 24, and we have to find the width and height of the rectangle, which I'll reffer to as W and H.

We know that :

W*H = 24

2W + 2H = 20

Now Sal goes about it in the lamest way possible, which is make a table and try out all the combinations until you find the parameters that satisfy both equations, but I would like to see how you would build a matrix out of it to solve it as a system of equations

Show me please

I would just rearrange the equation to find one variable, then substitute that in to find the other. Using matrices here is overkill.

The matrix form is also covered in the Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus/precalc-matrices/solving-equations-with-inverse-matrices/v/matrix-equations-systems