Is MathAcademy Worth It? Thoughts After 2k Experience Points (XP)

It&#x27;s the best way to self-study math really.<p>I was previsouly trying using Susan Rigetti&#x27;s &quot;So You Want to Study Mathematics...&quot; guide. It has been posted here a few times, but it&#x27;s so easy to get lost in doing tons of problems that are too easy or too hard for your level, especially when you already know quite a bit of math, but there are some things that you never really mastered and some things you&#x27;ve forgotten, but you don&#x27;t know what. Identifying those areas can be really hard, but MathAcademy helps you do it.<p>I don&#x27;t really like their gamification system, somehow the way they deal XP points feel non-rewarding when I get points and it feels like I get punished when I answer something wrong, maybe that&#x27;s just me, but the gamification of other online learning apps like Brilliant feel more rewarding, but those apps are just much less efficient and complete overall.<p>I also wish the mobile experience was a bit better. I need to keep the phone in landscape mode just to see the page. It would also be nice with an &quot;on the go&quot; feature that would show only problems that can be done mentally, to make it easier to do some 5 minute session on the go when you don&#x27;t have pen and paper nearby.<p>It&#x27;s really a must for anyone who wants to self-study math to fill in gaps, learn machine learning, physics or just for fun, especially if you want to master it and not just learn it on a superficial level.

I&#x27;m not so sure about the spaced repetition side of things. Out of curiosity I&#x27;ve just opened MathAcademy after not doing any lessons for a little over two weeks and all choices I have are for new lessons. I expected to see an ocean of reviews instead, since surely I&#x27;m on the verge of forgetting a lot of what I&#x27;ve learned.<p>Other than that, I have very high hopes for the future of MA. It&#x27;s by far the best platform I&#x27;ve found for actually learning math.

I recognize myself a lot when he talks about the feeling of losing knowledge acquired years ago. I would be very interested with MathAcademy if it can help me fight this! I am also wondering if it can help me learn <i>new</i> knowledge, especially new topics in maths I have never learned before?<p>Also what is the difference between MathAcademy and Brilliant? I have read many skeptical opinions on Brilliant, so it would be interesting to have a comparison.

Khan Academy use to have a cool knowledge map made with google maps api, it helped with identifying knowledge gaps.<p>Does anyone have an opinion about MathAcademy vs KhanAcademy ?

I agree with the observations of the author. I have found MA <i>much</i> more engaging than any book I&#x27;ve crossed paths with. Going from a pile of math textbooks to MA was going from good intentions to good results; it&#x27;s quite amazing how much I&#x27;ve relearned over the past few months. This is the future, as far as I am concerned, with only refinements needed.<p>Also: I too really hope they expand into physics.

at 50$&#x2F;month it can be interesting if you have an economical incentive to do it, but hard to justify if you just want to refresh your knowledge (not a critic, just a comment)

I struggle with my math courses at university (computer security), so much so, that I currently think about hiring a personal teacher for a couple hours a week before giving it another try.<p>I think my main problem (at least last time) is my inability to stay interested - I like having a real-world use case for the things im doing. It probably also didn&#x27;t help, that my ADHD wasn&#x27;t diagnosed last year.<p>Since MathAcadamy seems to address this problem (somewhat) I will try it for a couple weeks and report back. Might be interesting for some of you to get an entirely different perspective than the author&#x27;s one.

A question for anyone with experience with MathAcademy: how does it handle proofs for the ideas it teaches? If my aim is to understand the mathematics, not just to solve equations, is this the right kind of tool?<p>My biggest complaint about the maths I&#x27;ve learned in the UK is that it was always taught mechanically. e.g. matrices were just taught as a set of rules for which numbers to add&#x2F;multiply etc to get the right result, with no mention of <i>why</i> it all worked or the proofs behind it.

I&#x27;ve had a similar experience. I&#x27;ve now done math with Math Academy for 349 days in a row as of today. I&#x27;m not going as fast as I&#x27;d like due to other higher priorities like my kids and my startup, but Math Academy helps me make the most of the time I do have. I highly recommend it.<p>I also documented my experiences when I hit the 100 day streak mark here: gmays.com&#x2F;math

MathAcademy is exceptional for dedicated students who can commit daily blocks of time to self-study. It was far better than my attempts at learning via textbooks. I largely agree with this author&#x27;s conclusion that it&#x27;s worth the money.<p>It&#x27;s not perfect, though, and my experience differed a little:<p>&gt; MathAcademy excels at identifying exactly what you need to work on, zeroing in on your weak spots and areas for improvement.<p>It doesn&#x27;t excel at this yet. It claims to have an &quot;adaptive diagnostic assessment [that] will identify the correct starting place for the student&quot; but this didn&#x27;t work very well for me. I ended up sitting through many questions that felt insultingly easy (e.g. number lines) without a way to skip them. You have to answer the questions quickly and correctly to prove you understand them, which is probably a defence against students clicking &quot;I understand this&quot; for everything when they don&#x27;t, but it felt very tedious.<p>If you get a lot of questions wrong on a subject it ends the topic early with a (somewhat discouraging), &quot;ending your session early due to poor performance&quot; (why not just, &quot;let&#x27;s come back to this later&quot;?). But if you get lots of questions right quickly it doesn&#x27;t seem to have a similar, &quot;lesson ended early due to great performance&quot; or &quot;ok, it&#x27;s clear you already understand this&quot; — it just continues to drill you, which feels very tedious.<p>&gt; For less than the cost of a single hour with a private math tutor, MathAcademy provides you with 24&#x2F;7 access to what is essentially a tireless, expert math tutor.<p>It&#x27;s less like a tutor and more like a choose-your-own-adventure textbook with tests, spaced repetition and guided pathfinding. And that&#x27;s great! But I missed things I&#x27;d get from a tutor, like the ability to ask for clarification. MathAcademy uses terms in questions or descriptions that it hasn&#x27;t defined or explained previously (or perhaps it had defined those terms in earlier lessons it skipped?). I ended up looking things up from outside sources or taking a 30-minute detour into YouTube to fill in the gaps. Which is fine when it&#x27;s occasional, but annoying when it&#x27;s every other session. Sure, it&#x27;s &quot;adaptive&quot; but it&#x27;s not responsive like a real tutor.<p>The overall tone is that of the forever unimpressed tutor — quick to penalise and very light on encouragement. Full gamification with gold stars and badges and weapons upgrades would be annoying, but I&#x27;d like something more than &quot;you scored x&quot;. (For example, immediately show me how my recent result has affected my overall understanding of the subject as a progress bar.)<p>The UX of the site is tedious when drilling questions daily. The slow round-trip before seeing if your answer was correct becomes grating; if this can&#x27;t be done client-side I would love to see improved performance server-side.<p>On the whole, though, yes, it&#x27;s worth checking out if you&#x27;re serious about maths improvement.

If someone wants an idea, something like this for ds&#x2F;algorithms would do wonders

Can I get it for free?

Is going through MathAcademy as an adult done for the sake of learning? Is it done as a hobby? What benefits are there for someone who may not be in a math related field to go through MathAcademy?