I have recently got myself back into studying mathematics as a hobby. The last time I studied mathematics for a considerable length of time was 18 years ago! I picked analytic number theory as the topic for this new hobby. I did a Tell HN [1] too about it 6 months ago. Thanks to that post and the awesome HN community, we now have a book club around it that has been going consistently since then. In fact, incidentally I published a new blog post about it discussing the learning experience about half an hour ago. [2]
I talk about this book club here on HN often, so at the risk of repeating myself, I do want to mention on this thread that as a result of these ongoing book club meetings, I realized something interesting. I realized that studying and learning in a social setting like this ensures constant progress. The risk of discontinuing the learning activity due to other priorities of life becomes lower. No matter what, barring exceptional circumstances, I know that I need to sit with our book club for 40 minutes everyday and work through a few pages of the book together. I think that kind of consistency is very important while learning an abstract topic like this that we are learning purely for the joy of learning! Further, the insights that the book club members share with each other during the group study is a nice bonus!
I talk about this book club here on HN often, so at the risk of repeating myself, I do want to mention on this thread that as a result of these ongoing book club meetings, I realized something interesting. I realized that studying and learning in a social setting like this ensures constant progress. The risk of discontinuing the learning activity due to other priorities of life becomes lower. No matter what, barring exceptional circumstances, I know that I need to sit with our book club for 40 minutes everyday and work through a few pages of the book together. I think that kind of consistency is very important while learning an abstract topic like this that we are learning purely for the joy of learning! Further, the insights that the book club members share with each other during the group study is a nice bonus!
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26366464
[2] https://offbeat.cc/blog/our-trip-to-the-prime-number-theorem...