Is MathAcademy Worth It? Thoughts After 2k Experience Points (XP)(jonathanwhitmore.com)
jonathanwhitmore.com
Is MathAcademy Worth It? Thoughts After 2k Experience Points (XP)
https://jonathanwhitmore.com/posts/2024-09-10-MathAcademy-after-2000-points/
43 comments
I'm surprised a mobile app does not exist, yet. That space is fairly successful for a number of learning platforms (Brilliant, Duolingo, SoloLearn, etc) and it makes sense that giving your subscribers to learn on-the-go would make many of them more inclined to stick with it. Duolingo worked on me because I could do a bit each time I had 20 min to kill while waiting for a bus or whatever.
To the best of my knowledge, they only have a single web dev. That's Jason, who is also a founder. Other Sandy, also a founder, who runs operations, a bit of help from their son when he's back from college, and an ML dev, the whole team is mathematicians who are working on content.
As a customer who spent a good amount of time on the app a couple of years ago, I don't think a mobile app would be very helpful. The website is perfectly usable from an iPad, but you should have a pen and scratchpad available while working through the exercises. On an iPad, the notes app works fine for this, but a phone just isn't the right form factor IMO.
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IMO, Brilliant isn't even in the same category as Math Academy when it comes to depth and Duolingo just may be the worst learning app ever created despite the fact that it's been a great business. I used to run a language school and later worked at a language learning startup and was active in communities of language learners. While I've met many people who have used Duolingo for hours a day for a year or even multiple years, I've never met a single person who's gotten to even a B2 level through Duolingo. If you really want to learn a language, get LingQ and either read stories in it or listen to the audio versions of them at the bus stop. That will get you a lot more input / minute.
As a customer who spent a good amount of time on the app a couple of years ago, I don't think a mobile app would be very helpful. The website is perfectly usable from an iPad, but you should have a pen and scratchpad available while working through the exercises. On an iPad, the notes app works fine for this, but a phone just isn't the right form factor IMO.
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IMO, Brilliant isn't even in the same category as Math Academy when it comes to depth and Duolingo just may be the worst learning app ever created despite the fact that it's been a great business. I used to run a language school and later worked at a language learning startup and was active in communities of language learners. While I've met many people who have used Duolingo for hours a day for a year or even multiple years, I've never met a single person who's gotten to even a B2 level through Duolingo. If you really want to learn a language, get LingQ and either read stories in it or listen to the audio versions of them at the bus stop. That will get you a lot more input / minute.
definitely agree on the mobile support needed. it wouldn't be that difficult either (based on what i've seen in foundations 1 an 2). being desktop only means I can only really use it when my laptop is out. sometimes I travel around with just a sling and it would be nice to just have my phone with the problem out and a small notepad + calculator.
Having a decent mobile experience is a big reason why I started to use Anki, it's the perfect way to spend time while traveling.
I'm not so sure about the spaced repetition side of things. Out of curiosity I'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'm on the verge of forgetting a lot of what I've learned.
Other than that, I have very high hopes for the future of MA. It's by far the best platform I've found for actually learning math.
Other than that, I have very high hopes for the future of MA. It's by far the best platform I've found for actually learning math.
Thanks for the kind words!
Regarding spaced repetition, keep in mind the following:
1. New tasks are selected only as you complete existing tasks (so if you come back after 2 weeks, you need to complete some existing tasks from 2 weeks ago to get new tasks selected based on your knowledge profile right now).
2. We are often able to implicitly knock out due reviews with new lessons. We're not just doing plain vanilla spaced repetition. We're doing a highly efficient novel version of it that we call Fractional Implicit Repetition (FIRe). I have a writeup on this that gained some traction on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954571
Happy to answer any questions you may have.
Regarding spaced repetition, keep in mind the following:
1. New tasks are selected only as you complete existing tasks (so if you come back after 2 weeks, you need to complete some existing tasks from 2 weeks ago to get new tasks selected based on your knowledge profile right now).
2. We are often able to implicitly knock out due reviews with new lessons. We're not just doing plain vanilla spaced repetition. We're doing a highly efficient novel version of it that we call Fractional Implicit Repetition (FIRe). I have a writeup on this that gained some traction on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954571
Happy to answer any questions you may have.
It will mix in the reviews too, don't worry. It's actually a bit clever with those and new tasks which rely on previous knowledge points will count as a small amount of review for those previous tasks too. It's not split into purely-new and purely-review.
>I'm not so sure about the spaced repetition side of things.
From what I could read, many studies have shown this is an effective technique. From my personal experience it only works if you understand what you are trying to remember. For example, trying to memorize some complicated formulas that you don't understand is doomed to fail.
From what I could read, many studies have shown this is an effective technique. From my personal experience it only works if you understand what you are trying to remember. For example, trying to memorize some complicated formulas that you don't understand is doomed to fail.
I think you misunderstand. They aren't doubting SRS. They're doubting that MathAcademy is doing it. They logged in after 2 weeks and had no reviews waiting.
Just a heads up that there's an explanation for this; I responded to the original comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41556644) but I'll also paste here in case anyone misses it:
1. New tasks are selected only as you complete existing tasks (so if you come back after 2 weeks, you need to complete some existing tasks from 2 weeks ago to get new tasks selected based on your knowledge profile right now).
2. We are often able to implicitly knock out due reviews with new lessons. We're not just doing plain vanilla spaced repetition. We're doing a highly efficient novel version of it that we call Fractional Implicit Repetition (FIRe). I have a writeup on this that gained some traction on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954571
1. New tasks are selected only as you complete existing tasks (so if you come back after 2 weeks, you need to complete some existing tasks from 2 weeks ago to get new tasks selected based on your knowledge profile right now).
2. We are often able to implicitly knock out due reviews with new lessons. We're not just doing plain vanilla spaced repetition. We're doing a highly efficient novel version of it that we call Fractional Implicit Repetition (FIRe). I have a writeup on this that gained some traction on HN recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954571
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 new knowledge, especially new topics in maths I have never learned before?
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.
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.
Brilliant doesn't have spaced repetition, it has much less coverage and doesn't have enough exercises to let you really master subject, but it's an easy to use mobile app with nice visualizations that can give a conceptual understanding of many things. If MathAcademy and Brilliant covers the same topic, Brilliant may be more visually appealing and contain animations. Brilliant is nice for getting overview of many things, but doesn't really go that deep.
MathAcademy is great for learning new topics that you haven't studied before, provided they have a course in that subject.
MathAcademy is great for learning new topics that you haven't studied before, provided they have a course in that subject.
I've tried both and am currently using MathAcademy to learn new knowledge. It's very, very good at incrementally building out concepts and gradually adding complexity. I had no luck at all with Brilliant. MathAcademy practically forces you to bust out a pencil and paper and dive into problems, but Brilliant was more like watching a kind of neat YouTube video on a topic.
I reckon it can and I am about to give it a shot, myself. It sounds like a Duolingo sort of structure, which can be boiled down to "use it or lose it" which is not hard to support with compelling evidence. Say what one will about Duolingo, but my Spanish and German are passable because of it (no, I am not fluent, but I can get by in common situations). Ideally, MathAcademy will cultivate the same results.
Khan Academy use to have a cool knowledge map made with google maps api, it helped with identifying knowledge gaps.
Does anyone have an opinion about MathAcademy vs KhanAcademy ?
Does anyone have an opinion about MathAcademy vs KhanAcademy ?
MA has that too. (Kind of, not exactly the same) For each course you can see a graph similar to https://mathacademy.com/img/screenshots/knowledge-graph-calc... with your current progress. The initial test (seriously comprehensive) gives you a summary of everything, so you can figure out the missing areas that way too.
FYI, the "why not just learn from a Khan Academy / MIT OpenCourseWare / a textbook / etc" question comes up from time to time, so I wrote up a detailed answer here: https://justinmath.com/why-not-just-learn-from-a-textbook/
TLDR: I learned from those kinds of resources myself, and while I came a long way, for the amount of effort I put into learning, I could have gone a lot further if my time were used more efficiently. That's the problem that Math Academy solves.
TLDR: I learned from those kinds of resources myself, and while I came a long way, for the amount of effort I put into learning, I could have gone a lot further if my time were used more efficiently. That's the problem that Math Academy solves.
This was such a great overview of the whole 'math field'! I remember slowly going through it a while ago and trying to complete It was a huge task, but seeing what is there made the progress easy to measure and visible.
Fast forward some time in the future, and they have removed it...
Fast forward some time in the future, and they have removed it...
I agree with the observations of the author. I have found MA much more engaging than any book I've crossed paths with. Going from a pile of math textbooks to MA was going from good intentions to good results; it's quite amazing how much I've relearned over the past few months. This is the future, as far as I am concerned, with only refinements needed.
Also: I too really hope they expand into physics.
Also: I too really hope they expand into physics.
at 50$/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)
They really need a family plan. A $100/month family plan would be easy to justify as "it's for the kids". It'd be more effective if parents did it with their kids and it would let the parents use it without having to commit to "getting their money's worth". Once you get over $200/month, that starts to be more expensive than other kid's activities.
if you're an engineer, The $50 is a pittance. your time is the much bigger investment.
But lets put it in concrete terms. lets say you want to break into machine learning and deep learning but you lack the requisite math background.
if you start at foundations 1, if you put in around 8-9 hours a week of work into it, you can get to the end of math for machine learning after a year and a half. lets be cynical and say 2. At 50 usd x 24 months, you're looking at a cost of $1200 usd. Even the cheapest community college set of courses you'll be taking to get to that level will cost you more than that AND will require a ongoing time commitment where you show up at the classes. While its nice to have a class, Mathacademy is much more efficient for getting the information into your brain. You have the problem set in front of you and you see imediatly if you get it right or not. the time window for correcting yourself from feedback is tighter than you're ever going to get from a classroom where your graded problem sets come back days later.
AS for return on investment, Just look up how much machine learning engineers make. coding is the easy part. Having the mathematical maturity to understand why certain things are used where they are and kwowing enough to deviate where they don't work is PRICELESS.
But lets put it in concrete terms. lets say you want to break into machine learning and deep learning but you lack the requisite math background.
if you start at foundations 1, if you put in around 8-9 hours a week of work into it, you can get to the end of math for machine learning after a year and a half. lets be cynical and say 2. At 50 usd x 24 months, you're looking at a cost of $1200 usd. Even the cheapest community college set of courses you'll be taking to get to that level will cost you more than that AND will require a ongoing time commitment where you show up at the classes. While its nice to have a class, Mathacademy is much more efficient for getting the information into your brain. You have the problem set in front of you and you see imediatly if you get it right or not. the time window for correcting yourself from feedback is tighter than you're ever going to get from a classroom where your graded problem sets come back days later.
AS for return on investment, Just look up how much machine learning engineers make. coding is the easy part. Having the mathematical maturity to understand why certain things are used where they are and kwowing enough to deviate where they don't work is PRICELESS.
It's trivial to justify if you're a middle-class Westerner. You'll likely spend dozens (more likely hundreds) of hours to properly refresh your knowledge; $50/mo is dominated by the time needed, unless your time is worth very little.
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.
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't help, that my ADHD wasn't diagnosed last year.
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's one.
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't help, that my ADHD wasn't diagnosed last year.
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'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?
My biggest complaint about the maths I'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/multiply etc to get the right result, with no mention of why it all worked or the proofs behind it.
My biggest complaint about the maths I'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/multiply etc to get the right result, with no mention of why it all worked or the proofs behind it.
FYI, I wrote an in-depth response to a similar question recently that you may want to check out: https://x.com/justinskycak/status/1835085776524394951
I've had a similar experience. I've now done math with Math Academy for 349 days in a row as of today. I'm not going as fast as I'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.
I also documented my experiences when I hit the 100 day streak mark here: gmays.com/math
I also documented my experiences when I hit the 100 day streak mark here: gmays.com/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's conclusion that it's worth the money.
It's not perfect, though, and my experience differed a little:
> MathAcademy excels at identifying exactly what you need to work on, zeroing in on your weak spots and areas for improvement.
It doesn't excel at this yet. It claims to have an "adaptive diagnostic assessment [that] will identify the correct starting place for the student" but this didn'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 "I understand this" for everything when they don't, but it felt very tedious.
If you get a lot of questions wrong on a subject it ends the topic early with a (somewhat discouraging), "ending your session early due to poor performance" (why not just, "let's come back to this later"?). But if you get lots of questions right quickly it doesn't seem to have a similar, "lesson ended early due to great performance" or "ok, it's clear you already understand this" — it just continues to drill you, which feels very tedious.
> For less than the cost of a single hour with a private math tutor, MathAcademy provides you with 24/7 access to what is essentially a tireless, expert math tutor.
It's less like a tutor and more like a choose-your-own-adventure textbook with tests, spaced repetition and guided pathfinding. And that's great! But I missed things I'd get from a tutor, like the ability to ask for clarification. MathAcademy uses terms in questions or descriptions that it hasn'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's occasional, but annoying when it's every other session. Sure, it's "adaptive" but it's not responsive like a real tutor.
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'd like something more than "you scored x". (For example, immediately show me how my recent result has affected my overall understanding of the subject as a progress bar.)
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't be done client-side I would love to see improved performance server-side.
On the whole, though, yes, it's worth checking out if you're serious about maths improvement.
It's not perfect, though, and my experience differed a little:
> MathAcademy excels at identifying exactly what you need to work on, zeroing in on your weak spots and areas for improvement.
It doesn't excel at this yet. It claims to have an "adaptive diagnostic assessment [that] will identify the correct starting place for the student" but this didn'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 "I understand this" for everything when they don't, but it felt very tedious.
If you get a lot of questions wrong on a subject it ends the topic early with a (somewhat discouraging), "ending your session early due to poor performance" (why not just, "let's come back to this later"?). But if you get lots of questions right quickly it doesn't seem to have a similar, "lesson ended early due to great performance" or "ok, it's clear you already understand this" — it just continues to drill you, which feels very tedious.
> For less than the cost of a single hour with a private math tutor, MathAcademy provides you with 24/7 access to what is essentially a tireless, expert math tutor.
It's less like a tutor and more like a choose-your-own-adventure textbook with tests, spaced repetition and guided pathfinding. And that's great! But I missed things I'd get from a tutor, like the ability to ask for clarification. MathAcademy uses terms in questions or descriptions that it hasn'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's occasional, but annoying when it's every other session. Sure, it's "adaptive" but it's not responsive like a real tutor.
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'd like something more than "you scored x". (For example, immediately show me how my recent result has affected my overall understanding of the subject as a progress bar.)
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't be done client-side I would love to see improved performance server-side.
On the whole, though, yes, it's worth checking out if you're serious about maths improvement.
How much time did you find yourself spending on the courses? They have this whole "xp" concept (where 1 minute is 1xp and they recomend you spend at least 45 "xp" a day) but I couldnt really find a listing of how big the courses are time-wise. Also did you find it doable to keep up with the daily workload? Ive personally bounced off Anki a few times because I stopped doing the daily reviews.
> How much time did you find yourself spending on the courses?
> …I couldn't really find a listing of how big the courses are time-wise.
I spent about an hour a day and it projected a course end date of about two months away. (When you commit to an XP daily pace, it estimates the completion date for the course you selected.) Most courses seem to need 30-90+ hours of study, but it will vary by subject and student since the placement test may put you ahead of or behind others.
> Also did you find it doable to keep up with the daily workload?
No. I set an XP daily pace I felt comfortable with (I think 40XP?), saw the projected end date was far further than I had hoped, then increased my daily pace commitment but couldn't match that consistently due in part to the compounding gripes I mentioned in my parent comment and — frankly — my own lack of motivation.
To stick with MathAcademy or any learning program it's better to have strong motivation in the form of a concrete goal you are working towards. I didn't have a strong sense of that — only a much woolier, "I think a stronger maths foundation would unlock more for me as a software engineer", which is the kind of goal that makes quitting too easy.
If I were to subscribe to MA again I'd first clearly define a goal, like being able to write an AI or game engine physics library from scratch (and then also a strong reason why those things feel important to me, like getting a job in the field or whatever). But I've since moved on to learn other things (design, drawing, painting) and find the motivation flowing much more naturally there. Partly that's because the positive feedback loop flows better for me with art than with maths (the progress week-to-week is highly visual!) but also because I'm working toward a more strongly defined goal.
> …I couldn't really find a listing of how big the courses are time-wise.
I spent about an hour a day and it projected a course end date of about two months away. (When you commit to an XP daily pace, it estimates the completion date for the course you selected.) Most courses seem to need 30-90+ hours of study, but it will vary by subject and student since the placement test may put you ahead of or behind others.
> Also did you find it doable to keep up with the daily workload?
No. I set an XP daily pace I felt comfortable with (I think 40XP?), saw the projected end date was far further than I had hoped, then increased my daily pace commitment but couldn't match that consistently due in part to the compounding gripes I mentioned in my parent comment and — frankly — my own lack of motivation.
To stick with MathAcademy or any learning program it's better to have strong motivation in the form of a concrete goal you are working towards. I didn't have a strong sense of that — only a much woolier, "I think a stronger maths foundation would unlock more for me as a software engineer", which is the kind of goal that makes quitting too easy.
If I were to subscribe to MA again I'd first clearly define a goal, like being able to write an AI or game engine physics library from scratch (and then also a strong reason why those things feel important to me, like getting a job in the field or whatever). But I've since moved on to learn other things (design, drawing, painting) and find the motivation flowing much more naturally there. Partly that's because the positive feedback loop flows better for me with art than with maths (the progress week-to-week is highly visual!) but also because I'm working toward a more strongly defined goal.
> "adaptive diagnostic assessment..." but this didn't work very well for me.
I found it a bit controversial too, but it makes sense if you consider the goals of MA / creator's approach. MA aims for "you're going to learn to mastery, passing 100% or you don't know the subject yet". Which works great if that's what you're after, and less well if you want to just get to know the landscape and be more comfortable appling a few things every few months. (One of the reasons I dropped out was when it made me do way too many vector/matrix multiplications that felt like busy work I'm never going to do manually, but it would make sense at uni time) You can trigger the diagnostic again btw if you think something's seriously off.
I found it a bit controversial too, but it makes sense if you consider the goals of MA / creator's approach. MA aims for "you're going to learn to mastery, passing 100% or you don't know the subject yet". Which works great if that's what you're after, and less well if you want to just get to know the landscape and be more comfortable appling a few things every few months. (One of the reasons I dropped out was when it made me do way too many vector/matrix multiplications that felt like busy work I'm never going to do manually, but it would make sense at uni time) You can trigger the diagnostic again btw if you think something's seriously off.
For me it was not controversial, just imperfect. The perfect diagnostic would learn in one pass what the student has already mastered and not leave them with study material they can already answer at 100%.
I didn't think anything was seriously wrong, just wrong enough to be annoying for the first few days because I wasn't learning much and the system is rigid and zero trust — I have no way to tell it I understand except by hard proof.
It's also a balancing act, though. Under-estimating a student's ability on purpose might frustrate them a little but offer a small confidence boost while they're still learning the system and finding a daily rhythm. Over-estimating could make them feel stupid and intimidated and drive them to drop out early.
I didn't think anything was seriously wrong, just wrong enough to be annoying for the first few days because I wasn't learning much and the system is rigid and zero trust — I have no way to tell it I understand except by hard proof.
It's also a balancing act, though. Under-estimating a student's ability on purpose might frustrate them a little but offer a small confidence boost while they're still learning the system and finding a daily rhythm. Over-estimating could make them feel stupid and intimidated and drive them to drop out early.
I used it and relearned quite a bit a couple of years ago. Whenever I encountered a term I wasn't familiar with, I clicked through to the lessons of each of the prerequisites of the lesson I was currently in. That was a pretty quick way of identifying what I was missing.
If someone wants an idea, something like this for ds/algorithms would do wonders
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?
I'm a senior level software engineer. A lot of the hard barriers I've hit in my pursuit to get better over the last few years came down to my lack of math ability. you really can't do machine learning or graphics programming or cryptography without getting deep into the requisite mathematical underpinnings.
That makes perfect sense, thanks for the reply
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I was previsouly trying using Susan Rigetti's "So You Want to Study Mathematics..." guide. It has been posted here a few times, but it'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've forgotten, but you don't know what. Identifying those areas can be really hard, but MathAcademy helps you do it.
I don'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'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.
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 "on the go" 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't have pen and paper nearby.
It'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.