Hello, I was wondering: how many of you are doing khanacademy?
Right now, I am about 2 weeks away from completing khanacademy altogether. 334 out of 380 concepts are completed, assuming that the KA team don't add any new content during the time period.
Are you guys brushing up your math on KA, and if so what's your progress?
I'm currently doing a part-time undergrad degree. It's spread out over six years and not as comprehensive as I'd like it to be, so I use Khan Academy to revise material and fill in any self-perceived blanks in my syllabus. For example, my course is sketchy on linear algebra compared to what I imagine I'll need in future, so I'm currently exhausting the Khan Academy library on linear algebra, before moving onto something more advanced.
The "ceiling" of Khan Academy is becoming more apparent to me, in that it's increasingly failing to meet my needs in terms of subject depth and self-assessment. I've had to raid MIT OCW for linear algebra problem sets.
On a related note, I've found myself explaining things using the same intonations and phrasing as Salman Khan.
Depends on what you mean by "a systematic manner". If there's a large subject I want to go through, I'll start where I think I'm already up to, work my way through the videos one by one, skip topics I'm already happy with, and continue along those lines until I'm satisfied. If there's a small subject I want to go over, I'll identify the appropriate videos and watch them all.
It wouldn't be a productive use of my time to go through every single Khan Academy video one by one, as I'm already most of the way through a maths-heavy undergrad degree.
Well, I meant doing the exercises. I don't spent much of my time on the videos because either I already know it or I figured out either with the hints or without. Then, it's smooth sailing the rest of the way.
The exercises aren't that in-depth. They only really go up to introductory differentiation. It's clear that the focus of the assessment exercises is a secondary/high school target, and there's a lot of video content pitched at an undergrad level which is completely unassessed.
I'm attempting to use it alongside Udacity to grasp Maths, Science, Statistics and Computer Science (well, programming). I've not got down to doing everything systematically yet, but it's all much more effective and efficient than school (I'm 15). Currently, I'm learning Calculus, and it's much better than the English education system, even though I have a one-to-one session for one hour per week with my teacher. On Khan, I have an Earth Badge, and 66,858 points.
As a soon-to-be maths teacher, hearing about high school students going above and beyond the terribly-designed curricula that teachers are forced to inflict on their students warms my heart enormously. May your passion for learning continue to grow, and guide you to ever greater intellectual heights. Have an upvote. :)
Thank you very much :) I'm glad that there's one more teacher who has an interest in teaching, and not just signalling learning in students - even if that's the only option governments let them take :(
I agree with what you've said, and I believe it applies to most, if not all subjects. I've found children don't thrive in factory-like conditions of quiet and memorising in age dependant groups, and their capabilities aren't measurable in a one off three hour written exam - people really are different. I think I'd leave school, and teach myself to pass the necessary qualifications to get into uni and so much more, if it weren't for my school having an excellent music department of the sort I wouldn't be able to get elsewhere (it's a music school). -Because I really do love to learn. I'm with Michel Thomas, that "it's the learning process that motivates these kids".
Well, since I am almost complete the whole thing, I have 1.3 million energy points, and 4 suns and 2 earth badges in additions to all the moons and the meteorites.
I failed math in grade 9. So far I'm at 202/414 tasks. Currently chewing on "linear equations", tastes like redemption.
My progress has been VERY slow. Once in a while I hit a task that I ace in the first stack, but mostly it's a grind. Like, I've been at "almost halfway" for months because they keep adding new units fast enough to keep pace with me. I'll have way more time for it when I'm no longer studying forex.
When CERN was talking about their 5-sigma result, I had recently mastered the "inferential statistics" bunch, and being able to know what '5-sigma' meant was a huge confidence boost. It makes my life feel less shameful and more like just another casualty of environmental factors.
Here's my profile, https://www.khanacademy.org/profile/Jotto999/
I am aware that doing KA is not nearly as good as having a teacher, but using up a slot at a university for me would be a stupid business decision, so I'll keep plugging away at it. Also, math is irrelevant to my day-to-day life and as long as I can master all of KA before the age of 30, I'll be more than satisfied.
I used to go on Khan Academy pretty often earlier this year, but now I usually learn by means of a textbook + writing down exercises in a notebook. Earned 2 Sun Badges and about 350k energy points so far, if you're interested in hearing about some measure of progress.
It's absolutely awesome for high school students, but it doesn't look like it can help much past the freshman or sophomore year in college. (Then again, what the heck do I know?) If LessWrongers are, on average, as good at math as I estimate them to be, then only the youngest of us can derive much benefit from it.
I don't think khanacademy is just for high school kids, or elementary or middle school. Everyone will forget, and almost everyone with a high school education or better will have gaps in their knowledge. Everyone seems to think that college is the end of their education, but that's false. As with everything you learn or master, you need to practice them, and khanacademy offers periodic reviews according to the principle of spaced repetition.
So, it's great for adults too, even if they're only in review mode for the vast majority of their life. When they start to learn something more advanced, they don't have to go back to elementary math or deal with the problem of knowledge gaps.
Only the youngest can derive much benefit from it? Absolutely not true.
Is what you said true even if you go into a field, or choose a major, that relies heavily on advanced math? That was what I was trying to get at. If people do much more complicated math on a daily basis, presumably they have already mastered all math topics at a high school level, unless the skills they use are much narrower than that (which, of course, might very well be true).
That's a question that cannot be answered without looking at math major's area of focus or their specific career of choice, of which I am ignorant about.
That being said, I don't think a math major or a person who is in a strong math related field necessary focus on everything that requires high school mathematics. They may not touch statistics, or linear algebra as often as other area because they don't need it in their day to day job. They may need khanacademy to reviews those area that they didn't touch.
In a highly technical field like programming, most programmers may not need to deal anything more complicated than algebra, so they're going to forget the more advanced aspects.
It's helped me tremendously - just started university, and we had a teacher who just wasn't that good. Nice person, not enough teaching experience. Looked up Khanacademy, and a second explanation made it stick. I'll use it to repeat things later on. Started peeking into javascript too, as I've yet to write a single line of code in my life, it's a much appreciated source of information.
Did some with Java, mostly messing around and getting used to the interface, and some math, as I got done with it a year before you're supposed to, so I've forgotten some of it, and did... I think I started with simple integrals. So far, mostly videos, few exercises, though.
I don't use it systematically anymore, but it's my first port of call when I don't understand something in school or want to hear something explained differently. It works pretty well when I use it in this way, although he often goes through things more slowly than would be ideal for revision purposes.
Well, there are no physics or chemistry exercies, and the linear algebra ones weren't around when I needed them. The calculus problems were useful though.