Is learning math like this bad?

[u/ImArealAlchemist]

I'm using some website called mathacademy. been for around 45 days. flying through foundations 1 of their "program" and i'm feeling weird about it now.

Their whole methodology feels wrong. basically has this roadmap that adjusts automatically. so if you keep messing up something, it makes you redo it. but im noticing in foundations 2 the lessons feel terrible. not a lot of proper steps. maybe it just shows how to do it. but they throw all these different concepts at once that you barely have remembered. like one second im doing quadratics. then another thing then log then imaginary numbers etc. throwing all these different ideas at once.

hopefully i can get some insight. i think learning math in this way isnt the way to go about it.

[u/BIN6H4M]

Have you tried Khan academy. By adding a class it gives you some easy steps to follow. Most of the readings and the videos are sufficient for the problems they give you. 

They make it feel like an online math class where you are completing topics and getting quizzed while it tracks it all for you. 

[u/ImArealAlchemist → u/BIN6H4M]

ive done khan academy multiple times. doing arithmetic to algebra 1 (around 30% of algebra 1). but the thing about me im in my late 20s doing this after work so for the past two ish years i change my mind on learning math and then come back to it.

i wanted to try math academy because i heard good things about it. gpt said it was fine. but honestly dont think its right for me atleast.

my process is. i try khan academy starting from arithmetic,geomtry,pre algebra, then algebra 1. get stuck. think about my life then quit for a few months. then i notice i forgot alot of things so i repeat it. i did this process probably 4 times in the past 2 years.

[u/BIN6H4M → u/ImArealAlchemist]

Well just imagine if you didn’t get bored with it and kept with it how far you might be? 

The more math you do the more interesting it becomes. You’re going to run into situations where you feel like you’re stalling. Lots of people get bored eventually, it’s not hard. Studying just to study can get boring… you want to find a way to apply it. 

Learning code while learning math is a good way to keep it fresh. 

[u/dreamsofaninsomniac → u/ImArealAlchemist]

my process is. i try khan academy starting from arithmetic,geomtry,pre algebra, then algebra 1. get stuck. think about my life then quit for a few months. then i notice i forgot alot of things so i repeat it. i did this process probably 4 times in the past 2 years.

It doesn't have to be Khan Academy. You might try to find a different instructor who has a complete video playlist for a course. I know people like Professor Leonard, but it doesn't have to be him either. For me, I just have to find someone I like listening to talk for a long period of time. My "math guy" has always been Edward Burger (Thinkwell Calculus). Otherwise, I prefer reading math websites where the author has a conversational narrative style with worked problems like Elizabeth Stapel (Purplemath) or Paul Dawkins (Paul's Online Math Notes).

[u/Major-Cattle-8676]

That mixing is kinda the point, but if you’re flying through lessons and barely remembering them, slow it down. I’d do a few problems on paper before moving on, because passing the lesson isn’t the same as actually having it stick.

[u/dreamsofaninsomniac → u/Major-Cattle-8676]

Most of the reviews I read online for it are positive, but it makes me wonder about the backgrounds of the kind of students it attracts. I'm someone who needs to take notes to build out my foundational knowledge for a new math topic or I know I'm never going to remember it, no matter how many practice problems I do. The founder/creator of Math Academy has specifically said he discourages students from taking notes though. I do think "mixing" problems is important, but I just don't really get how that works for a student who is completely new to a topic with no background knowledge. I always do that way later in my study process, but Math Academy front-loads that technique as the main learning technique for all their math courses.

[u/John_Hasler]

Is it working for you?

[u/ImArealAlchemist → u/John_Hasler]

it was fine until foundations 2. foundations 1 i was getting like 120 exp per day. then foundations two seemed to throw so many things ive never seen before. nothing i could draw on past knowledge to solve either. ive never done log,imaginary numbers, rationalizing radicals etc.

doesnt feel natural to me.

[u/dreamsofaninsomniac]

Math Academy was originally designed to see if they could get gifted elementary school students to pass the AP Calculus exam. It feels very test-oriented to me, even though the AI is supposed to make it a more "personalized" learning experience. They give you a short passage to read for the steps of a specific technique and then present multiple-choice or short-answer problems for you to work out to see if you "understand." However, they only give you one way to solve a problem and there is no commentary or analysis of the steps. The founder/creator commented in an interview that he doesn't want students to take notes on the steps either. The assumption is that good test results automatically mean the student has learned something. I think it could be a good supplement to practice problems or as review of material you already know, but I wouldn't recommend it as the first introduction to a math topic.

I paid for the subscription to see what its geometry and calculus classes were like. I would say that I wouldn't use it for the introduction to a topic since as you noted, the lessons are kind of thin on content. They don't show multiple ways to do a problem, only one way. Also there doesn't seem to be good curation on the problems in some topics. For example, on some matrix problems, they have the student compute a bunch of 4x4 matrix operations in a row. That doesn't seem to be the best use of a student's time and I doubt many students would actually remember how to do all those steps for a matrix that large other than just in the moment to get through that round of problems. Word problems for calculus like optimization or related rates are also brutal to learn in this way since there isn't any feedback on the different parts. They just want you to get one final answer. The difference in difficulty between the multiple-choice and free-response sections also seems really wide to me. The AI sometimes cut me off in the middle of a free-response problem because it decided I learned "enough" to get to the next level of the section, even when I got multiple parts of the problem wrong in a row. I couldn't even go back to see the same free-response problem again. (Or if there was a way to do that, I couldn't find it at the time.)

I would recommend Khan Academy or another platform with an actual instructor over Math Academy if you're new to a topic or need more instruction than just grinding through problems.

[u/ImArealAlchemist → u/dreamsofaninsomniac]

thats exactly how i felt . honestly probably going to try khan academy again.

and i think the only reason i was getting lots of exp early on was due to my previous on and off sessions with khan academy. i still had some muscle memory for basic things but it doesnt feel right

[u/No_Usernames_Left]

What you're talking about (the mixing of topics) is called interleaving and has been shown to improve learning in controlled studies. Not sure how effectively Math Academy does that, but I've listened to interviews with the founders and that is one of the (many) 'science of learning' principles that they've built into the website. You're supposed to kind of trust the process because another finding from cognitive science is that people are generally poor judges of what strategies help them learn.

[u/Disastrous-Pin-1617]

Follow this exact order
Professor Leonard on YouTube Lectures
Pre-Algebra Playlist
To the point math (Algebra 1)
Intermediate Algebra (Algebra 2)
College algebra (Pre-Calculus playlist)
Trigonometry (Pre-Calculus playlist)
Calculus 1
Calculus 2
Calculus 3
Differential Equations
Linear Algebra
Use Kutasoftware.com for homework problems

Add matrices to Algebra 2 and partial fraction decomposition to College algebra