BetterExplained

That's one of the things I like best about https://betterexplained.com -- it focuses on ways to gain intuition about a given math concept, using visuals and metaphors as appropriate. If only math education were always presented like that....

I would say I felt the same way. I am also self taught and just have high school level math. For the most part of my career though it hasn't really been an issue. But I want to learn ML so digging in. I feel like it is not as bad as I thought it would be, I think the problem with math information is assumes a lot of things. There are tons of notation that is really dense. My recommendation would be to pick a project or an area, because math is huge. Try to find resources for that. So for ML it is linear algebra and Calculus. Try to find a bunch of resources and get different ways of explaining it. I highly recommend: Math for Programmers by Paul Orland https://betterexplained.com/

I'd say my goal is not so much about avoiding math but more about learning intuition-first rather than equations-first. Top-down vs. bottom-up, maybe. Most of material that I've encountered about math-heavy stuff tends to do the latter. I imagine there are many people who're great at picking apart an equation and deriving things from first principles; but for me, I find it more manageable to get the big picture first, visualize what's going on, and then finally learn the math behind it. So far the DSP Guide book is doing a great job of presenting things that way. Another good example of this kind of style is https://betterexplained.com/ (some of their articles are great companions to these DSP topics actually!)

They’re much narrower in scope than a full curriculum (or even a course, for that matter), but Better Explained [0] has some very good overviews of math topics. They are a useful supplement I’ve come across repeatedly while searching topics I found challenging over the years. On the topic of open source learning, I take every chance I can to heartily recommend fast.ai’s course [1]. It’s a good intro to Deep Learning that leaves you informed enough to build things, and equips you to ask follow-on questions and dive deeper when/where you need to. [0]: https://betterexplained.com/ [1]: https://course.fast.ai/

I’ve found https://betterexplained.com an excellent resource for developing an intuition for fundamental concepts in math. For calculus itself, I’d recommend Thompson’s enlightening and witty 1910 textbook “Calculus Made Easy”. It’s available for free at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33283/33283-pdf.pdf

I'm 32, didn't go to college, and have been a programmer since I was 17. I suck at math. https://teachyourselfcs.com/ is a good resource, and they recommend (and have a link to the pdf for) Mathematics for Computer Science. I plan on getting through that at some point, but I've also had decent luck with https://betterexplained.com/ - they do a pretty good job of explaining calculus.

https://betterexplained.com/ - has some great guides and a bunch of different ways to think about things. Site is primarily text, but he offers video courses too.

Two quick things I can recommend without hesitation, which focus on an intuitive understanding of concepts: 1. Essence of Linear Algebra mini-series - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kjBOesZCoqc 2. Better Explained website - https://betterexplained.com YouTube has a lot of high quality math content, it definitely helped through university. It's also worth mentioning the Stanford U courses. The main takeaway I have for you is learn the concepts intuitively first, then spend the time to play around with them on paper until they sink in. Some things will be easy, some will be frustrating, much like programming you will walk away from a frustrating problem and have an epiphany while doing something completely different. All the best and have fun!

The web site https://betterexplained.com/ has physical books that you can purchase "Math, Better Explained: Learn to Unlock Your Math Intuition". The explanations on that website are excellent, I imagine the book is the same.

Summer of 1980, going into my senior year in high school, I mentioned I'd be taking Calculus next year to a co-worker a couple years older than I. He said he had the best book in the world on Calculus, and he loaned me his copy of Silvanus P Thompson's Calculus made easy. I thoroughly enjoyed that book, benefited from its intuitive explanations, and forever appreciated his recommendation. If I may similarly influence anyone here, for themselves or someone they know, to read Calculus made easy to supplement their calculus coursework, I will be happy to have paid the favor forward in some small way. By the way, Kalid Azad may be our modern day Silvanus P Thompson. And he has better tools[1], which he wields masterfully, than just pen and paper. Recommended too. [1] https://betterexplained.com/

This! Exactly this! Honestly as a CS person I might be completely biased but, I often hear this quote around the office "The hardest part of software engineering is naming things". We spend a lot of time and effort to name things in a way that a non engineer would understand. I wish people in hard sciences would do the same. I often times understand the underlying concepts described by all these Greek letters and symbols but it gets lost in translation. That is why I love efforts like https://betterexplained.com/ where math is made concrete.

Indeed, I love https://betterexplained.com/ which is all about intuitive understanding of calculus and other stuff. A post on the constant 'e' - nobody ever told me what that number really means. More such material, and a willingness to learn is all thats needed for a majority of folks, in my opinion Edit: typo

What are you using to self-educate? I'm kind of doing the same. I decided to start with "Mathematics for the Nonmathematician", which so far is good (only on chapter 3 though). Someone in the comments shared https://betterexplained.com/ - which I hadn't heard of and looks great.

I am always struggling to find good educational games for kids. Something like http://betterexplained.com/, but for younger kids (mine is currently ~8 years), would be great.

I would recommend BetterExplained, there you can find many concepts explained in layman's terms: http://betterexplained.com/

> Based on my experiences, the best way to teach kids is to show them the hidden interestingness in the things you want them to learn. This is consistent with the ideas behind BetterExplained [1] and Crash Course [2], both excellent learning resources that are really compelling. "Learning is about a permanent shift in viewpoint, an Aha! moment, not memorizing facts that are quickly forgotten." --- [1] http://www.betterexplained.com/ [2] http://www.youtube.com/crashcourse/

Apart from all the great replies, here, do try out http://betterexplained.com/ (Many things are free here, you wont' be at a loss, checking this site). It has some nice aha! moments in math study.

I really like BetterExplained (http://betterexplained.com/). It made me a bit more interested in math, which i never liked. I also love the whole StackExchange network, especially skeptics (http://skeptics.stackexchange.com). A great way to learn new stuff from common myth.

Great comment. I think the difficulty in defining what makes a good teacher is as difficult as what defines a good parent. In rough terms, I think a good parent means someone who raises a compassionate, honest child. Similarly, a good teacher / education system is one that raises inquisitive students. I've long believed it's better to graduate kids who love algebra vs. those that know and hate calculus. Because in 10 years, the ones who loved algebra will probably end up loving calculus too (instead of developing a lifelong aversion to math, and learning in general). So, my meta-reply would be to search for a system that tries to generate genuine interest in learning. (Plug: I try to blog in this manner at http://betterexplained.com).

Thanks to one of the comments on that post I found http://www.betterexplained.com! This is a great resource that I plan on sharing with anyone who asks the "but WHY?" question (whichis a good thing).

https://betterexplained.com might be worth checking out.

This isn't answering your question but it seems others are and it's still good to say: Spend some time learning maths. I don't mean to say you shouldn't continue advancing in programming and I understand that you're in elementary school which is supposedly teaching you maths on a standard track but you are clearly a self-starter and would do well to advance independently. Schools teach maths poorly. They generally focus on rote mechanics at a slow pace with very little to keep the interest of anyone and this is a big reason people (a) think they are bad at maths and (b) hate maths. My elementary school barely advanced beyond arithmetic but, thanks in large part to programming, I independently advanced much faster than that. I still regret not pushing myself to go further but at least I got to spend most of my K-12 education ahead of the mathematics track. I have no idea where you are in mathematics since "elementary school" is very broad, but BetterExplained (http://betterexplained.com/) is a great place to get some started. It can even give you a better grasp of addition and subtraction, let alone more advanced topics.

Given that you have a Ph.D. in mathematics, this might seem hopelessly elementary, but who knows--I found it intuitive and insightful: https://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-intuitive-guide-to-imagi… Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18310788

My parents did psychology and they always warned us about this. Bayesianism helps but isn't taught well enough in school. Basically, we fail to handle the false positive and false negatives into the calculation, and this happens a lot with psychologists as well. This is really the point where people say untrained 'professionals' are dangerous - they can't evaluate that inaccuracy of the diagnosis itself. This is the best explanation I've seen so far: https://betterexplained.com/articles/an-intuitive-and-short-explanatio…

I have really enjoyed reading some of the better explained pages. I wouldn't recommend most people start on calculus on that site, but since you requested it specifically here's the overview: https://betterexplained.com/guides/calculus/

See the great article on e from Better Explained: https://betterexplained.com/articles/an-intuitive-guide-to-exponential…

I'll go with an example to demonstrate why that's not always enough. Many people are quite keen to know what this (for example) is actually doing: float InvSqrt(float x){ float xhalf = 0.5f * x; int i = *(int*)&x; i = 0x5f3759df - (i >> 1); x = *(float*)&i; x = x*(1.5f - xhalf*x*x); return x; } From https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fast-inverse… In my case I don't have a huge amount of time to chase down every rabbit hole, but I'd love to accelerate intuition for LLM's. Multiple points of intuition or comparison really help. I'm also not a python expert - what you see and what I see from a line of code will be quite different.

This article is great for getting a practitioner to understand how to calculate a logarithm. For non-math friends, I still reach for this[0] as a great way to get an intuition for the utility of logarithms. [0] - https://betterexplained.com/articles/demystifying-the-natural-logarith…

The fourier transform. Encountered it first in my undergrad engineering degree, it was presented as dry mathematics, with no real explanation, just threw complex exponentials at us, and pages of derivations. Years later I actually use it in my job, and through that and other material can see its beauty, and how its actually not that complicated. Some great resources like this helped a lot: [0] https://betterexplained.com/articles/colorized-math-equations/

not mine but taking the opportunity to repost an amazing one: the quake inverse square root https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fast-inverse…