I’ve completed Calculus II, my sixth Math Academy course, and per my usual habit am posting another update on my Math Academy experience, along with miscellaneous comments on matters Math Academy-related. (For past posts about my experiences, see my first Math Academy post, which contains links to all my other posts and updates. Coincidentally, that first post was exactly one year ago today.)

This completes my Math Academy education in single-variable calculus, with Calculus I and Calculus II supplementing the material I learned in Mathematical Foundations II and Mathematical Foundations III.

As I usually state: Not everyone will share my opinions on Math Academy, and not everyone will want to use the Math Academy system as I do. But my comments may be useful or interesting to at least some people.

Skipping school

According to my activity log, I averaged just over 35 XP per day, with a lot of variability (standard deviation of over 25). I didn’t do any work at all on 18 days and did less than 10 XP on another 4; that’s almost 2 days a week when I skipped out on doing Math Academy. On the positive side, out of the 22 quizzes I took, I had to re-take only 12—far from perfect, but much better than what I was able to do in Calculus I.

Between “skipping school,” covering more new material, and a lot of reviews of material from previous classes (see below), it took me over three months (97 days) to finish Calculus II, considerably longer than I hoped when I began the course.

Just the facts, ma’am

I noted in my last update that I was starting to use Anki to try to remember the host of formulas related to trigonometric and hyperbolic identities, derivatives, and integral. Alas, this was not as successful as I’d hoped it would be.

The primary problem is that I have yet been able to make Anki reviews a daily habit: I’ll remember that I haven’t reviewed my cards in a while, do a session, and then forget to do it the next few days.

This problem is in turn probably due to two other factors: First, the sheer number of cards shown as needing to be reviewed is daunting, although most of them are for decks I don’t care about. Second, and I think more important, is that my Anki practice is disconnected from my Math Academy activity.

That’s why (once again) I’d like to see a Math Academy course focused on more advanced mathematical facts, as opposed to the kind of “math facts” course that’s been mooted, one intended for students learning multiplication tables and other common prerequisites. I think the chances of seeing such a more advanced course are relatively small in the next two or three years, but perhaps the Math Academy folks will have time to consider it at some point.

“Review hell”

A common complaint by people on the Math Academy discord server is that the number of reviews they have to get through is overwhelming, especially toward the end of courses. “Review hell,” some call it, frustrated that they aren’t seeing many new lessons compared to reviews.

I can put some numbers to that frustration: in the course of taking Calculus II, I had 87 lessons for Calculus II compared to 234 reviews of previous material (both in Calculus II and previous courses), about a 2.7-to-1 ratio of reviews to lessons.

I can also understand why people are frustrated: it’s annoying to be told that you’ve almost completed a course only to see review after review and only one new lesson. However, I also think that having lots of reviews is just a natural consequence of Math Academy having enabled you to complete lots of courses in a relatively short time.

Consider: in less than a year I completed 5 Math Academy courses, including a re-do of a comprehensive high school mathematics curriculum, the equivalent of a complete “Linear Algebra I” university course, and a fair amount of material from university-level courses on multivariable calculus and probability and statistics.

Of course I have a lot of material to review, how could it be otherwise? And I want to review that material; otherwise I’ll forget it all and the time (and money!) I spent learning it will have been wasted. So, you won’t catch me complaining about “review hell.” While I certainly don’t welcome seeing review after review appear in my queue, I recognize that they’re an important part of the Math Academy experience and I feel a sense of satisfaction when I can finish one without errors, knowing that I just helped solidify my knowledge of the subject.

Slowing down, taking a break

A major reason for my slowness in finishing Calculus II (I had originally planned to finish by the end of 2025) is that I’m working on a separate (and unrelated) project that’s taking up a lot of time. I’ll be doing that at least through the end of February, so I’ve decided to cut my daily XP goal from 40 down to 30 for now. I suspect I may also end up skipping a few days.

However, at some point I should have more time (perhaps much more time) and I’ll be ready to re-engage with Math Academy more fully. As I’ve previously mentioned, I plan to next take Multivariable Calculus and then Probability and Statistics, with a goal of finishing both this year. I have no idea what new Math Academy courses will be available after that, but I’m sure I’ll find something suitable.

That’s it for now, my next update probably won’t be for a few months.