Ask HN: How to learn math from zero for adults?
I&#x27;ve done this and would echo the good advice you&#x27;ve already gotten about Khan Academy but I think the comments in this thread are skipping over the most important part: pace. Work slowly. Don&#x27;t move on until you really &quot;get&quot; the concept you&#x27;re working with. Some topics might &quot;click&quot; right away and others might take weeks of bashing your head against the wall until your brain makes sense of it. That&#x27;s okay. It can definitely be tedious at times (so be kind to yourself!) but a lot of learning happens when you&#x27;re struggling to make sense of something so it&#x27;s worthwhile to lean into the trouble you&#x27;re having and figure out what it is that you&#x27;re struggling to understand.<p>The downside of formal education is that the teacher has a timeline that needs to be kept and the class will move on without you. It might not seem like a big deal in the moment but in math the foundation is so important because the concepts build on one another. Sometimes in really subtle ways. If you have the motivation (and it sounds like you do!) then the huge upside to self-paced learning is that you can build a really strong foundation and the more complicated advanced topics will be so much easier to master. Khan Academy is really good at breaking subjects down into tiny bites and then slowly building on what you&#x27;ve learned but if you don&#x27;t quite understand a lesson or if you haven&#x27;t properly paid attention don&#x27;t be afraid to do it again. If you guessed the right answer but don&#x27;t understand <i>why</i> your answer was right, don&#x27;t be afraid to go back and do it again.<p>So just because one person here could do all of the Khan Academy 9th grade algebra in a week that doesn&#x27;t mean you should set that timeline for yourself. Everyone is starting from a different place. So maybe it&#x27;ll take you a day, or a week, or a month, or even months. But however long it takes is how long it takes.