Self taught programer math catchup tutorials?
June 2, 2024 10:50 AM   Subscribe

I'm self teaching Arduino programing and I quit math as soon as possible in high school and that's finally catching up with me. Easy / best way to learn the math I need?

I didn't take calculus, I don't know what sin or cosin are. For a project I would like to use a round screen so I need to translate xy to polar coordinates. For a different part of the project I'd like to select every third or fifth or whatever LED pixel and I'm pretty sure that means division with a remainder which I definitely sorta remember from elementary school.
I'm pretty good at learning from YouTube videos if they're well produced. I don't mind paying for a real good set of learning materials. Is Brilliant actually any good at teaching the math I should learn? A book that will teach programing math for those that hated high school math?
posted by Uncle to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I'm sure someone will come in here recommending more conventional sites like Khan Academy, and while those will be more comprehensive on math, might I recommend Freya Holmér's youtube channel? She has a series called "Math for Game Devs" and the third one is on trigonometry.

Now, I was the kind of kid who was really ahead in math, so I can't vouch for the helpfulness of these videos specifically, but her series on shader programming was super useful and informative, and generally her videos have been very engaging and helpful to me.
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:27 AM on June 2, 2024 [9 favorites]


Best answer: I'm sure someone will come in here recommending more conventional sites like Khan Academy

I’m that person.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:16 PM on June 2, 2024 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Khan Academy may not always be the best choice, but it's very rarely a bad choice.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 12:19 PM on June 2, 2024 [1 favorite]




https://schoolyourself.org/

This site, in spite of its kind of generic name, is really thoughtfully crafted by educators to teach numeracy in a deep and conceptual way. It also more or less forces mastery before you move on, like an interactive workbook with interspersed video explanations. Its kind of like free code camp in its design, but for all sorts of maths.. really hope you can check it out. Found it after someone on reddit shared that they kept getting stuck in college math because of early concepts theyd miss3d in grade school ,and when they finally sat down and went through this - which took a minute - they overcame the block bc early concepts theyd missed or not understood deeply got sorted. Really really good stuff, i think this as core amd khan as supplement maybe?
posted by elgee at 12:04 AM on June 3, 2024 [4 favorites]


Brilliant is pretty good for doing quick, game-like lessons. You can do a trial to see whether it works well for you.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 2:17 AM on June 3, 2024 [1 favorite]


The learn-by-fiddling stiff at Brilliant is fun.

Also work out what made you quit. Maths is about turning problems you don't know how to solve into problems you do know how to solve, and people quit maths because there's a "missing stair" i.e. a concept you use later as foundational but for some reason it has not stuck in the toolkit. You may be able to focus your study on the 'missing stair' items.
posted by k3ninho at 3:17 AM on June 3, 2024 [1 favorite]


As a practical matter, I think you have to figure out how to focus on the math you need. In school, the path from arithmetic to calculus takes four or five years depending on how you count. Of that, you can probably skip plane geometry.

For example, searching on "trig for programmers" brings up several options to try. You might find one that works for you, or you might find you need some algebra to keep up with the manipulation of expressions.

The functions built into your programming language are clues. You mentioned sine and cosine. Modulus (mod) is a lead to dealing with the division remainder problem.

The classic way to learn math is to get a book on the topic, then read a chapter, do the problems at the end of the chapter, rinse and repeat. It's a hard thing to do though.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:48 AM on June 3, 2024


Start watching some cool math channels on YouTube. You won't get a deep education. they are paper thin, but you'll get an idea of the different areas of math, and what you need to know vs. what's out there.

3blue1brown is great. Numberphile is also pretty good, but there are more.

https://youtube.com/@3blue1brown?si=51qgh_V5vK5gP6lY
https://youtube.com/@numberphile?si=818trAj1_EdWTSUc

It doesn't replace the rigor of doing exercises. But it does give you a stronger intuition about what's possible with different mathematical techniques and how they'll be useful.

"How to solve it" by George Polya is a book that helps build your problem solving capacity, which could be helpful.

Good luck!
posted by jonnay at 11:32 AM on June 3, 2024


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