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.
Go on eBay and buy the following Open University book sets. They go for around £30-50 a pop: MU123 (basics), MST124 (more complex). 6 months worth of study in each book set. If you like it do MST125 (even more complex) and M140 (stats) after. That's the first year of a mathematics degree literally from the ground up through GCSE and A-level stuff. If you really like it, get a student loan and do the associated accredited degree.
£30 for 6 months is pretty damn cheap and you get to keep it forever!
This is a proper accredited course developed over 50 years or so with its own textbooks and material from a respectable university, not a gamified subscription portal experiment put together by god knows who that can disappear in a puff of smoke at no notice.
I'm studying the Q31 (BSc Maths) on Open University.
I can second this recommendation. The maths books are _excellent_.
It's hard to explain how, but let me try: most of the maths textbooks I possess (plenty of them) are written with the assumption that you attend lectures at a classroom and use them for extra material/exercises/reference.
The OU books are written with the assumption that you learn from them as the primary material, so they go a lot further with regard to explaining things as well as producing them from first principles.
Yeah, MU123 is basic (high school) mathematics. The reason for that is that the way the Open University works, they have no formal requirements to join, so they cannot assume that students know even the basic stuff (because they might have left school earlier, or they might be out of formal education for years, or be from a different domain, etc), so the aim of that course is to quickly help you catchup regardless your background.
If you are above this level, you would start with the "intensive start", which skips MU123 (allowing you to pick another module in its place) and then starts with MST124 (precalculus, trigonometry and single-var calculus, roughly), moving you on to MST125 (intro to proofs, number theory, more calculus, linear algebra, etc), in a faster pace.
Yeah I get the part about filling in some missing foundation. But it's the level that surprised me. Some of the MU123 content is covered in 5th grade in the US, i.e. around age 10 or 11.
But I guess there are people who will have forgotten that stuff, if they're not using much math day to day.
The way I come to look on such offers (monthly unlimited subscriptions) is not the net price itself, and not future supposed returns to it (who knows what they be, and they for sure will depend on many other things), but how many hours a week I am willing to spend on that service.
If you can and willing dedicate on average 2 hours a day (a big commitment but I think I was able to hold it for several month with them) the cost of mastering, say, Linear Algebra will be ~4 less then if you subscribe and will be spending ~30 minutes a day.
I guess it depends on where you are at in the world, but in our neck of the woods $50/month is an absolute bargain compared to using a tutor. Not to mention you get to work at your own pace and to practice spaced repetition consistently.
It is. But I don't think there is an alternative way to make it sustainable. There are just not that many people who are serious about self-education, and you won't like it to cater to the less dedicated customers.
> 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.
Even if it were $10/mo, the people who would benefit from it the most (around the world) still can't afford it.
my read as a US person is that math academy is optimized towards students who would otherwise be well served by an in-person supplemental math program. at the earlier grades for math academy (grades 4-5 etc) the main competition i've encountered are in person programs like AoPS, Russian Math, or Kumon. The prices for those range between $450-$100/mo and for a student or student and parent combo that may be looking to supplement their math classes or for somebody who needs to home school for a period of time, mathacademy at $50/mo is a steal.
I wonder if they could charge lower rates for people who live in poorer parts of the world.
$49/month is almost nothing to me now, but it would be prohibitively expensive for a 15 y.o. me in freshly independent Czechia.
I suspect it would also be prohibitively expensive for most 15 y.o.s in the developing world today, and these are the guys and gals who stand to gain the most.
the format basicly consists of a list of modules (lessons or reviews) to work though. each lesson module starts with a short test on how to solve the problem it teaches, 1-2 worked problems and 2-3 problesm then more short text on how to solve some variation of the problem coupled with 2 solved problems and 2-3 for you to solve. review modules just give you a few problems to solve. if you can solve 3 without making any mistakes, it will finish the module and you can go tot he next one. every few days you are presented with a quiz that tests what you know and genearates review modules for you to go though before retesting you.
overall, it seems spartan but its effective. you spend most of your time actuvly engaing with the problems with just enough information to solve them. the structure of the courses are setup such that you learn and master prerequisites before you are presented a lesson so there isn't much of the frustration you might find where a problem implicitly assumes you know something you don't. That a big reason they start you with a placement test.
overall I'd say the $50 price tag is worth it. its very efficient vs reading and working though problem sets where you don't necessarily know what you need to know to solve them. you're not spending time figuring out what your knowledge gaps are as it fulls them in as you go for you.
I don’t trust those plans - it’s easy to forget to cancel it, and most products are simply hoping that you will forget. If I actually think I will want to cancel it, I will not sign up for services with this pattern. It’s a simple rule that saves a lot of mental overhead.
That is not the case with MA they will refund you with a click of a button and it will cost them money since stripe keep their cut and don’t refund it to MA.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.
