Why do textbook explanations make no sense?
Complex academic texts often lack intuitive explanations, forcing learners to memorize formulas without understanding the underlying concepts. This lack of clear foundational reasoning makes it impossible to build real intuition for the subject without first taking more advanced courses.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- It is not one crowd: 2 people on Hacker News and 2 on Reddit ran into the same thing.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Reading alternative resource types like interactive websites, video series, or non-technical books inspired by authors like Nassim TalebDid this help you?
- 2Using companion books that focus heavily on exercises or short reference guidesDid this help you?
- 3Using reference treatises like Bittker and EusticeDid this help you?
- 4Suffering through the class to just get a passing gradeDid this help you?
- 5Using LLMs to explain the 'why' behind tax rulesDid this help you?
- 6Looking at actual tax schedules and doing multiple-choice questionsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I've got a Bachelors and two Masters degrees in CS/Math, but yet I feel Probability and Statistics is my greatest weakness. I just cannot grok it / build an intuition for it, and believe me, I've tried.”source ↗
“something I kept running into is that you can't really unlock the intuition for many concepts without taking more advanced courses.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 2Why do homework questions have no explanation or poor wording?
- 5Why is it so hard to apply textbook rules to practice exercises?
- 2Why does loan paperwork show two different interest rates?
- 2How to help kids understand what test questions are asking
- 7How do employer retirement match calculations work?
- 4Why does sending money to Wise show a US bank recipient address?