After 1,000 Days of Daily Math, He Credits It for Financial Independence
Reflections on 1,000 Days of Math
Gabe hit 1,000 consecutive days of math using Math Academy, starting from the lowest level and working into machine learning. Early on, he checked answers and peeked at notes, which masked his weak spots and forced a full reset. The second pass built real intuition. He says the habit sharpened his decision-making, helped him reach financial independence in his late 30s, and turned his kids into math lovers.
Math Academy can give you the best learning system ever invented, but if you short-circuit the load-bearing parts you don’t build the prerequisites.
- hyperfuturism
I am quite sure that learning math has nothing to do at all with investments doing well. Would be a classic example of having made money, but getting the reason for why wrong.
The markets have been uponly since 2020 in general, so no surprise if one were invested, especially in technology, that one would have done well.
- liendolucas
I think the question to be asked about this post should be: "How many things can you solve by yourself outside the platform you are currently using?".
I have the feeling (though I could be wrong) that you might very well sort out the exercises and problems that are presented in the platform, but what about tackling for example Project Euler? How far can you go with the knowledge that you acquired from this platform after 3 years of daily usage?
Please note that I'm not trying to diminish the value of the mentioned platform but I believe that tackling problems that force you to hit your head on the wall and/or figuring out things by yourself with maybe some books, makes you learn in a completely different and richer way.
- willmeyers
I remember your 500 days of math post! I'm curious if along the journey you took time to apply new concepts you learned in a larger project or lab? I've never used Math Academy, but does it just give articles/videos and then exercises? Congrats on the dedication, that's a lot of work especially with kids.
- har777
I have to shout out MathAcademy(the same platform the author is using). It's pretty darn good. I did like 2 hours a day for 90 days and went from Math Foundations I(70% completed) to Math Foundations III(74% completed). The pace of improvement was very fast.
- tptacek
I'm a broken record on how valuable I found Math Academy to be; 22,000 XP in roughly a year, going from high school trig (and a grim confrontation with my intuitive ability to work with fractions) through multivariable calculus.
The most important thing to understand about Math Academy is that it's all problems, problems over and over again, with just enough pedagogy to get you from one kind of problem to the next. It's a form of spaced-repetition system (often with the repetition cleverly arranged through interleaved topics, so that solving problems in the "next" unit also depends on techniques from the previous) and a drilling tool.
I'd echo any other observation about that structure being limiting for deeper understanding. The thing about that is, though, we already have ample resources for deeper understanding! For my part, GPT4 and GPT5 were more than enough supplementation, to drill into topics, connect them to other topics, ask "why the fuck does this work", etc.
When I got to Calc II (in Math Foundations III), Herbert Gross MIT lectures were super handy too. If you're doing Linear Algebra, I'd pair Math Academy with Strang's lectures.
To me, the limitations of the approach aren't interesting. The problem Math Academy is solving is the limiting reagent for self-study: boundless exercises and worked examples, a clear syllabus, and a forcing function for actually doing the problems. If you're self-studying math, you probably don't need extra structure to get you to read […]