Back Story | F.A.Q.

First and foremost, math must be learned in order. Each topic builds off of the previous one. We often see students struggling with homework due to foundational gaps. If you are someone who really struggles with math, it may be helpful to build up a strong base by starting with our Pre-Algebra course and working forward.

Secondly, it is extremely important to understand that practice is essential to learning math. You can't learn math by just watching the video lessons. Just like if you want to learn the piano, you must play the piano. So if you want to learn math, you must do lots of math problems. If you want to get the most out of online video tutorials, it's best to watch the video, then rewatch and try the problems on your own. Once you understand all of the problems from the video lesson, move on to the practice test. Since someone else is doing all of the work in the video lesson, it's really easy to think you understand the lesson only to completely fall apart when you try to practice. If you have a hard time with videos, try reading. A large percentage of students find watching math videos very boring. Reading and working through problems in a textbook would be a better approach in this case, as it keeps your brain more active.

Lastly, you really need to consider a full plan if you are trying to learn math on your own. When you are in a school program, you have a teacher to give a lecture, provide homework, and then give quizzes and exams. For the person who is self-studying, they are really at a disadvantage because they have to gauge their own progress and find the motivation to keep studying day after day. When you are in school, you are forced to do the work or fail. With self-study, you are the only person keeping yourself on track. A strong suggestion would be to always work with a textbook and make sure you can answer all of the different types of questions for each section of whatever math course you are studying. If you can't, that means you need to redo that section until you can clear each different problem type in the given section. OpenStax.org offers free textbooks for math that are well-written. You can also buy used books on Amazon for a low cost.

Often the follow-up question here is: what is the best textbook to use for a given subject? While some textbooks are better written than others, it really doesn't matter. A mediocre book that you read and work all the problems in is going to be a lot better than the world's greatest textbook that just sits on your bookcase and collects dust. Any textbook will work. Having more than one is usually a good approach as sometimes a different explanation will click better.

All the courses on GreeneMath are designed with a textbook approach. So the lessons are based on a few different textbooks for the given class. Often we get questions about why Algebra 1 topics are present in the Algebra 2 course. You have to think about Algebra itself as one really huge subject that is divided into these different classes to make it more digestible.

• Algebra 1 is the lowest level and includes introductory/foundational topics
• Algebra 2 contains all of the topics from Algebra 1 and introduces some additional topics
  • The topics from Algebra 1 are usually expanded on and covered with additional problem types
• College Algebra and Pre-calculus deal with the more advanced topics
• Since College Algebra is a complete Algebra course, the introductory topics are in that course as well
  • With College Algebra, you are going to see every single topic from Algebra 1 and Algebra 2
  • The Algebra 1 topics are going to get minimal coverage as this is a more advanced class
  • The focus will be on the more advanced topics starting with functions and working forward

What creates the most confusion is that different school districts have different definitions of Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, College Algebra, and Pre-Calculus. Also, a lot of content is cut from school courses due to time. A Pre-Calculus book is usually around 1,500 pages and contains well over 250 topics. It is usually impossible to cover all of those topics in one single year.
In terms of our College Algebra and Pre-Calculus courses, they have the exact same Algebra content. The difference is only in the title, not the material. Most people don't realize that Pre-Calculus is just the latter half of College Algebra (starting with functions) with the addition of Trigonometry. You can always look through the different OpenStax textbooks to see what topics are included in each Algebra course and then make your decision from there.

• Algebra 1 (Open Stax)
• Algebra 2 (Open Stax)
• College Algebra (Open Stax)
• Precalculus (Open Stax)

Note: Our Pre-Calculus course follows a different order than most textbooks. In Pre-Calculus textbooks, the Trigonometry section is generally in the middle of the course, whereas for our course it is at the end. The Trigonometry portion is generally the hardest part and should be learned last in our opinion. You can always use the syllabus from the OpenStax textbook linked above to follow the usual order.

ChatGPT could be the biggest help ever invented for someone trying to learn math on their own. In the past, if you were stuck on a problem, you had to find a similar problem in a textbook or workbook and match things up. Otherwise, you would have to wait to find someone who could explain the steps of the problem. For quite a while now, we have had these calculators that show the steps for math problems. It didn't work for every type of problem but it was extremely helpful if you got stuck on a common problem. With ChatGPT, now you can see the full steps, and then ask follow-up questions or for things to be explained in a different way. When used correctly, this is probably the biggest advance since the mass printing of workbooks.
We should note here that ChatGPT could also be the biggest hindrance to learning math. If you are using ChatGPT or other tools to do your homework, it's a really bad thing. Doing math on your own is the only way to learn. Getting help when stuck on a problem is the correct use for ChatGPT.

From the very start of this project, John has always tried to answer all emails and comments from YouTube to offer help to those who need it. Unfortunately, a spammer has removed our ability to communicate with the general public. A long time ago, this individual started by sending an email asking for advice with textbooks. A few days later, we received an email saying the exact same thing, formatted in the exact same way, completely matching the analytics information but using a new email and new name. This pattern of emails continued, where this individual, using different accounts, cycled through a series of fake questions. This person is an extremely malicious spammer and controls a very large number of accounts. In some cases, he has hijacked legitimate emails in his attempts. He recently hijacked a school email and pretended to be a school administrator. As soon as the email was read, it was determined to be written by ChatGPT and completely fake (the email also made no sense whatsoever). This guy is in the business of hijacking accounts, so emails can't be responded to. There is no way to know if the email we are receiving is real or not. In most cases, we can determine it is spam due to the use of prepaid mobile foreign IP addresses or the fact that the spammer literally says the same things over and over again. This site has 99% of its traffic coming from the U.S., but 99.9% of our emails are coming from shady foreign IP addresses.

Even though we haven't answered emails in a long time, we were answering all comments via YouTube. Recently, a few full course videos started to get some traction. The spammer decided to mass spam these videos with thousands of fake comments from fake YouTube accounts. At first, we noticed the same pattern as from emails. A large number of extremely similar comments but different accounts. He was rotating through a series of about 20 or so fake comments. This guy literally asks the same fake questions over and over again. Also, he was constantly posting a large number of comments that made no sense at all. This spammer guy asks questions that make you immediately say, "There's no way that's a real question". As we started reacting to these suspicious accounts by deleting comments, the guy became more and more aggressive and started flooding our channel with comments trying to get anything in. It just made the comment spam more obvious when you are getting the same thing posted all day every day. These YouTube accounts all seemed to either be brand new or to have a few videos uploaded and a few hundred subscribers. We believe this guy is involved in malicious cookie jacking and that's how he is getting the accounts. We would always notice his fake comments coming in at the same time, which is not normal and follows the same pattern as his fake emails. We were able to use his analytics information from the web pages he used to access unlisted videos to confirm our suspicions. After contacting YouTube, they verified this guy is posting an extremely large number of fake comments from fake accounts across YouTube. Unfortunately, if we turn comments back on, this individual will just flood the channel again, so comments have to be permanently paused. These fake comments have also created issues for our YouTube account as the main videos that were bringing in money each month to support the website were flagged with "fake engagement" and "invalid traffic". The flags have been removed after clearing comments but the videos don't perform as well now.

Channel Membership Update: Unfortunately, the spammer was purchasing YouTube memberships using his fraudulent accounts. At this point, we don't know if the accounts triggered something or if he was using stolen cards or some other fraudulent means for payment. The only response we have received just mentions "Action Taken Due to Suspicious Activity". We will not pursue channel memberships if/when they become available again. The guy is just going to do the exact same thing again, so there is no point.

Udemy Update: Unfortunately, the spammer has been purchasing Udemy courses using fraudulent accounts. After a review of Q&A questions and login timestamps, it is clear that the spammer guy is responsible for the vast majority of the Q&A questions and direct messages. You can tell by the login timestamps that these fake accounts are being logged into using a spreadsheet.

If you find an error in content and you are confident in the error, please send an email using the form below. Please use ChatGPT or a trusted resource to verify first. We receive a lot of error messages that are just a lack of understanding. We will not be able to respond, so we will thank you in advance. Note: Our email form is only available to users in the U.S. due to the spam mentioned above.

On each main course page, you will notice checkboxes that sit next to each course item. You can check the checkbox in order to track your progress. Whether the checkbox is checked or not is saved to your browser's local storage. Depending on your browser and whether you are in private mode or not, this information might be cleared when you close the browser. For most people, it will work just fine, for others, you may have to adjust your browser's settings. Please note, we don't have any control over your browser's local storage. We would love to move to a server that allows us to set up a login for each person, but that's too expensive for our small organization at this point. If you need a way to track your progress and can't use the local storage option, please consider purchasing one of our premium Udemy courses. Udemy offers ad-free learning and tracks your progress automatically.

On the math practice section, a trophy icon will appear only after you have successfully completed the associated test. This value is saved to your local storage and could be inadvertently cleared out.

For many years, we tried to rely on user donations. This didn't work at all, as people very rarely donate. Due to that fact, we have moved to an ad-based/freemium model. Some of our content is free and supported by ads, while other content is provided via Udemy at a low cost. We realize that ads are annoying and not everyone can afford to purchase a course, but it's the best we can do. We don't have endowments, grants, or big corporations sending us money each month. Unfortunately, running a website costs a lot of money, so we have to do what is necessary to meet our financial obligations.

Purchasing a premium Udemy course is the only current way to financially support our project. As mentioned above, due to the actions of the spammer, we no longer have access to channel memberships or to the "Thanks" button on YouTube. Thank you to those who supported us for many years; it really helped a lot with the costs of running the site. We are not moving to Patreon or any other platform, as the spammer will just wreck it with his fake accounts.

Udemy is ad-free, tracks your progress automatically, and doesn't expire. Once you pay for the course, you'll have lifetime access.

We realize that most people hate ads, so we are currently giving users the option to block our ads. You may do this with an ad blocker or by selecting the ads button on the navigation menu. When you turn off ads, they will be removed from your current page and also blocked from loading on future pages. This setting is saved to your browser's local storage.
Note: Some browsers don't allow access to local storage. In this case, you will need to use an ad blocker to block ads on our pages.

No, we are following a general guideline for high school and college math.

The site is not doing well at this point. The YouTube traffic just isn't there at all, and Google has the AI summaries now, so getting legitimate web traffic is pretty tough.
It's hard to say when exactly, but this site will come to a conclusion at some point in the very near future. Originally, the goal was to make it through Calculus, but that would be impossible now as the funding just isn't there. Also, it's hard to justify that type of time commitment (thousands of hours) when AI can replicate any human work in a small fraction of the time.

No! GreeneMath.com owns the exclusive rights to all of its content. It does not share its content or grant exceptions to non-profit organizations or schools for any reason. Using the YouTube for education player will remove the ads. You can also just play the video with an ad blocker enabled.

If you want to use our video lessons with your class, you may link to any YouTube video or video lesson webpage. Additionally, you may use the embed code from the official GreeneMath YouTube video to include our video with your lesson. You may not download our videos for any reason. As mentioned above, you can use the YouTube player for education to avoid having students see ads.

Yes! You may link to our website and our videos. Please note, our content is available for non-commercial personal use only!

Hardware: Dell XPS Computer, Shure MV7 Microphone, and Wacom Cintiq Pro

Software: Camtasia Studio, Microsoft One Note

GreeneMath.com is custom-built by John Greene. There are a few extremely helpful libraries and programs such as jQuery, ASCIIsvg, David Lippman's Graphing Tools, Inkscape, MathGV, and MathJax that are used for animations and displaying math equations.

Our site requires JavaScript in order to fully run. Please check that JavaScript is enabled. Additionally, some features may not work on older browsers such as Internet Explorer. We test each page in a variety of modern web browsers. Our site works best with a fully updated Google Chrome browser. If you find something not loading or working correctly while using an updated modern browser, try reloading the page. In some cases, one of the dependencies may not load correctly on the first try. If the issue persists, you may send us an email using the form below. We will look into the issue when there is time. Unfortunately, due to the spam concerns mentioned above, we are unable to respond and thank you in advance!

If you see a dead link, this is used when content is planned but not completed yet. Again, with John working a full-time job it takes quite a while for things to be complete. Most frequently, we get questions about the lessons in the College Algebra and Precalculus courses. We are putting a link to an alternative video lesson that you can use for each one.

• Polar Equations
  • Professor Leonard YouTube Video
• Rotation of Conics
  • Ms. Ruddy YouTube Video
• Parametric Equations
  • Professor Rob Bob YouTube Video
• Linear Programming
  • Mario's Math Tutoring YouTube Video

These will be completed after the solution videos are finished for the rest of the course.