Top all-time · #7545
Neil Sainsbury
Personal blog · neilwithdata.com · on HN as nsainsburycareerprogramming
Neil Sainsbury writes Neil with Data, a personal blog at neilwithdata.com about career and programming. Since 2020, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this self-study mathematics guide, which lists books and resources for teaching yourself maths. Commenters point to it for people who are out of practice with the basics.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner8 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2020-02-23
- The Consequences of Outsourced Thinking2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-27
- Advanced SQL and database books and resources2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-01
What Hacker News says?
I'm nowhere near as smart as Colin but I'll also share here a little personal story which relates to the topic. I was also a very high achieving student in high school and university and was similarly all set for a career in academia (also studying mathematics). In my final year however, I had a full-time position doing research with CSIRO, which is a leading research organisation in Australia. I did some interestin…
Comment linking /how-i-built-bbsmart
on “On the Use of a Life”Submitted Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner as a story · 1232 points
HN discussionI've been continuing my study of mathematics ( https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner ) and recently started Needham's Visual Complex Analysis which I'm really enjoying. I've also been putting more time into competition table tennis (coaching, etc)! Am no Fan Zhendong but the backhand is coming along nicely.
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)”Submitted The software industry's greatest sin: hiring as a story · 542 points
HN discussionI got this page from HN a while back: https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner Might be of interest to a similar group of people as the OP
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “A Programmer’s Introduction to Mathematics”Submitted Advanced SQL and database books and resources as a story · 440 points
HN discussionIf anyone is interested in following a self-study curriculum but with more of an emphasis on pure vs applied math, you may find my experience and recommendations useful: https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Self studying the MIT applied math curriculum (2019)”Submitted How I built the best-selling BlackBerry app as a story · 234 points
HN discussionThis[0] was posted up on here a while ago - has some good book recommendations for teaching yourself maths (assuming you remember some basics from school[1]). I got a few of them and whilst they may have gathered some dust... They seem great! Also obliged to recommend Khan Academy and the 3Blue1Brown youtube channel - but they are probably best for fun/inspiration [0] 'Mathematics for the adventurous self-learner' -…
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Notes for courses taken at Harvard (2015-2019)”Submitted The myth of the developer that can't code as a story · 62 points
HN discussionThis block post, which has been referenced several times on HN, was a god send for me: https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner I also used get hung up on “mathematical notation”. But it turns out the problem wasn’t the notation. I was just bad at math. Well, out-of-practice is more like it. Once you have the fundamentals clearly explained and you’re doing some math on a regular basis the notation, even…
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Ask HN: How did you learn math notation?”Submitted Advanced SQL and database books and resources as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI've been long frustrated about how technical interviewing takes place in our industry (and I've written about it quite a bit as well eg. https://www.neilwithdata.com/developer-hiring ) I think many companies through the hiring process completely lose sight of what they are actually looking for. They forget that the barriers they erected (whether they be whiteboard problems, take-home coding tests, algorithmic dance…
Comment linking /developer-hiring
on “An interview code submission that wasn’t even submitted changed our process”Submitted The Consequences of Outsourced Thinking as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote about my journey learning mathematics for the last ~6 years quite recently actually! Might be of interest to you as well: https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Ask HN: How to Study Mathematics?”Submitted Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI saved some bookmarks about this topic through the years, so let me paste below, maybe someone found sth is useful: http://mathfor3dgameprogramming.com/ https://gamemath.com/book/intro.html https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jean/math-deep.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPfxjQ6sqrc
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Introduction to math for game developers”Submitted Mathematics for the Adventurous Self-Learner as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI actually wrote up quite a few thoughts related to this a few days ago but my take is far more pessimistic: https://www.neilwithdata.com/outsourced-thinking My fundamental argument: The way the average person is using AI today is as "Thinking as a Service" and this is going to have absolutely devastating long term consequences, training an entire generation not to think for themselves.
Comment linking /outsourced-thinking
on “Outsourcing Thinking”Submitted The Consequences of Outsourcing Thinking as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere is an Open Source curriculum [0].This consists of: MOOCs, videos, pdfs, etc. It should provide you with a guide of what/where to study. Neil Sainsbury posted their own list of books [1] Alan Kennington provides a 10 steps learning mathematics[2] Another source to get an overview of a topic [3] [0] https://github.com/ossu/math [1] https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner [2] http://www.geometry.org…
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “Ask HN: Is is possible to self study undergrad mathematics from books?”Here's a link that was on HN before: https://www.neilwithdata.com/mathematics-self-learner There's no quick fix in there though.
Comment linking /mathematics-self-learner
on “A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics”Touching on the atrophy point, I actually wrote a few thoughts about this yesterday: https://www.neilwithdata.com/outsourced-thinking I actually disagree with Andrej here re: "Generation (writing code) and discrimination (reading code) are different capabilities in the brain." and I would argue that the only reason he can read code fluently, find issues, etc. is because he has spent year in a non-AI assisted world w…
Comment linking /outsourced-thinking
on “Karpathy: A few random notes from Claude coding quite a bit last few weeks”