Top all-time · #1812
Justin Skycak
Personal blog · justinmath.com · on HN as JustinSkycakmathaicareer
Justin Skycak's personal blog at justinmath.com covers math, ai and career. Since 2023, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 118 times, most often “The Math Academy Way”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (25) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Justin Skycak's writing on math learning and pedagogy, including the Math Academy approach, knowledge graphs, and his books 'Advice on Upskilling' and 'The Math Academy Way'.
- Recommended for · 10 comments
- Called well researched and practical, a good argument on exercises; books 'Advice on Upskilling' and 'The Math Academy Way' urged.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 25 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Math Academy Way6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2024-08-17
- Mathematical Potential Has a Limit, but It's Likely Higher Than You Think3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-08-24
- Individualized Spaced Repetition in Hierarchical Knowledge Structures3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-09
- Why Is the EdTech Industry So Damn Soft?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-08-04
- Advice on Upskilling3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-03-17
- Math Academy Eurisko, 5 Yrs Ltr: Student Outcomes from High School Math/CS Track3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-26
- /files/the-math-academy-way.pdf3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-04-20
- /books/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-18
- Show HN: Introduction to Algorithms and Machine Learning [pdf]3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-07-27
- Deliberate Practice: The Most Effective Form of Active Learning2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-08-24
What Hacker News says?
As detailed in the article, my conclusion of there being a limit does not rest on the assumption that higher math is intrinsically incomprehensible to a subset of people (though, unrelatedly, I would expect that to be true in some cases). In the article, the key underlying assumption is that the further you go in math, the more energy it requires to learn the next level up -- and everyone's "energy vs level of abstr…
Comment linking /your-mathematical-potential-has-a-limit-but-its-likely-higher-than-you-think/
on “You are not dumb, you just lack the prerequisites”Submitted The Greatest Educational Life Hack: Learning Math Ahead of Time as a story · 369 points
HN discussionThanks! Yeah, I guess I should probably link to some of those later posts about active learning and deliberate practice in the article. If you want to read more about that part you liked, here's the main one I'd follow up with: https://www.justinmath.com/deliberate-practice-the-most-effe...
Comment linking /deliberate-practice-the-most-effective-form-of-active-learning/
on “You are not dumb, you just lack the prerequisites”Submitted The Need to Grind Concrete Examples Before Jumping Up a Level of Abstraction as a story · 186 points
HN discussion100% agree. What I typically tell people is "your mathematical potential has a limit but it's likely higher than you think." Not everybody can learn every level of math, but most people can learn the basics. In practice, however, few people actually reach their full mathematical potential because they get knocked off course early on by factors such as missing foundations, ineffective practice habits, inability or un…
Comment linking /your-mathematical-potential-has-a-limit-but-its-likely-higher-than-you-think/
on “You are not dumb, you just lack the prerequisites”Submitted Individualized Spaced Repetition in Hierarchical Knowledge Structures as a story · 178 points
HN discussionIt can definitely be helpful to take a top-down approach in planning out your overarching learning goals. However, the learning itself has to occur bottom-up. Especially in math. Math is a skill hierarchy, and if you cannot execute a lower-level skill consistently and accurately, you will not be able to build more advanced skills on top of it. I wrote about this recently here if you're interested: https://www.justin…
Comment linking /how-to-learn-machine-learning-top-down-or-bottom-up/
on “You are not dumb, you just lack the prerequisites”Submitted How to get from high school math to cutting-edge ML/AI as a story · 150 points
HN discussionHard to say but this should give you an idea [0]. At that rate, less than a year is reasonable. [0] https://www.justinmath.com/what-is-the-highest-sustainable-d...
Comment linking /what-is-the-highest-sustainable-daily-xp-on-math-academy/
on “Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking”Submitted Lots of people in education disagree with the premise of maximizing learning as a story · 48 points
HN discussionYou'll want to get your daughter to start using Math Academy for at least 30 minutes per day [0]. New solutions exist for old problems. [0] https://www.justinmath.com/books/#the-math-academy-way
Comment linking /books/
on “Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking”Submitted Why Is the EdTech Industry So Damn Soft? as a story · 36 points
HN discussion> IMO everyone has a ceiling when it comes to math. Yes, but it's higher than you think: https://www.justinmath.com/your-mathematical-potential-has-a...
Comment linking /your-mathematical-potential-has-a-limit-but-its-likely-higher-than-you-think/
on “Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking”Submitted Spaced repetition is more than memorization – it's also generalization as a story · 34 points
HN discussionFYI this is the guy that wrote the comment you replied to: https://www.justinmath.com He's true math nerd, and definitely not a marketer. In fact, I don't think a single marketer works at the company. It's a bootstrapped labor of love and I've been following their journey for almost a decade. I get the skepticism, but some things are legit.
Comment linking /
on “Relearning math as an adult”Submitted Study Sessions Should Be Short and Frequent as Opposed to Long and Sparse as a story · 19 points
HN discussion> Its structure and modularity is exactly what I needed. Through great effort, I completed Mathematical Foundations I & II. I talked about it a bit here [1][2]. If you read through MathAcademy's methodology and reasoning, it's incredibly strong [3], but in practice I never felt confident in my understanding or execution, everything felt quite discrete and I didn't understand the relationships or purposes of what I w…
Comment linking /files/the-math-academy-way.pdf
on “Beej's Guide to Learning Computer Science”Submitted Why 4x8 and 6x8 are, surprisingly, some of the hardest times tables to remember as a story · 17 points
HN discussionContent is good but he is part of a paid math program and some articles and submissions appear to be indirect advertising/marketing if you think about it. (but it's effective and less forceful) https://www.justinmath.com/why-is-the-edtech-industry-so-dam...
Comment linking /why-is-the-edtech-industry-so-damn-soft/
on “Increasing Retention Without Increasing Study Time [pdf]”Submitted If You Want to Learn Algebra, You Need to Have Automaticity on Basic Arithmetic as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI'd highly encourage anyone interested in the contents of this article/learning about learning to read through the submitter's blog: https://www.justinmath.com/blog/
Comment linking /blog/
on “Increasing Retention Without Increasing Study Time [pdf]”Submitted Fast, Correct Answers Do Matter in Mathematics as a story · 11 points
HN discussionInspired by MathAcademy, I'm developing: 1) a note-taking workflow in Obsidian (you take bite-sized notes about a topic, then connect "prerequisite" notes in Obsidian's canvas editor) 2) a tool that uploads each note and graph data to a database 3) a webapp that presents those notes algorithmically using spaced repetition. This enables you to allow others to "traverse" your note graph in a guided and self-paced mann…
Comment linking /individualized-spaced-repetition-in-hierarchical-knowledge-structures/
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)”Submitted Graphing Calculator Drawing Exercises [pdf] as a story · 8 points
HN discussion> less of the ... repetitive manual arithmetic exercises I think this post (from a math academy employee) has a good argument for why these sorts of exercises are important. It's about basic arithmetic, but I think it applies to tedious things like performing gaussian elimination on small matrices as well. https://www.justinmath.com/if-you-want-to-learn-algebra-you-... I like to come at it from both angles - higher…
Comment linking /if-you-want-to-learn-algebra-you-need-to-have-automaticity-on-basic-arithmetic/
on “Robotics 101 at UMich: Applied numerical linear algebra as intro linear algebra”Submitted The Greatest Educational Life Hack: Learning Math Ahead of Time as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI guess these workbooks usually come in two different "shapes" - one, a guided workbook with a high-level goal that combines several concepts, and another would be a practice worksheet where we do a bunch of exercise of the same algorithm (say, long division, calculating summations, or matrix multiplication) over and over. For the "workbook" pattern, we first discuss with the LLM the final goal (e.g. a scratch progr…
Comment linking /files/the-math-academy-way.pdf
on “Don't force your kids to do math”Submitted Accountability and Incentives Are Necessary but Absent in Education as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI am halfway through an online degree in ICT. We had a Instructional Design course that went over the differences. There is a textbook that has a chapter on it called Trends in Instructional Design but it is pricey. My position is adult learning works better online to reorganize cognitive schemas but children benefit from social learning theory. It is something like 1-5% complete MOOCs, they really need some kind of…
Comment linking /books/
on “The Triple Failure of 2U, EdX, and Axim”Submitted The Greatest Breakthrough in the Science of Education over the Last Century as a story · 6 points
HN discussion
