Teaching myself maths

[kora]

So I always hated my maths teachers and thought it was the subject I hated (I was a bit of a brat). In my last three months of mathematical education I finally got a good maths teacher and started to love the subject, though still had difficulties due to the fact that I had missed so many levels of the logical building blocks that is the mathematical system.

So, getting to the point, I'm now taking it upon myself to re-start learning it from scratch. Does anyone know a good way to do this? Maybe a site or a set of books that you think is good. It definitely has to start at quite an early level, I really sucked.

PS: Mods welcome to move this thread to wherever you think is appropriate, wasn't sure where to put it, and the lounge gets the most views.

 

[Coolydudey]

How bad are we talking? How much learning, and where?

 

[shrub77]

What level of math do you already know/want to start from?

 

[kora]

@Coolydudey @shrub77

I really started switching off when equations cropped up I think, I just stopped paying attention and started drawing instead . On the upside, I ROCKED geometry. It's algebra that's the problem. Basically secondary school education from the age of 12-13 onwards.

 

[Matt3737]

@higs

There are many very educational videos on youtube that can give introductory lessons on basically any topic you want.

Here's one with Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Topology, and Infinite Series introductions:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MyWhyU?feature=pvchclk

 

[Etheri]

https://www.khanacademy.org/

Scroll down to math (or just pick a diffrent subject). I assume you're somewhere at algebra, geometry and precalc.
Also, while things in highschool go SLOW, if you're interested you can go much faster and catch up faster than you'd think. While it's hard to teach yourself at this pace, keeping the pace high forces you to practise the basics more.

As an autodidact, no matter how good you are at maths, you'll get stuck and have questions at times. If you honestly can't figure out what something means, google it, ask someone, wikipedia, wolframalpha (mathworld), ..., but one way or another, FIND OUT. Don't give up until you understand both the answer to your question and where your confusion came from. Giving up on small parts just leaves holes in your understanding, which will bite you in the ass sooner or later.

 

[Philovitist]

khan is best. You might consider mit opencourseware, but it might be too hard and too fast.

 

[kora]

Good stuff so far, I can use all of this.

 

[bartoli]

I had the same thought as a new year resolution, to master all the lessons i didn't give full attention when i was still in school (and believe me i have regreted it for some stuff already in my first work years).
If you want a french resource, I had found http://www.academie-en-ligne.fr/default.aspx, managed by the french ministry of education, that has lessons and exercices for all classes and levels from 'CP' to 'Terminale'

 

[ApostateAbe]

So I always hated my maths teachers and thought it was the subject I hated (I was a bit of a brat). In my last three months of mathematical education I finally got a good maths teacher and started to love the subject, though still had difficulties due to the fact that I had missed so many levels of the logical building blocks that is the mathematical system.

So, getting to the point, I'm now taking it upon myself to re-start learning it from scratch. Does anyone know a good way to do this? Maybe a site or a set of books that you think is good. It definitely has to start at quite an early level, I really sucked.

PS: Mods welcome to move this thread to wherever you think is appropriate, wasn't sure where to put it, and the lounge gets the most views.

I would suggest opening a textbook that deals with the material where you know you have trouble and working on the problem sets. Check your answers in the back of the book. Where you are having trouble, consult the section of the text that covers it. It is a perfectly conventional method of education, and maybe you think of textbooks as dreadful, but it is a method that I know has worked well for me. I took a year off from school and schooled myself on algebra using only the textbook. I should have continued that way. Classrooms slow me down.

 

[ApostateAbe]

If you accept that advice, then go on Amazon.com and find a relevant textbook with a high rating from buyers. Then go on bookfinder.com (indexes almost every book from almost every large online vender) and buy a cheap used copy. The older editions are always far cheaper than the newer editions.

 

[~~~]

Don't forget that some major publishers have made some interactive texts aimed at high school level on iTunes too. I'm not sure how good they are though. There is a maths subsection there.

 

[Hadoblado]

https://www.khanacademy.org/

AI showed me this gem. It is a fantastically designed learning tool that gives you a free education at whatever level you think you're at. It starts with telling time, and ends up an matrices and quadratic equations. It saves your progress, and gives a visual representation of difficulty without limiting your progress to a certain order. I have never been so impressed with a site in my life.

 

[ℜεмїηїs¢εη¢ε]

http://education-portal.com/academy/subject/mathematics.html

 

[ShameFace]

Good shit.

I'm completely Math illiterate. Its embarrassing and a big factor in keeping me from getting a college degree. If I had to guess what grade level of Math I'm proficient at, I'd probably have to guess somewhere in the 4th or 5th grade range (I'm 35 BTW)

 

[octopuses]

Yeah actually, I hated math too in high school and I pretty much tuned out a lot of it. Yet, I took pre-cal, statistics, and calculus in college and actually enjoyed them alot (except for pre-cal). I still don't remember much about trig or geometry but I've found that they weren't really necessary to know in stats and calc. So I think if you just get to know algebra pretty well you should be pretty set for higher levels of math.

 

[MichiganJFrog]

I wanna do this, too. I went back to the quadratic equation the other night and couldn't make heads or tails of it. I don't know if I just have some kind of mental block or if I have dyscalculia. I'll give these resources a shot, though. Thanks for raising the question.