As part of my Parea Resource Collection, I’ll be posting resources to help explore STEM-centered subjects. Today’s category is pretty broad: math. I’ll continue adding resources, and this will likely branch off into different categories in the future…
Anyways, this resource is for those who may dislike math class in school, or those who may not see the point in the math we learn at school. Personally, the latter describes me. Up until high school, I saw math as a way to problem solve, and this puzzle aspect is interesting to me. However, upon taking high school math courses, I didn’t get that same experience I envisioned, and I think that’s something that needs to change in the way we teach math.
Because, a lot of people won’t pursue a future career in math, science or engineering, or… they may not hold much interest in studying polar graphs. I think this has contributed to the saying “I’m bad at math.” When people say that they’re “bad” at math, they’re talking about grasping the symbols, equations and procedures that we’re taught. Yet, math is about problem-solving, and I think that as long as we have a desire to, we could all cultivate this skill. Sure, for some, problem-solving ability comes easier, but that doesn’t mean that we can all improve at our own pace (since being able to examine situations from different angles… no pun intended there… and implementing an approach to solve the problem is beneficial in any field).
Enough with my opinions on math education… without further ado, here is a list of resources to help build a genuine passion for math and problem solving!
3Blue1Brown
Created by mathematician and Stanford graduate Grant Sanderson, 3Blue1Brown takes a visual approach to math through incorporating self-created animations in his videos. In each video, he approaches concepts logically, through first providing specific examples, then identifying patterns in those examples and generalizing (which is really what math is all about). I’ve watched some of his videos for calculus, and they’re super interesting as he presents ideas intuitively. Sanderson also discusses mathematical phenomena and problems of interest.
MindYourDecisions — Presh Talwalkar
This channel popped up in my field a few years ago, and I’ve been watching it ever since! Presh Talwalkar goes into fun math problems, olympiad problems and logic puzzles; he often makes videos based on problem submissions he receives. Overall, the videos are incredibly engaging, and are a good way to tease your brain and be exposed to different patterns & ways of mathematical thinking.
StatQuest with Josh Starmer
I found StatQuest as I needed help understanding some statistics and machine learning concepts. I think that regardless of if you need help with statistics or not, StatQuest has great resources and makes learning statistics pretty interesting! Videos are somewhat entertaining and explain concepts in simple language, applying them to real life to make them more relevant.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is a great resource for learning specific topics, whether that be in math or science. It’s well aligned with the AP curriculum, and could be helpful in self-studying for those courses, as well as learning the material for typical high school math courses like Algebra and Geometry. For more general high school science classes, it depends if the material sequentially aligns with the course you’re taking (or if you know exactly what topics you need to learn).
I like Khan Academy as videos offer an in-depth conceptual understanding of topics, before preceding into the application of those concepts with specific problems/examples. This is important for building logic, and for gaining a better appreciation for STEM subjects.
Mathematical Visual Proofs
This is a relatively new math channel; I stumbled across it while watching YouTube shorts and it’s pretty interesting! It uses the same “manim” animation library that Grant Sanderson uses to make his 3Blue1Brown videos. As implied by the title, the channel focuses on visual, geometric proofs to explain mathematic phenomena (i.e. using the area of a polygon to demonstrate the sum of an infinite series).
Well that wraps up the math resources! As I research and gather more, I’ll add them to this page. If you have any specific websites/videos, feel free to leave them in the comments below or contact me and I’ll add them here.
