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I was a C student in high school. I never took a math class beyond basic algebra. I started from Khan Academy's first exercise when I was 33 years old. It seems
by zerohp 4y ago
I was a C student in high school. I never took a math class beyond basic algebra. I started from Khan Academy's first exercise when I was 33 years old. It seems silly looking back that I was solving problems on the number line as an adult.
At that time, around 10 years ago, Khan Academy had excellent coverage through trigonometry and single variable calculus. Once I reached that point I went to my local community college and took all of their math classes. I transferred to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and continued onward to get a BS CS, BS EE, and MS EE. I finished at 41 years old and landed a dream job that I would have never thought possible when I started.
I guess my advice is to start from the beginning and see where it takes you.
- 99_00 4y agoKhan academy math by grade level. For each grade level you can do a 30 minute exam. It identifies weak points and updates your progress on areas where you are successful. Then you can focus on areas where you are weak instead of doing the entire grade again. Then move to the next grade.
- xoac 4y agoAbove is not advice but I would echo it, with emphasis that higher education makes much more sense when you go there as an adult with other stuff to do outside of it so uou just focus on learning things.
- koheripbal 4y agoThe counterpoint is that that maturity is much more valuable to industry, which is why they don't incentivize us to return to school. Some balance needs to be found.
- ImaCake 4y ago>It seems silly looking back that I was solving problems on the number line as an adult. I study biostatistics and dabble in population genetics research. I still resort to number lines and venn diagrams frequently. There is a reason we teach number lines - they are very useful!
- methusala8 4y agoWhere exactly do you use number line? Thanks.
- aksss 4y agoI don’t recall ever learning number lines in school. Was in eighties. Are number lines a new teaching tool or am I just not remembering this?
- achileas 4y agoYou might be forgetting them, it's literally just a line with numbers marked on it. I learned them in primary school in the 90s, further classes never used them but they've always been useful tools for visualizing relationships between numbers.
- ImaCake 4y agoUsually just when I am having trouble with an idosyncratic number scale. So usually when I need to make sense of dates and the time between them. It's often got nothing to do with work, but I do use them in my personal life.
- gigatexal 4y agoWow. I was going to come here and suggest them as well but your story does an even better job. Congrats to you and all the hard work you must have put in over the 10 years!
- jp0d 4y agoMate, you've no idea how much I could related to your story. I've a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering. Looking back at those subjects, I feel like I didn't have the maturity needed to appreciate the depth and meaning of it. I was too busy just passing exams and working to get a degree and eventually land a job. I did that and I have no regrets. But those concepts taught to us are the foundations of almost everything. The more I think about it the more respect I have for scientists who came up with those before 1950s! They had nothing and they solved their own questions. Bloody legends.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoYes - imagine inventing Fast Fourier Transforms without a computer. Or the original continuous Fourier Transform, with just a pen and paper. Or Heaviside's simplification of the Maxwell equations. Or calculating planetary orbits with perturbations. Incredible leaps of imagination.
- jp0d 4y agoTrue indeed. I was patting myself on the back for graduating engineering school without any help from WikiPedia or YouTube. But these legends wrote all those universe describing equations without the help of a computer.
- rg111 4y agoI was an A+ student up to Sophomore year in HS. I downgraded to A or B+ student after I knew how much fun actual learning is. Before that, all I was doing was memorizing and practising heuristics to get A+. I actually started learning Science since 11th grade. I grew and grew. And my scores tanked. Got only 6.xx/10 in college as well. But no regrets. Learning Math properly gave me a super solid foundation to learn Deep Learning very quickly. Now I do my semi-dream job as a Deep Learning Research Engineer building actual products with Deep Learning. I have a truly realistic chance of getting my dream job within the end of this calendar year. No regrets. Screw scores and learning systems designed for the mediocres. The education system has no care for the poor learners with no parental care. Neither it is good for future scientists and geniuses.
- SubuSS 4y agoFwiw it is not necessary to throw your college scores to actually learn as well: they just feel orthogonal sometimes. You can do both!
- oriolid 4y agoI understood it as that learning math is easy and fun in high school but becomes hard and boring work at university level.
- chongli 4y agoIt depends where you study and what courses you take / who teaches you. Sometimes the professor will drive a ferocious pace of instruction and assessment and you will simply not be able to meaningfully keep up unless you sacrifice the depth of your learning in exchange for getting everything done. I have been in that position and watched my grades tank. Then, a year later, I watched my peers struggle with follow-up material that seemed to make a lot more sense to me.
- Tempest1981 4y agoI was always pushing to take 16-18 units (5-6 classes), so never any extra time to "savor" the details, or deep dive into areas of interest. If I did it again, I would take the minimum of 12 units (3-4 classes)... assuming I could afford to stay in school for 6 years. At the time, I was racing to graduate and get a job.
- justsomeuser 4y agoWhat kind of job do you go into with a math degree?
- tomrod 4y agoMath degrees open an amazing numbers of doors. Data science, analysts, strategy, legal research (or research in general), many CS jobs, etc.
- jseliger 4y agoGermane: https://nautil.us/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in-math-rp-5164/ https://nautil.us/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in...
- BigHatLogan 4y agoWonderful story--thanks for sharing! I love stories like this. Maybe off-topic: But did you run into any difficulties landing your first job after finishing your MS in EE? I'm tempted to pursue something similar, but I worry about ageism and other factors when going into the job marketplace at that age in a brand new field. Would love to hear more about your experience.
- saminjerseycity 4y agoAlmost same thing. Khan Academy is amazing.
- _8j50 4y agoThanks for sharing! Your story is an inspiration to me.