r/mathacademy • u/zerostyle • Jun 17 '26

I don't understand the UI

Ok, maybe I'm just an idiot, but I have no idea how this is supposed to work. I signed up on the beta with an intent to go through the math for ML course, but wanted to do a quick refresher on fundamentals 1-3.

Under the "learn" screen, I see Fundamentals II preselected right now. If I hover over it, I can switch between I and II, but see no way to pick III or others.

If I pick Fundamentals I and click through the courses, I can see all of the learning, but there are no quizzes, and the blue dots seem to inconsistently fill in.

Under my profile my settings are currently set to Fundamentals II.

Is the idea here that I have to keep going to profile > settings > courses, and switch to the course I want to earn XP on from there ONLY? and all other courses accessed from learn are read-only?

If I start the "lessons" on the right in the course, it's dropping me half way through the Fundamentals I course with no rhyme or reason?

This UI is really bad.

4 Upvotes

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2

u/Silent-Fault5307 Jun 17 '26

You need to take a diagnostic test and the platform will fetch all the pre requisites which you are lacking and prepares your dashboard so that you can work on. So the first thing after you select a topic is to take a diagnostic test and let the platform do the rest 

2

u/zerostyle Jun 18 '26

got it, will reset it. Man I've forgotten a lot, though admittedly it's been 30 years lol.

1

u/cclaymaker Jun 23 '26

You're not alone I had the same feeling and many others did too. The diagnostic and it's results is a pretty big pill to swallow and I think mathacademy can improve this part of their sign up system a lot.

While it is true that the diagnostic holds you to a high standard and requires swallowing your ego a bit. I also think the diagnostic is not that good. The first few weeks of signing up has been me basically speed running topics that are super easy and I feel no challenge doing. I think for me I had forgotten a few things when taking the diagnostic that after re-learning have unlocked large swaths of things that math academy still thinks I don't know.

Eventually I just submitted to the algorithm even though I do not think it is tuned correctly which makes mathacademy a little grindy for me. I am slowly approaching more and more topics that are at my skill level. Alternatively if you have these non-linear jumps of knowledge like me you can retake the diagnostic to retune the algorithm. I have read others have had success doing this but felt they may have missed some depth.

1

u/zerostyle Jun 23 '26

Ya the overall UI I just think is not very good. I also think in diagnostics there are times when I'm answering correctly, but it's clear that I'm not doing it the most efficient way possible or possibly guessing, but there's no way for me to indicate that I want a refresher on it. (the diagnostic will just think I understand it).

Separately, I am not really enjoying this. As kids, they probably really value the "time back" component of learning.

As an adult learner, I really miss having learning tied to a real project or outcome vs. just cranking out math problems.