Chief Quant, Director of Analytics at Math Academy. Posts about learning, upskilling, math education, Math Academy, and more generally, stages 2-3 of Bloom's talent development process in hierarchical skill domains.
New Posts from JustinMath.com
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Hey! You're receiving this email because you requested to be notified about new posts at JustinMath.com. A new podcast came out last weekend. It is, without a doubt, the best podcast about Math Academy to date. Alex Smith (our content director) and I joined Anna Stokke, professor of mathematics at the University of Winnipeg, on her Chalk and Talk podcast which has been picking up some serious traction in the world of math education. If you want to understand what we're doing but don't have time to skim our 400+ page book, this episode sums it up in an hour: ~1.25h • [~5:00] What is Bloom's two-sigma problem, how did Bloom attempt to solve it, why does it remain unsolved, and what is Math Academy's approach to solving it?
[~10:00] What is mastery learning? Why is full individualization important? What is our knowledge graph and how do we use it to implement mastery learning? How do we use data to improve our curriculum?
[~21:00] Why is it so important to be proficient on prerequisite skills? How does this relate to cognitive load? You see this same phenomenon everywhere outside of math education. Jason has a "learning staircase" analogy that elegantly encapsulates the core idea.
[~26:30] Why are worked examples so important? How do we leverage them?
[~29:30] Our perspective on memorization. Yes, students need to memorize times tables (among other things). No, they should not be expected to do this before they know what multiplication means (and how to calculate it using repeated addition).
[~33:30] Our perspective on the concrete-pictorial-abstract approach -- what it's useful for, and how it often gets misapplied.
[~41:00] What is spaced repetition? How does that work in a hierarchical body of knowledge like math? What are "encompassings" and why are they so important? How do we choose tasks that maximize learning efficiency? How do we calibrate the spaced repetition system to student performance and intrinsic difficulty in topics?
[~48:00] What is the testing effect (retrieval practice effect) and how do we leverage it? How do we gradually wean students off of reference material? How do quizzes play into this?
[~52:00] What does a student need to do to be successful on Math Academy? What does an adult need to do to facilitate their kid's success, and what are our plans to build more of this directly into the system?
[~55:30] We have a streamlined learning path specifically designed for adults, to get them up from foundational middle-school material up to university-level math in the most efficient way possible. What the learning experience often feels like for adults: it can be an emotional experience when you successfully learn math that you used to be intimidated by, and realize that the reason you struggled in the past wasn't because you're dumb but rather because you were missing prerequisites.
[~1:02:00] How did Math Academy get 8th graders getting 5's on the AP Calculus BC exam? What's our origin story? Can any student be successful on Math Academy? The students in our original Pasadena program -- what was their background, what did they learn in our program, and what are they doing now?
[~1:10:00] What's next for Math Academy? We want to become the ultimate math learning platform and empower the next generation of students with the ability to learn as much as they can.
Additionally, here are 3 new posts from the past month:
2025 Feb, ~900 words • If you don’t practice retrieving information from memory, it dissipates quickly and almost entirely.
It's 2025 Feb, ~250 words • It's not just that the expert actively thinks about things differently from the novice. It's that the expert literally perceives them differently to begin with.
2025 Feb, ~200 words • Just like successfully lifting a heavy weight forces your body to adapt to strengthen muscles, successfully recalling a fuzzy memory (lengthy wait) forces your brain to adapt to strengthen memory.
Best, |
Justin Skycak
Chief Quant, Director of Analytics at Math Academy. Posts about learning, upskilling, math education, Math Academy, and more generally, stages 2-3 of Bloom's talent development process in hierarchical skill domains.
Hey! You're receiving this email because you requested to be notified about new posts at JustinMath.com.(If you've changed your mind, click here to unsubscribe, please avoid marking spam.) Here are 3 new posts from the past month: The Importance of Learning Your Prerequisites2025 Feb, ~500 words • Mastery learning -- one of the most reliable, largest-effect-size techniques for elevating student learning outcomes -- centers on learning prerequisites. In fact, the famous Two-Sigma Problem is...
Hey! You're receiving this email because you requested to be notified about new posts at JustinMath.com.(If you've changed your mind, click here to unsubscribe, please avoid marking spam.) Here are 3 new posts from the past month: Math Academy’s Eurisko Sequence, 5 Years Later: Student Outcomes Emerging From the Most Advanced High School Math/CS Sequence in the USA2025 Mar, ~2500 words • During its operation from 2020-23, Eurisko was the most advanced high school math/CS sequence in the USA....