Math Academy pulled me out of the Valley of Despair

For child, being precocious in a subject is usually a curse. Being bright and a generally fast learner is also a trap. Hitting the wall is inevitable for almost everyone, but until that point your self-image is built on forward velocity, and especially relative velocity — you’re just faster than your peers. Turns out there are faster kids, they just aren’t at your school.

Parents can make this worse but it’s pretty hard to prevent it.

Great post! It's always interesting to see the experiences of fellow peers going through Math Academy.

It took myself 2 1/2 months to complete Mathematics for Machine Learning on Math Academy last year (2024) working through reading material, taking notes, and completing all the exercises took all day everyday I loved it, this was after I completed Khan Academy (starting from the beginning of mathematics negative numbers, to the end differential equations) because I kept putting it off for years when I got to busy.

The main thing for me was learning not to get too frustrated when getting an answer wrong. If I made a mistake, I focused on understanding what went wrong, looking up youtube videos on the topic if it was confusing, and then trying again.

At the end of a lesson I wish I had someone to bounce questions off of but thats when I used chatGPT.

Congrats!

I’m doing math academy and I have two comments. First, the value of this site comes from its content which is very thorough. I think it’s a great way to learn math.

Second - I love the website. It reminds me of what I think of as the golden age of web design where sites were mostly server side rendered with a little jquery / Ajax sprinkled in, and more information density was preferred.

Math Academy and a SQLite course pulled me out of despair as well. I grew up thinking I was relatively smart and being able to learn on my own, but only randomly and sporadically. After not learning much the past few years and feeling very stupid, I decided to look for some paid courses to take on Hacker News.

The SQLite course was in a very different video format and took roughly 20 hours, but I learned a lot and immediately used that knowledge in two software projects that would've seemed insurmountable to me.

As for MA, it's taken a lot longer and has been difficult. I'm now at 6000XP and halfway through Fundamentals II. I have a lot of thoughts, but I (kind of) plan to (probably not) write a review after having completed Foundations I-III, since I haven't talked to anyone else who's done so so far.

I'll call out 3b1b and khan academy for me. Especially over covid. Made math fun again.

My middleschool principal thought it'd be a good idea to skip me over pre-algebra into alg 1.

Turns out that doesn't work great, and I still have confidence issues because I have a hard time remembering the properties of addition & multiplication by name. I know the rules.

I really want to do Math Academy and even briefly tried it a year ago. It's absolutely great but it's also very expensive. I know that math skills are invaluable, it's far cheaper than schooling, and that long term the investment is likely to pay for itself but when you're skint $49/month is still a pretty hefty sum, especially if you live outside of America. For context in the UK, a basic gym membership (£17/month) and a SIM only phone plan with unlimited data (£22/month on a two year contract) only costs £1 more in total than Math Academy (£38/month). I can't help but feel that the people who would benefit from it the most are also the people least likely to be able to afford it.

I’ve used Khan Academy with the kid and always been impressed, but Math Academy sounds very promising indeed. Anyone have an informed view on the relative merits? I don’t mind paying the monthly fee if there’s genuine value.

Always great to hear from people on the far side of the valley of despair. I don't think it is pointed out enough that people who fall off of "mount stupidity" can sometimes get really really stuck. In my experience when they do that at work it is quite traumatic.

Another good book for the author and others is "5 Elements of Effective Thinking" by Burger & Starbird. It thinks about thinking which can sometimes side step the depression of suddenly not thinking you know anything about anything that accompanies that big drop off mount stupid.

Congrats on your progress!

Over the past few years, while homeschooling my daughters, I've come to see the way math is usually taught as horribly pathological. In the US, where we live now, it's often seen as a competitive activity -- almost like a sport. In the UK, where I grew up, that wasn't the case but still it was taught as this huge body of knowledge and skills with almost no motivation.

My daughters are so advanced in math and I really don't believe it's even mostly due to innate ability. It's because, just to take an easy random example, when we studied geometry our very first lesson was me pointing out that the word "geometry" just means "earth measuring", and it was useful for farmers to be able to do that. Or, when we proved the irrationally of sqrt(2), of course I entertained them with the tale of Hippasus being thrown into the sea by the Pythagoreans. For basically everything we've learned there are so many fun stories. It makes me sad that most students of math never get to hear them.

I am currently studying for our country's version of the SAT and, having tried Math Academy — having been convinced there is nothing anywhere as polished and developed on the market — I still had to cancel my subscription after the first month. The price just wasn't worth it; over a single year, it translates to a cost greater than one-on-one tutoring.

Small companies have to understand the value of local pricing — nobody is willing to pay above h percent of their salary for a service X, and there's only so much that rule can be bent. I understand that, at the end of the day, the company still has all their expenses in USA prices, but for digital services with no manufacturing or logistic costs, it can be better to make a modest profit than none at all.

Math Academy is awesome, I'm fully hooked, but, repeating something I wrote elsewhere: it is a bleak existential confrontation with your ineptitude with fractions.

I read this article because I wanted to learn more about their Math Academy experience, but I found the preamble and backstory a little long, which caused me to skim.

Re: Math Academy, I used the service for ~3 weeks last year from a post here on HN by the guy responsible for the AI/ML knowledge graph behind the platform (I believe his first name is Justin). I was "only" doing about 30-60 minutes a day (a little bit higher than their guidance, but low for someone not doing math otherwise IMO).

N.B. Due to substandard early instruction combined with being "gifted and talented", I was placed by the test into Math Foundations 1 (or 2?). For example, I still don't have an active/working mastery of the unit circle. So if you're a real whiz, YMMV.

I found Math Academy effective at showing me my weaknesses and sharpening those skills in the short term, but I probably didn't do it for long enough to benefit from the spaced repetition effects. I found the UI/UX better than Khan Academy (sans AI), and much less tedious (when I demonstrated understanding, the questions moved on or increased the complexity vs. doing the full problem set no matter what).

When I cancelled within the first month to receive my refund (see other commenters mentioning the high price), I was surprised to see my support email and refund request email both went to one of the founders (or owner?), Sandy Roberts, who was emailing me while also attending her daughter's college orientation (or helping her move, can't recall right now).

Cancelling was painless once I realized I was getting a response from someone at the platform --- so if you're interested in trying it, I can recommend giving it a shot. Maybe there's some sort of economy for them if more (adult) people sign up, because 50 USD still feels a bit steep.