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tptacek • today at 7:00 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

I'm a broken record on how valuable I found Math Academy to be; 22,000 XP in roughly a year, going from high school trig (and a grim confrontation with my intuitive ability to work with fractions) through multivariable calculus.

The most important thing to understand about Math Academy is that it's all problems, problems over and over again, with just enough pedagogy to get you from one kind of problem to the next. It's a form of spaced-repetition system (often with the repetition cleverly arranged through interleaved topics, so that solving problems in the "next" unit also depends on techniques from the previous) and a drilling tool.

I'd echo any other observation about that structure being limiting for deeper understanding. The thing about that is, though, we already have ample resources for deeper understanding! For my part, GPT4 and GPT5 were more than enough supplementation, to drill into topics, connect them to other topics, ask "why the fuck does this work", etc.

When I got to Calc II (in Math Foundations III), Herbert Gross MIT lectures were super handy too. If you're doing Linear Algebra, I'd pair Math Academy with Strang's lectures.

To me, the limitations of the approach aren't interesting. The problem Math Academy is solving is the limiting reagent for self-study: boundless exercises and worked examples, a clear syllabus, and a forcing function for actually doing the problems. If you're self-studying math, you probably don't need extra structure to get you to read about math; you need the structure to get you to do math.

Easily the most valuable learning resource I've ever spent money on. Highly recommend.