[admsmz]

This sounds very similar to the system behind http://mathacademy.com . You follow a graph of skills and dependencies and because you always have the necessary prerequisites it is always doable.

Their team of mathematicians have created a curriculum from k-12 to a bachelors in mathematics.

[squeaky-clean]

Mathacademy looks interesting but FYI for everyone else, this user only has 5 comments in their history and 4 are advertising mathacademy

[eps]

It's also $49/mo with no preview.

[ykonstant]

What in tarnation. For 100 bucks/month you can get 1-1 mastery learning sessions from math PhDs/postdocs that need money (like me! I am the postdoc!).

If you want to learn some math and are willing to fork over $50 a month, my advice is to find a competent tutor online*, tell them what your goals are, and work with them to produce an evolving, customized mini-course.

Have them pick material suitable for your goals, work through it in-session together so they can spot gaps in your knowledge/technique and make progressive problem sets to cover those gaps, and so on.

*A local tutor would be better, but I presume they will be prohibitively expensive in the average HN user's location.

[huhtenberg]

The problem is that finding a postdoc that is also a good _teacher_ is a monumental task of its own.

Compared to an online platform that's being used by a ton of people, has lots of reviews and recommendations and that is, presumably, actively optimized through a feedback loop, it's an easy choice between the two. Also, a platform removes the friction of cancelling the engagement if the need to do so arises for whatever reason.

I mean, if someone I know points at a postdoc and says "this guy is excellent", then their recommendation will prevail. But chances of that happening are next to zero.

[ykonstant]

I have no experience with those platforms, so I don't know how deep the instruction is. After taking, say, a Calculus course there, would you be comfortable doing Spivak's exercises? If yes, that seems great.

[huhtenberg]

This is orthogonal to the instruction quality. What good is the depth of the material if the teacher can't explain it clearly and concisely?

[codetrotter]

> For 100 bucks/month you can get 1-1 mastery learning sessions from math PhDs/postdocs that need money (like me! I am the postdoc!).

But how many hours of tutoring will 100 bucks/month get me? Maybe 1 hour per week.

[ykonstant]

No, you can't do anything in 1h/week, 3 hours should be the minimum, 4 is ideal, depending on the level of the class (I would ask for more than 100 for 4 hours a week if I am to teach advanced harmonic analysis, for example).

[trane_project]

Yeah, this is cool and similar to the end state I have in mind. The main difference is that I am not trying to create the curriculum/exercises. I am just creating flaschards that say "Solve exercise x.y.z in that textbook". Plus the whole free-software angle and being able to share the material as text files.

The math thing is just a side project at the moment to try to see how it works for other fields. I am primarily using this for music. I was hoping something like this existed already, but all the solutions are either very specialized like this one or do not support dependencies as a core feature, like Anki. Had Anki supported something like this, I wouldn't have needed to make my own thing.

[zozbot234]

It would be nice to simply include support for dependency tracking in existing flashcard software. Unfortunately, the most commonly used flashcard software, viz. Anki, has not been adding such features. I can only assume that the project is very lightly maintained and/or working on paying down technical debt - new innovative features don't seem to be a priority.

[dls2016]

Agreed, I've also been waiting to see a system with spaced repetition (to help memorize and retain) + dependency graph (to choose what new topics to present). Not sure what the AI value add would be?

I have two children and I was glad that teachers are willing to use new tools (I never asked if they were forced to use them, but I assume not because each teacher seems to use different websites). I'm sure some kids still get bored, but they can let the ones who enjoy math practice at their own pace and provide special guidance to them while still spending the majority of their time helping those who need it.

[trane_project]

I think ultimately it's a very different approach to their current one, so it might be too difficult to do in the existing codebase. Maybe not, I have not looked at the code. But the public docs and learning philosophy around anki all seemed to discourage it, so I decided to make my own thing.

And yeah, I don't think Anki gets a lot of support. I am an open-source maintainer myself, so I know that story.

[ecshafer]

Kahn Academy has a similar graph and plenty of gamified experiences, but its a non-profit. $50 a month is expensive.

[soferio]

This looks great. My son uses “beast academy” from Art of Problem Solving (https://beastacademy.com/), which is fantastic. But mathacademy looks like it might be a good competitor at the post year 6 level.

[sn9]

It would probably be best to use the AoPS books in conjunction with the site as a supplement.

[soferio]

My observation is that the paper books are unnecessary because the online experience on beastacademy is so comprehensive - and your answers are auto checked. YMMV.

[throwoutway]

I'm in the market for something like this but $49/mo is absurd, even though it's supposedly discounted from 79/99. Way too high

[huhtenberg]

How is it better than the Khan Academy courses?

[jxf]

It's not K-12; it starts at 4th grade, according to the site.