Math -- Better Explained

Better Explained: Math Lessons for Lasting Insight - https://betterexplained.com/

Math lessons! If you are like me and consider math not your friend, than this web page can be a big help for you. The site owner, Kalid Azad, originated this site while still at Princeton University, and developed it into books (Math, Better Explained and Calculus, Better Explained), a blog, and this current site. If you want to learn more about him, visit the About page for tons of links to interviews, his books, testimonials, etc. https://betterexplained.com/about/

His philosophy can be summed up in one Einstein quote: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

The home page can be used as a Table of Contents for the web site. You'll see the most current blog posts, then popular articles, then articles organized by subjects, such as Arithmetic and Numbers, or Algebra and Counting. https://betterexplained.com/

The Articles page is an archive for all the blog articles. It is organized by the categories in the blog and also by date. https://betterexplained.com/archives/
 

Azad included a page, Calculus Guide, that can come handy for the time deprived learner. He offers short and long explanations of calculus theories, depending on how much time the interested party would like to spend. You have 1 minute? No problem! You can learn how to turn a circle into a triangle. https://betterexplained.com/guides/calculus/  If you have 20 or 30 minutes or an hour or 12 weeks, you can learn even more.

If you like this blog, you can sign up for his newsletter here: https://betterexplained.com/newsletter/ 

Of course, for me the most interesting articles were not about calculus or any other theories, but some fun facts about math, such as shortcuts to do Math mentally. https://betterexplained.com/articles/mental-math-shortcuts/  How fun! Or the article about developing a sense of scale, which is, tie what you want to understand to something that you know or see for easier understanding.

Here is one example: "We like to see, not imagine abstract numbers. To our brains, a million, billion, and trillion all seem like large, vague numbers. Apple knows this....Many of its ads compare products to everyday objects, rather than touting the raw dimensions. The Macbook Air fits into a manilla envelope. The ipod nano is as thick as a pencil. Certain cameras fit in a box of altoids. You know their size without busting out a ruler."

This site is not strictly about Math, but other things as well, that Azad is interested in. I enjoyed reading about his advice about web development https://betterexplained.com/articles/category/web/  or personal development https://betterexplained.com/articles/category/personal-development/
 

His style of sharing his understanding of concepts is intuitive, based on what you already know, to "approach ideas from a different angle."
As a bonus, his book Calculus, Better Explained is available on his site for free (text only): https://betterexplained.com/calculus/

Review by Erika Prange, SWC Librarian