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Learning About Mathematics Study Strategies Self-Teaching Mathematics Education Related Questions
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Is it possible to teach yourself math to the level of a
If you had to teach yourself math from basic algebra to post-doctorate or PhD? I have made my way through
Trig, Calc 1-3, Linear, and Abstract...
high level mathematics, what would be your strategy?
What is the best way to self teach yourself math?
Manjari Narayan, Statistics and Signal Processing What is the best book to teach yourself math?
Answered Jul 30 2012
In what order should I learn math from basic algebra
I second suggestions to read work by Ian Stewart. I do not recommend Serge to advanced topics?
Lang for anyone, he simply does not introduce concepts and results in a nice How do you teach yourself mathematics?
logical/progressive manner. I do particularly recommend the following to get up
How can I be good at maths and stop being afraid of
to speed with basic high school level mathematics. it? I'm currently in high school. I can't even do basic
algebra questions. It's very frust...
1. "What is Mathematics?" by Richard Courant and Ian Stewart Can you teach middle and high school math well if
your degree wasn't in math?
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematic...
In other languages
2. "The Princeton Companion to Mathematics" contains great intuitive
introductions to the basics in dierent areas of mathematics. Though written by En espaol: Si tuvieras que aprender matemticas
desde lgebra bsica a matemticas de gran nivel
well known mathematicians, the mathematical exposition is quite accessible to
por ti mismo, cul sera tu estrategia?
the layman. You can dive in as little or deep as you like En franais : Si vous deviez apprendre les
mathmatiques par vous-mme, depuis l'algbre de
http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-... base jusqu'aux mathmatiques avances, quelle
serait votre stratgie?
Auf Deutsch: Wenn Du dir selbst Mathematik
If you want to become familiar with undergraduate level of mathematics, I beibringen msstest, vom Basiswissen Algebra bis zu
recommend learning real analysis, linear algebra, basic probability, and basic hherer Mathematik, welches Programm wrdest Du
dafr verwenden?
combinatorial/discrete math. The last three are staple requirements for In italiano: Se dovessi apprendere la matematica
dall'algebra base no alla matematica di alto livello,
engineering of all kinds and computer science.
quale sarebbe la tua strategia?
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What is the best book for studying maths from basics to high level?
In what order should I learn math from basic algebra to advanced topics?
See, Math is divided into the following 8 parts. Dont rush to do all
overnight, youll get demotivated and lose interest. Rather do it module
wise, in chunks that you can chew, Its like going 0 to hero in this order:
Module 2: Pre-Calculus
Module 3: Calculus
Module 4: Transformations
Module 7: Algorithms
Module 8: Cryptography
Move on to set theory (Set theory - Wikipedia ), learn what are sets,
subsets, power sets, cardinality of a set. After that learn basic set
operations like union, intersection, set dierence, complement. Learn
how to represent sets as Venn diagrams. Learn about the inclusion -
exclusion principle(Inclusionexclusion principle - Wikipedia ). Learn
what are cartesian product of 2 sets, learn how relations are derived
from cartesian products, learn how
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Learn what are Vectors, Learn about Unit vectors, Learn about the dot
and cross products.
Module 3: CALCULUS
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Module 4: TRANSFORMATIONS
Learn whatre Prex Trees and how to do derive Human Codes From
that, next study what are Human Trees/Weighted Trees.
Module 7: ALGORITHMS
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Module 8: CRYPTOGRAPHY
Learn the origins of cryptography, learn about the Caesar Cipher, then
learn what is encryption. Learn what is decryption. Learn the
dierence between Symmetric Key and Asymmetric Key
Cryptography.
Learn Symmetric Key Algorithms like: The DES and the AES
algorithm.
Learn about Hashing Algorithms like the MD5 and SHA-1 algorithm.
Lastly I would like to conclude by saying that math is a very interesting subject
as it forces you to think instead of rote memorization of useless facts. Most
people lose interest in math due to a bad teacher or other reasons. However
dont lose hope and try to be good at math, crunching numbers, visualizing
relations in your mind.
Math is everywhere you name it, Chemistry, Physics, Applied Math, Pure Math,
Research, Fluid Mechanics, Signal Systems, Computer Networks, and yeah
Google Search Engine, too.
Learn how to use a scientic calculator, Buy a Casio FX-991 MS or FX - 991 ES.
Gone are the days where you had to visit a library, Now in 2016 you can use the
vast internet and there is YouTube channel called as Khan Academy just follow
his videos.
In the end, I just want to say, Knowledge is power and comes to those who
have a willingness to learn, experiment, think out of the box and persevere.
Happy Learning :)
Promoted by Upwardly.in
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nancial goals.
Having taught myself calculus back in high school, I can make the following two
recommendations:
Follow an actual math track - don't try to jump into real analysis without having
taken calculus rst. In mathematics, many foundations are laid by prior
subjects, but not always in apparent ways. Here's what I did beyond my rst
algebra course, in order:
Geometry
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Algebra II
Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry
Dierential Calculus
Integral Calculus
Multivariable Calculus
Linear Algebra
------------------------------
Graph Theory
Number Theory
Complex Analysis
One might take dierential equations or topology along the way as well.
After the dotted line above, I think that order matters signicantly less between
the various disciplines.
Secondly, augment your books with someone who knows math. A friend who
majored in math back in the day (provided the day was only a few years ago)
should be sucient, as long as he's willing. Despite their best intentions,
textbook authors will inevitably confuse you, no matter which texts you select.
As such, every so often, you'll want to be able to pick someone's brain as to "Why
is integration by parts necessary?" or "Why aren't all groups Abelian?" Though
the internet (esp. Quora) is great, you can get live, personalized service from a
chum more eciently when it comes to many aspects of mathematics, as
diagrams & proofs don't always transmit well digitally. Take him out for a coee
- don't pay him. :)
Good luck!
*I won't recommend specic books for you - everyone has their own tastes.
However, if you were to nd and follow a syllabus, use the book the
teacher/professor suggests. This will make your life much easier.
This is essentially what I've done over the past couple years. Okay, I knew
calculus from AP Calc in high school when I started out, but I really hadn't used
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it for 8 years. This is long, but I hope you'll nd it useful. I've bolded the specic
tactics I used to make it slightly easier to read.
The #1 thing you can do is begin with the end in mind. Depending on your exact
goal, you probably have a long and arduous road ahead. In order to stay focused
and even to stay in the game, you will want to have a specic goal (a PhD in
computer science, a job as a statistician, a job as a high school math teacher,
etc.). The more specic, the better, because then you can gure out exactly what
you need to know.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do at this point, but I had to be working toward
something. I planned on studying for about 300 hours for the rst actuarial
exam, and then going from there based on my comfort with the material. With
my tutor, I reviewed derivatives and integrals, learned some probability and
statistics, and got familiar with mathematical notation. I was working full time,
so I spent about 6 hours a week with the tutor, and studied on my own an
additional 5-10 hours. My strategy was to work through a textbook written
specically for students studying for this particular exam.
After several months and gaining some condence with calculus, probability,
and stats, I decided to change course slightly (that's another story, but the
impetus was my tutor taking a job halfway across the world) and study to
become an economist. I started researching. That's actually how I discovered
Quora! (Quora helped with career advice, but not with learning math.) I looked
at Urch's PhD forums to get an idea of where I stood and what I would need to
know. Using advice from forums, professors' blogs, and local professors
whom I called and emailed (I found these guys through my network), I started to
build a curriculum for myself, in order to qualify for and survive a PhD in
economics.
I continued with the MIT course, used Khan Academy's linear algebra videos,
and found more specic economics courses on Utubersity. These things helped
me get up to speed. I spent a ton of time learning on my own before grad school,
but there is a lot of value in formal education. I also took two intermediate
undergrad courses just to be sure I wouldn't be completely lost with the econ
terminology. Unless you're still with a very capable and patient tutor, going to a
university is the best way to get the feedback and accountability you need to
learn graduate level math (if you call economics "graduate level math" :D).
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I've taken a few of those courses, focusing on CS or statistical computing, topics
which fall outside of my main area of study now. Now that the end of my
program is in sight, I'm still taking Coursera courses and reading about subjects
that synergize with my traditional classes. By the way, I got this idea from Cal
Newport at Study Hacks , who has phenomenal material online about getting
into grad school and succeeding in a career.
So, in summary:
1. Have a clear goal, and use it to dene your curriculum. Keep rening it
as you learn new things.
Best of luck!
For exciting and useful applied mathematics at a basic level start reading David
G. Luenbergers's books. Particularly,
It all depends what the questioner means by 'want[ing] to become very good at
math'.
How do you dene 'very good'? And what sort of mathematics do you want to
learn, and why?
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Let's address the second question rst. With any learning activity - and
particularly with self-directed learning - it is important always to have the
objective of that learning in mind, rstly so that you can plot an ecient course
towards it (thereby hopefully avoiding wasting your time on unproductive
detours and irrelevant distractions), and secondly so that you'll know when you
have reached it.
So which should you choose? To sharpen your focus on just those areas that
might be of interest and relevance to you, ask yourself some basic questions,
such as:
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dier in their choice of topics and the depth to which they are developed in a
degree course, these dierences being dictated to a certain extent by the
interests of the lecturers, the research activities of the mathematics (and
physics) faculty, and whether the course is more geared towards pure or applied
mathematics. But all mathematics curricula will have certain broad subject
areas in common. The easiest way to discover what these are would be to visit
the websites of various university maths faculties and look at the subjects they
teach. These are likely to include the following topics (many of which overlap
each other) as a minimum (listed in no particular order, though some topics are
more advanced than others, and have certain prerequisites):
Set Theory
Group Theory
Real Analysis
Complex Analysis
Topology
Number Theory
Probability theory
Generally, the more prestigious the university or college, the more advanced the
material in its degree courses will be, so some (e.g. Ivy League (US) and Russell
Group (UK) universities) will introduce topics at the undergraduate level that
others (e.g. smaller 'provincial' universities) would only cover at the
postgraduate/Masters level.
If you want to use mathematics to solve practical problems, then your choice of
mathematical subjects will depend on what sort of practical problems you are
interested in. But all 'practical' mathematical problem solving will require
certain basic skills, and familiarity with some of the more generic tools of
mathematics, such as algebra, geometry, calculus, combinatorics, probability
and statistics.
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mathematics, but I particularly like - and highly recommend - those of the
British mathematician Prof. Ian Stewart, many of which I read when embarking
on my own mathematical education (I was 99% self-taught in mathematics
before going on to study it at university). Ian Stewart writes in a very clear,
accessible and entertaining style, and really brings his subject alive for the
reader. I can particularly recommend the following:
http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Yo...
http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-M...
http://www.amazon.com/Here-Inn...
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematic...
http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Nu...
http://www.amazon.com/Five-Golde...
http://www.amazon.com/Five-More-...
Once you have got an idea about the dierent areas of mathematics out there,
you can decide (perhaps based also on your answers to the rst two questions
above) whether you want to focus on one area alone, or a few particular areas, or
be a 'generalist' and study a wide variety of dierent areas. [1]
Now that you have decided which areas of mathematics you want to study, you
need to answer the rst question I raised: Exactly how 'good' do you want to
become as a mathematician? Once again, the language analogy is helpful: When
you are learning a foreign language, you have to decide what level of prociency
would be sucient for your needs. Do you want to be able to converse
condently and uently with native speakers (dicult - for most people)? Do
you just want to be able to understand books, music or lms produced in that
language (easier)? Or do you simply want to be able to use the language on
vacation, to read road signs and restaurant menus, and to ask and answer simple
questions in hotels, banks and shops (easiest)? The same sorts of questions
apply to mathematical prociency; do you want 'conversational uency', or
reasonable literacy when reading mathematical books, or just to be able to 'get
by' and read the road signs?
I'll conclude with a few words of advice regarding a general strategy for learning
mathematics from books. [2]
Firstly, understand that you cannot read a mathematics book in the same way
that you read a novel. Reading a mathematics book should be an active - and
interactive - experience, not a passive one. You will be required to follow
detailed arguments and - often complex and subtle - lines of reasoning, and to
continually answer questions that the text poses to you. In particular, you will be
required to check for yourself that you understand all the mathematical
derivations, ideally by reproducing the calculations and conrming the results
for yourself. You will therefore need a notepad in which to do your own
calculations as you read the book.
If you own the book, then make extensive use of annotation; underline,
highlight or otherwise mark signicant words, sentences and equations so that
they will stand out on subsequent re-reading. And you should always read
everything at least three times; rstly, with a light, skimming preview to get the
general gist of the material; then, with a detailed 'in-view' in which you immerse
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yourself in the material and attempt to achieve a complete understanding of it;
and, nally, with a review, in which you revisit the important points you
highlighted in the in-view and incorporate them into a higher-level framework
for ease of recall (I nd mind-mapping an invaluable tool for constructing this
framework). Add your own comments and thoughts in the margins as you go, as
these will help to put you back in the same frame of mind on a subsequent
reading, and may be important in recording and re-triggering your 'eureka!'
moments, in which you experienced a sudden insight or discovered a
connection with previous knowledge as you read the material. And if your own
calculations to conrm some statement or equation are brief enough, include
these in the margins too, so that you won't have to repeat them on a subsequent
reading. In short, a well-used mathematics book should look like a complete
mess when you have nished with it, its pages littered with your own
underlinings, highlightings, asterisks, question marks, exclamation marks,
comments and calculations! But that shouldn't matter, because if you have read
the book in the manner I have suggested, then you will have understood it and
memorized it, and shouldn't need to read it again :o)
Also, if you are aiming - in the language analogy - for conversational uency,
then it is very important that you not only read the text but also do the exercises,
because to achieve prociency in mathematics, as in any other subject, there
really is no substitute for practice, practice, practice!
Good luck with your journey of mathematical discovery, and have fun along the
way! :o)
[1] My own disposition is the latter, partly because I nd variety and novelty
stimulating, and partly because my other interest, theoretical physics, requires
familiarity with a broad range of mathematical disciplines. All theoretical
physicists are mathematical generalists to this extent (and this is one of the
reasons I was drawn to theoretical physics in the rst place); we are probably
familiar with more areas of mathematics than most professional
mathematicians, although our knowledge of any particular area generally won't
be as deep as that of mathematicians who are experts in it.
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[2] This is something I know a great deal about, as this is how I learned most of
the mathematics I know; book-based study has always been my preferred way of
learning the subject, even when I was at university. I generally regarded lectures
as an inferior form of instruction to self-study, partly because of the inherent
limitations of the 'chalk-and-talk' format (especially in a large lecture theatre),
partly because of the poor quality of some of the lecturers (e.g. the mumblers
you just can't hear, the droners who send you to sleep, and - perhaps worst - the
reluctant and disinterested lecturers whom you suspect regard lecturing as a
tiresome duty that distracts them from their more interesting research work),
and partly because their material was frequently so damned boring and
irrelevant to my real interests (particularly in theoretical physics). My
philosophy was that if I could nd a good book on a subject, written by an
acknowledged expert in it, then I shouldn't need to attend any lectures in it, and
attendance should therefore be optional (my lecturers took a dierent view, of
course...).
Steven Clarke, High school and college math instructor for over 17 years
Answered Dec 16, 2015
I'd work through all of the problem sets on this page , in order. If I got stuck on
a problem and did not have access to a math teacher or tutor, I would use online
resources such as Khan Academy , Pauls Online Math Notes , and Wolfram
Alpha , and Mathematics Stack Exchange to get back on track. I'd also look
for inexpensive used textbooks and free online textbooks that cover high school
algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus.
When I nished with those problem sets, I would take a look at some good
textbooks on linear algebra and dierential equations. If I felt I could learn on
my own using those and some online resources I would continue my self-study.
If not, I'd look for college courses in those subjects. For anything beyond those
topics I would need to look for college courses in upper level undergraduate
topics -- real and complex analysis, modern algebra, number theory, set theory,
topology, dierential geometry, etc. Only a very gifted person could learn those
topics on their own, and I am not so gifted.
Finally, I would try to nd someone with similar goals and at about my skill level
to work with. Two (or three or four) smart and motivated students working
together are frequently a better resource than one good teacher. And throughout
the entire journey I would try to spend as much time as possible communicating
with people at all levels who enjoy math.
Yes, you can do it very easily. Just watch in this video how :)
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Now that I have boasted about IIT and JEE preparation, here is how the
strategy would look like.
I would pick these books one after the other, and just go after solving all
possible problems until I would be able to tell myself, that I have
understood the subject well enough. Some examples are merely
following, and there are more.
Then I would pick books written by some foreign authors to try and test
my knowledge, and then when I have gured out that I have gained
sucient knowledge, I would go after next subject or next book. This is
very simple to sound, and very hard to follow! I cannot even remember
the number of hours I used to put into solving problems from a wide
variety of books.
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was putting into them. Understanding those subjects is not the most
dicult thing in the world, if you give them some time.
Once I have done all this, I would pick up Matlab, and nd a problem to
solve, and then apply all the basics I would have learned.
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