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Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

(www.quantamagazine.org)
669 points sonabinu | 3 comments | 21 Nov 24 01:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mbbbackus ◴[21 Nov 24 15:21 UTC] No.42205153[source]▶
I've been reading the author's book, Mathematica, and it's awesome. The title of this post doesn't do it justice.

He shows that math skill is almost more like a sports talent than it is knowledge talent. He claims this based on the way people have to learn how to manipulate different math objects in their heads, whether treating them as rotated shapes, slot machines, or origami. It's like an imagination sport.

Also, he inspired me to relearn a lot of fundamental math on MathAcademy.com which has been super fun and stressful. I feel like I have the tetris effect but with polynomials now.

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1. gravypod ◴[21 Nov 24 17:30 UTC] No.42206579[source]▶
I really want to try MathAcademy.com. How quickly do you think someone doing light study could move from a Calc 1 -> advanced stuff using that site? In my case I could put in at least 30 minutes to an hour a day.
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2. Rendello ◴[21 Nov 24 20:17 UTC] No.42208184[source]▶
I can't speak to the advanced stuff but here's my stats on Fundamentals I:

Total time on site (gathered from a web extension): 40h 30m Total days since start: 32

Total XP earned: 1881

Since "1 XP is roughly equivalent to 1 minute of focused work", I "should have" only spent 31 hours. I did the placement test and started at ~30%, and now I'm at 76%. I'd say 75% is stuff I learned in HS but never had a great handle on, 25% I never knew before.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the course. I'm learning a lot every day and feel like I have stronger fundamentals than I did when I was in school. The spaced review is good but I do worry I'll lose it again, so I'm thinking of ways I can integrate this sort of math into my development projects. It's no Duolingo, you really do have to put in effort and aim for a certain number of Xp per day (I try for 60 XP rather than time).

3. sn9 ◴[23 Nov 24 21:41 UTC] No.42224169[source]▶
Hard to say but this should give you an idea [0].

At that rate, less than a year is reasonable.

[0] https://www.justinmath.com/what-is-the-highest-sustainable-d...