The Science of Learning Math (and Anything Else) with Justin Skycak

I got the chance to interview the learning legend Justin Sky-zack on a whole lot of topics around learning technical stuff like math efficiently.

He applied these techniques to building ai-driven system for math academy where he is currently the Chief Quant, Director of Analytics.

we’re going to cover:
- His learning backstory.
- What cognitive science says about the fastest path to mastery.
- And his practical advice for adults, kids, old people, people with ADHD, researchers.

Important Links:
📌 Justin's personal website: https://www.justinmath.com/
📌 Justin on X: https://x.com/justinskycak
📌 Justin's math journey: https://www.justinmath.com/bio/
📌 Math Academy: https://mathacademy.com/

📌 also btw if you want learn to code from full-stack to AI with Scrimba https://scrimba.com/?via=yacineMahdid (extra 20% off pro with my link, great resource, I love the team)

Table of Content:
- intro: 0:00
- justin skycak background : 2:10
- 3000h math self study in high school: 5:45
- what a day looked like for that 3000h stretch: 11:45
- meta-learning vs pure math learning: 16:10
- when did you get into cognitive neuro?: 21:50
- how did the fundamental math helped in your research projects: 29:55
- what does the math academy learning system looks like: 43:10
- how did you guys build the 2000 topic knowledge graph: 47:34
- would LLM be useful as an interface to that knowledge graph for the students?: 1:01:15
- how does the FIRe spaced repetition algorithm works?: 1:10:46
- does the same knowledge graph structure would work for physics? or other topic?: 1:17:34
- how do you understand the subject vs the curiculum: 1:34:05
- is there a connection between studying math and learning a sport?: 1:35:50
- do you think in math doing and teaching requires different skills?: 1:42:00
- could you get understanding without automaticy?1:56:25
- do you see any upside of confusion in learning?: 2:05:35
- learning math as an adult?: 2:14:11
- how to fill the motivation gap after learning the fundamental?: 2:19:20
- how should teaching math for kids and adults balance fundamentals and creativity?: 2:24:10
- is it ever too late to learn math seriously?: 2:33:55
- mastery learning vs ultra learning: 2:46:00
- top-down vs bottom-up: 2:51:30
- mastery learning for domain without a structured hierarchical structure? 2:53:40
- neurodivergence / adhd for structured math learning?: 2:56:30
- amateur mathematician augmented with technology will be able to contribute to research?: 3:06:20
- what are you most excited about right now in term of learning: 3:14:37
- conclusion: 3:17:12

Also other links about math academy:
📌 Fractional Implicit Repetition (FIRe): https://www.justinmath.com/individualized-spaced-repetition-in-hierarchical-knowledge-structures/

📌 The Math Academy Way: https://www.justinmath.com/files/the-math-academy-way.pdf
Math Academy's working draft book, authored by Justin, which answers the following questions:
- What techniques exist to maximize student learning and talent development, particularly in the context of math?
- Why are these techniques so impactful, and if they are indeed so impactful, then why are they so often absent from traditional classrooms?
- How does Math Academy leverage these techniques?

And some of the other people's stories that we’re discussed
📌 Melbourne's journey from "not a math person" to deriving batchnorm and building robot dynamics from scratch: https://melbournebaldove.com/logs/math-academy-journey

📌 Sayid's story about overcoming his math anxiety - https://x.com/sayidislearning/status/1884326740417470527

"Around the 60 day mark my brain was like ... "we thought this was a temporary thing, but it doesn't seem like you're going to stop doing this any time soon, so we're going to have to do some rewiring to make sure you're not feeling repulsed, you're not feeling anxious." And then magically one day these feelings just completely went away.
...
When I was starting out learning math I wasn't really sure if that feeling of waking up and not looking forward to starting my day with math was ever going to go away. But I'm pretty sure that if you stick with something long enough, then it will just become the new normal for you. Your brain, your body will eventually be forced to adjust."

Additional more learning materials

📌 Introduction to Algorithms and Machine Learning: https://www.justinmath.com/files/introduction-to-algorithms-and-machine-learning.pdf

textbook Justin wrote while teaching the most advanced math/CS sequence in the USA, scaffolding high school students up to doing masters/PhD-level coursework: reproducing academic research papers in artificial intelligence, building everything from scratch in Python.

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Have a great week! 👋

Видео The Science of Learning Math (and Anything Else) with Justin Skycak канала Deep Learning with Yacine