Links

how to be more productive

Increasing your productivity is perhaps the most useful step you can take in improving your maths.

Top 10 productivity hacks for learning maths

Cal Newport has a website on how to work more productively in the social media age — The Deep Life. You need to pay attention to this topic now, your future self will thank you.

school maths

higher mathematics — paid for site but with free resources. Past paper questions ordered by topic — very handy!

advanced higher mathematics — as the previous link but for Advanced Higher

sqa higher maths past papers

maths is fun — very clean, easy to read pages and good content. The name of the site reminds me that we had a phyics book called physics is fun when I was at school.

advanced higher/higher

One of the important uses of trigonometry has to do with simplifying calculations with vectors, and therefore Trigonometry is Essential to Physics

Vectors and python

general interest

mathigon — Philip Legner’s beautiful web site on maths

plus magazine — an online magazine dedicated to explaining mathematics

chalkdust — excellent magazine for mathematically curious people

number gossip — everything you wanted to know about a number but were afraid to ask!

mathematicians born in Edinburgh — including a former pupil of George Watson’s College William Hodge

billionaire mathematician James Simons — making money by taking a scientific approach to markets — please also see How to become a quant below

The Good Thinking Society promote maths achievement, and their aims are broadly in line what I believe should be the purpose of education

maths education

a mathematician’s lament 

The Scottish Mathematical Council

interactive and dynamic

cut the knot — good for interactive puzzles — the creator of the site, Alexander Bogomolny, died in 2018

geogebra — dynamic geometry for everybody

desmos — you may like to consider using desmos as your go-to graphing tool

graphic calculators

These allow a more complete understanding of mathematics — “definitional”, graphical, and numerical — to be developed, all in the palm of your hand.

The SQA seem to disdain the use of these tools, and I can appreciate the reasons for doing so, but at the same time I really love my GCDs.

Casio fx-cg50 — this is the graphing calculator that I recommend

video

numberphile — videos about numbers and stuff

3brown1blue — for Advanced Higher topics and beyond

ridiculously large numbers — by David Metzler

the philosophy of mathematics — by Ray Monk

podcasts

I cannot think of any podcasts that are good for high school maths. If you know of any please let me know. On the other hand there are many excellent science podcasts, and I encourage you to follow and listen to these on a regular basis — it’s amazing what you can learn from this source.

blogs

Similarly I do not know of any good blogs for high school maths. There are many for maths beyond high school, but none that I know of aimed specifically at school students. Again please let me know if there are any that you follow and read on a regular basis.

For instance top 25 high school maths blogs are all American and more aimed at other teachers rather than students. I really want to point to a blog which is aimed at making maths clearer for students.

quotations on the subject of maths

today in science history has a page of mathematics quotations

how to become a quant

Michael Halls-Moore has a very informative site on all things to do with becoming a quantitive analyst. See A step-by-step guide on getting a job as a quantitive analyst and Understanding how to become a quantitive analyst. Basically you have to be prepared to study a lot of maths.

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