You will not become good at math watching youtube videos and reading books.
That depends on exactly what you mean by "become good at math". If you're talking about "becoming a mathematician" and doing original research in pure math, then you're probably right. But if one means "learning existing math well enough to apply it to a problem", I would argue that one can learn this stuff just using books, videos, etc. At least up through a certain level.
That said, I do encourage the idea of finding peers to work with. I used to coordinate a "math study night" at the local hackerspace for that exact purpose. It fell off because I got busy and couldn't keep committing to it, but generally speaking, it is a good idea to have other people to work with. I may well try to find a math major from UNC to hire as a tutor at some point as I keep working on this stuff.
And if one can't find somebody to work with in person though, and they need, say, a proof evaluated, there is the option of using math.stackexchange.com or the like.
I'm sure padthai meant that you need to do math to learn math, not just read or watch videos.
Sure, I'm just saying that it kinda depends on what part of math one is referring to. I think sometimes in these discussions on HN, we overload the term "math" to mean both "calculation" or "applied math", and "pure math" or "math research" and it can be unclear which is being referred to in a given statement.
I believe you can learn the former - "applied math" - (at least up to a certain level) just by reading books, and watching videos (and doing exercises, of course). But for the latter - "pure math" - I agree that you need other people, since you can't easily verify your own proofs.
That depends on exactly what you mean by "become good at math". If you're talking about "becoming a mathematician" and doing original research in pure math, then you're probably right. But if one means "learning existing math well enough to apply it to a problem", I would argue that one can learn this stuff just using books, videos, etc. At least up through a certain level.
That said, I do encourage the idea of finding peers to work with. I used to coordinate a "math study night" at the local hackerspace for that exact purpose. It fell off because I got busy and couldn't keep committing to it, but generally speaking, it is a good idea to have other people to work with. I may well try to find a math major from UNC to hire as a tutor at some point as I keep working on this stuff.
And if one can't find somebody to work with in person though, and they need, say, a proof evaluated, there is the option of using math.stackexchange.com or the like.