MATH!?

[arfadugus]

So I'm Thinking of teaching myself math with books. Have any of you felt math is a good skill to have to become rich?

 

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[Andy Black]

Yep.

Forget books though. It's quite simple:

https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/online-direct-response-metrics.52781/


Question for you:

Would you rather be "Book Smart", or "Street Smart"?
​

PS: My degree is in Maths, but I've not found the ability to prove one infinity is infinitely larger than another infinity particularly useful so far. The only formula that matters is this one.

 

[Mattie]

I used to hate math. When I had to take it for my degree I had to bare with it. Now I know math was about the best thing for my brain. It helps you problem solve and come up with solutions in everyday life. Critical thinking.

 

[Deleted21961]

Great introductory math books you may find relevant:
Calculus by Michael Spivak
Linear Algebra by Serge Lang
Introduction to Logic by Alfred Tarski
An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications by William Feller
Elementary Theory of Numbers by Wacław Sierpiński

 

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[Tengen]

Khan Academy might be a good resource

http://www.khanacademy.org/math

 

[tafy]

So I'm Thinking of teaching myself math with books. Have any of you felt math is a good skill to have to become rich?

No, you dont need any specific skills to be rich. You can employ a math wizard freelancer if you come across a problem that needs some complicated maths.

 

[Andy Black]

No, you dont need any specific skills to be rich. You can employ a math wizard freelancer if you come across a problem that needs some complicated maths.

^^^ This (although I'm sure there are specific skills that help you get rich... like identifying wants, getting shit done, etc).

Henry Ford knew that it's not about being "book smart".

Read this article.

Here's the pertinent part:

During the world war, a Chicago newspaper published certain editorials in which, among other statements, Henry Ford was called "an ignorant pacifist." Mr. Ford objected to the statements, and brought suit against the paper for libeling him. When the suit was tried in the Courts, the attorneys for the paper pleaded justification, and placed Mr. Ford, himself, on the witness stand, for the purpose of proving to the jury that he was ignorant. The attorneys asked Mr. Ford a great variety of questions, all of them intended to prove, by his own evidence, that, while he might possess considerable specialized knowledge pertaining to the manufacture of automobiles, he was, in the main, ignorant.

Mr. Ford was plied with such questions as the following:

"Who was Benedict Arnold?" and "How many soldiers did the British send over to America to put down the Rebellion of 1776?" In answer to the last question, Mr. Ford replied, "I do not know the exact number of soldiers the British sent over, but I have heard that it was a considerably larger number than ever went back."

Finally, Mr. Ford became tired of this line of questioning, and in reply to a particularly offensive question, he leaned over, pointed his finger at the lawyer who had asked the question, and said, "If I should really WANT to answer the foolish question you have just asked, or any of the other questions you have been asking me, let me remind you that I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid men who can answer ANY question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me, WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?"

 

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[tafy]

Someone been reading "think and Grow Rich"?

 

[Andy Black]

Someone been reading "think and Grow Rich"?

Lol... Is that where I picked that up? I read it years ago, can't even remember what's in it. I've read so many of those self-help business and positive thinking books that I can't pick 'em up now.

Fav books this year and last are:

1. 80/20 Sales and Marketing (Perry Marshall)
2. The Entrepreneurs Guide To Getting Your Shit Together (John Carlton)

Am currently 2/3 through The Millionaire Fastlane ... which is rocking. I'd have never picked it up with a title like that, but am glad I did now.

ardfadugus - the best "maths" book you could read would be "80/20 Sales and Marketing"

 

[DeletedUser394]

do my math homework for me. you'll learn math

 

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[Mohammed Hamza]

If you think that will help you.

Then go ahead.

If you can, get a book on accounting. But again if you don't have time, outsource

 

[Kak]

Depends on the math. Calculus, pre-cal were totally useless.

Statistics is meh.

Simple algebra, geometry are helpful in life.

Financial math is extremely helpful in business.

I suggest picking up an intro to finance textbook.

 

[H. Palmer]

Math is essential.

Understanding financial numbers for a business. Speaks for itself.

Conversion metrics for a website. This percentage of visitors sign up, buy, etc, with this sales page.
Compare this sales page with other sales page. Speaks for itself.

Statistics for market research, like research on a demographic. Yeah useful, although perhaps not in the start-up phase.

All in all train your brain to understand and manipulate numbers. You'll never regret it.

 

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[arfadugus]

Thanks for all of the responses. Glad I got a variety of them. Good perspective now

 

[Ashten]

I'd say as long as you know how to set up & plug in variables for formula equations, you're set. At least as far as I know. That's all I ever use.

 

[Tony Nguyen]

I know the basics in math are the most essential skills in life. (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) plus having financial IQ you don't need to learn calculus and any other math, it would be a waste of time and useless, unless you are a engineer or selected a career that requires this kind of math.

- Tony Nguyen

 

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[CarrieW]

I think basic math skills are extremely important. basic algebra is useful also. I think its very important to learn and understand addition subtraction multiplication and division (by memory not calculating) and also fractions and percentages and decimals.

obviously understanding things like compounding interest and other calculations are extremely helpful. I don't know that you could get by without a basic understanding of these things...

you need to know enough to know if what other people are telling you makes sense. you don't need to know everything. just enough to not be an idiot that gets taken advantage of...

 

[hotshot]

I agree with the consensus here. All you need is some financial literacy and basic algebra to make money.

Although one of my goals in life is to dive headfirst into math and just get lost in it.
I got a taste of calculus during my first year of university. It was fun as hell.

 

[firmwear]

It is hard to give you a good answer without knowing a little more about yourself (age & motivation).

Math is also such a large subject with so many applications that your question becomes vague in my mind.

I do not have a math degree but I do know a little about math and would like to answer to the best of my ability.

Engineering:
Most engineering problems are solved using math that was discovered well over a century ago (Fourier, Laplace, &c). If you decide to study math and its applications then you will end up studying these types of problems first. For example, goto a library or bookstore and look at the introductory electrical engineering texts and you will find the chapters mixed around but the identical subjects & theorems covered. Perhaps you can find some new application for these well-known formulas. However, most engineers end up working on problems that are already well-understood (e.g. for constructing a bridge/tunnel/&c, designing and simulating an electrical circuit, &c).

Math is so broad:
Also there is such a wide range of math topics such as Calculus, Linear Algebra, Set Theory, Graphs, &c that you can spend your whole life trying to know everything and eventually find out it was an exercise in futility. Finding a lucrative application seems to be the crucial step and the hardest to make.

New Research:
If you decide to study cutting-edge math (which will likely take many years of continuous effort), it will be doubtful if what you discover will be readily applicable to everyday life. [It seems like] newer theoretical math is solved/discovered/invented/whatever before there is an actual application for it to solve in real life. I sometimes had to attend some graduate students' Phd defense and they always seemed to know everything about their research except: "what good is it for?" Atleast in academia, it seems as if a lot of mathematicians are not overly interested in commercially exploiting (I am over-generalizing too much here).

Commercially successful endeavors using Math:
I can think of a few successful ventures off the top of my head.
1) Page & Brin's Google PageRank algorithm:
A lot of people studied this algorithm. We all know how rich they became from their algorithm, right? Also, Standford U. owns the patent (utility: process).

2) Cooley & Tukey's Fast Fourier Transform (FFT):
Anybody who has worked on digital signal processing knows about this algorithm. It has been used in lots of applications (military, telecommunications, sound engineering, &c) but the most successful application is probably for decoding the tones of the buttons on your phone as you press them. I think that both Cooley and Tukey lived well but they themselves were slowlaners for IBM. IBM made a lot of money off of these types of guys.

3) RSA Cryptosystem:
A good example of a fastlane business using math was RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) Security using their RSA crypto-algorithm for secure communications.
You can find information about all these topics on Wikipedia.

Final words:
All I can remember from my time of studying math is that the higher you go, the smaller the books get. Also, the higher you go, the numbers disappear and are completely replaced by letters. For a dumb guy like me, I knew where my limitations were. I encourage you to learn math (and anything else) as well as you can. At a certain point, will you realize that you do not actually understand something unless you can model it mathematically.

Just for reference, if you are truly interested in learning math at a high level and exploiting that knowledge, it will take a long time even if you are exceptionally gifted. It will take longer without some kind of instruction (more than books). I suppose online videos can serve this purpose. I received a formal education before the online education boom so I cannot provide a meaningful comparison of those two methods for you.

However, if you are dead-set on learning from books, I also recommend the following:
1) Visit your favorite university website and check the schedule of classes.
2) Visit each class website for the undergraduate student track.
3) Read the syllabus for each class. On the syllabus will be the book they are using. Oftentimes, a professor will assign a book that he authored. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not. The best bet is to check multiple syllabi (sp?) from multiple university math departments and see if there is a common book.
4) Study your chosen books in order, solve all the problems, and learn as well as you can.
Remember, in a lot of ways, a university degree is just a certificate acknowledging that you read and understand all of the books that were assigned for you to learn.

PS: Reading math books is not like reading a novel; oftentimes, I had to read the same section over and over before even starting to understand it. It can be tough. Good luck, it is not going to be easy.

 

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[Michael Raphael]

LEARN MATH!!! Seriously, the only math you need to know is basic algebra. If you can do basic accountings and create financial documents and understand them, then you will be slightly ahead of any other emerging "entrepreneurs". Literally, the difference between me today and 7 months ago was the ability to write financial documents effectively. Since then, I have literally been able to raise $100k from investors. Some almost 1/4m so please learn that! I now offer it as a service in my consulting firm, it's really that important!

 

[JAJT]

Statistics is meh.

While I would say you will never have to actually learn to perform statistics by hand, it is still very useful to understand at a very high concept level. It helps you spot bullshittery in the marketplace and political landscape and also could be useful from a marketing standpoint. Understanding terms like standard deviation, margin of error, significant vs non significant sample sizes, how correlation is separate from causation, etc... can be very helpful from an academic point of view.

 

[CarrieW]

heres a link to the program I use for us for homeschool. it goes from elementary basics to above and beyond college courses. and you can study on your own...

for anyone who may be interested... http://lifeoffredmath.com/

 

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[RHL]

There's only one kind of person who stays rich-the kind with a good understanding of math. What math you need depends enormously on your own niche and what you want to do, but unquestionably, every fastlaner should be able to figure out percentages of something, amortization, and compounding interest in their head pretty rapidly. I assume that Geometry, Trig, and other spacial maths are not as valuable unless you're in the production/engineering/development niche.

 

[timmy]

Math as already mentioned is a fundamental building block in all business matters. However it can be broken down to bite size portions and digested accordingly.Khan Academy have met all my needs to date.

 

[Daniel A]

Here are some free plans to improve your mental math.

I'm going to start them as soon as I finish up some other things I am working on.

"Being able to solve basic arithmetic in your head is a skill that offers lifelong benefits. Strengthening this skill is not as daunting as it may seem, and can even be fun! This plan offers bite-sized daily challenges to help you keep your mind sharp and build a quantitative edge in daily life."



Level I: https://www.coach.me/plans/828-mental-math-level-i

Level II: https://www.coach.me/plans/831-mental-math-level-ii

Level III: https://www.coach.me/plans/276115-mental-math-level-iii

Level IV: https://www.coach.me/plans/361957-mental-math-level-iv

 

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[Ninjakid]

I like math a lot, and having good math skills can probably be tied to logical problem solving; but I really see no more relation between being a mathematician and being rich than I do with being an animal-lover and being rich.