Relearn Math from the ground up?

I believe it is within my best interest to start relearning Math over from scratch, and I am unsure of how exactly I should begin to tackle such a massive goal.

I am a dropout, and in preparation for my GED, I spent 2 months cramming every single Khan Academy video I could down my throat and did it all until it stuck.

I passed my tests with honors, but now it's a month later and I haven't practiced any Math at all, and I have forgotten all of it, and I would like to take my TSI entry exam and go to college for Comp Sci.

I believe that my problem is that I don't know Math. I simply haven't been taught it. I have been trained. I trained myself to do all the problems and what not, and now I've forgotten the training because of a lack of practice.

I sit here and try to do a long division problem, but I am constantly looking up what steps to do in order to do the problem, because I don't know how long division itself works. I only know how to do a procedure that I have remembered. I lack the knowledge to do things for real.

Therefore I come to you, Veeky Forums, asking for help.

How can I begin the process of learning Math, up to Algebra 1 and High School level Geometry? What books can you recommend me? I am ready to start ASAP. I'm also ready to try as hard as I ever have tried at something before, and willing to go with it as long as it will take. Please help me start.

Other urls found in this thread:

pdf-archive.com/2016/12/12/chap1-papier/chap1-papier.pdf
people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

To further explain what I mean, I take the fraction 5/8.

If I were asked to convert 5/8 into a decimal, then I would say "ok. so divide the top by the bottom." and I would do so and reach 0.625(assuming of course I didn't get side tracked with re-training myself to divide).

So 0.625 is the correct answer. I know this. But I do not know why it is the correct answer. Therefore it is suffice to say I do not understand decimals or fractions at all. I simply know how to do some of the problems.

And this is a problem that's affluent with a lot of math related things I do. But I do not know where to begin in learning the correct things.

I can sit here and memorize Khan Academy videos until I can apply the procedures Sal does to similar problems in the videos, but as soon as a problem comes up I don't have a procedure for, I'm stumped. I don't want this anymore.

Am I making any sense?

There's no "why" as for 5/8 = 0.625. Both are just different notations of the same thing.

You should read books on functions and/or geometry first. The wiki should help.

>But I do not know why it is the correct answer

How many times can 8 cut up/divide/go into 5 evenly? 0 with a remainder of 5.

Now if we wanted to do better with a finer answer, we can figure out how many tenths of 8 (0.8) go into 5 or equivalently how many times 8 goes into 5 scaled up by 10 ie 50 (because 5 is 50 tenths). You can go 8-16-24-32-40-48 times so 6 tenths(.6) of 8 go into 5 giving a remainder of 2 tenths(0.2). Now looking for the hundredths of an 8 that can go into the remainder of 0.2 (ie .2 / .08) or conversely number of 8 hundredths we can pull out of 20 hundredths. We can get 2 more leaving 20-16=4 hundredths so we have 6 tenths 0.6 plus 2 hundredths we just pulled out or .6 +.02=.62 with a remainder of 4 hundredths which in decimal is 0.04. And then with thousandths of an 8 (.008) that goes into .04 we see 5*.008=.04 so .008 goes into .04 5 times with no remainder so we add 5 thousandths to .62 and get .62+.005=.625 as a final answer.

Alright. I suppose I should have first checked for a wiki for this board before diving into this whole thing. Right now I'm trying to just gather up the necessary resources I need to begin the relearning process.

Are there any books specifically you can recommend personally? I'm going to try to get the best I can find.

I'm gonna head over to the wiki for a bit and see what I can dig up in the mean time.

>Are there any books specifically you can recommend personally?
I speak French, sorry. But I would recommand paying a close attention to the fundamentals of analysis, like what is exactly a derivative, what is a limit, what is a function. Those are vitals in almost every other aspect.

Any book will be fine, don't worry about that. Just use whatever your local community college is using, because that's good enough trust me.

I'm not in the community college, I'm in a french Uni.

We're using some papers written by the teachers themselves. This one is about logic and mathematical expression, but I don't think it can of much use if you don't speak French yourself :/

pdf-archive.com/2016/12/12/chap1-papier/chap1-papier.pdf
It's available for free on my uni's website.

Alright so I've looked over the wiki a bit, and I've looked over some recommendations from stack exchange, and so far my book list is stacking up to really high levels. I'm going to start trying to narrow things down now, since most of the posts I'm coming across now are just "lel go look at Khan Academy!"

That being said, here's what I've gathered up so far:
>Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning by Thomas A. Garrity
>"Mathematical Logic" by We Li
>The Square Root of Two by David Flannery
Then I start getting to books related to subjects.
> Calculus - Volume 1 and 2 by Tom Apostol
>Linear Algebra by Georgi Shilov
>Elements by Euclid
> Elementary Number Theory by Charles Vanden Eynden
>Differential Geometry by Erwin Kreyszig

I'm not sure which of these are good to read or not. Particularly the first three I listed. I am a bit skeptical of The Square Root of Two because that sounds a bit like pop-math.

How's this list looking so far? Anything I should add?

> french uni
> not in pic related

learning math at the college level is in a way learning math again from the ground up. don't waste your time going back.just learn analysis and abstract algebra

Choose one book which covers high school algebra. Basic mathematics by Lang is fine for this purpose, but you can pretty much use any cheep textbook you get your hands on. But do make sure you're using a book and not just Khan Academy (though that is a good supplement). If you do this, you can get into college for a comp sci degree and learn calculus and other math there.

Most of the books listed in the second half are more rigorous, stuff for a pure math major. If you're interested in that, that's great, but you should learn basic calculus first, and read an intro to proofs book, before attempting any of those. If you want some exposure to proofs but nothing further, elements is a good choice.

I mean hey - the less I have to juggle between different books the better. I'd like to just have the simplest, yet effective learning regime I can construct.

I found a good PDF of Basic Mathematics by Lang, and it's sitting in my folder now.

As for pure math, I don't think I have the heart for that to be honest. I'd like Comp Sci, and only Comp Sci. I'm not interested really in majoring or minoring in anything else in college.

Honestly I've started looking at trade schools now as well. I'm only 18 and I've spent a lot of my life just floating around, so now that I have to force things into perspective I'm a bit lost as to what exactly I what to do. Something will sound good, but then I remember that it's for the rest of my life. Programming so far is the only thing that hasn't made me feel depressed upon thinking of doing something forever.

Alright, so I have:
>Serge Lang's Basic Mathematics
>IM Gelfand's Algebra
>Thomas' Calculus: Multivariable
>Thomas A. Garrity's All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School

Thomas' Calculus is a monumentally large read but I suppose that'll give me a fantastic head-start if I study the living shit out of everything in it.

How's this reading list?

The math on the TSI exam is as follows:
>The mathematics portion of the TSI test is 20 questions in length and spreads across four different elements of mathematical knowledge. The first is data analysis, meaning that one of the test’s concerns is your ability to decipher probability, statistics, and sets of data. The other areas the TSI’s math section tests are geometry, or how well you can distinguish three-dimensional shapes, symmetry, and area; and algebra on both intermediate and basic levels. The last component of the math test evaluates your ability to solve various types of algebraic equations. You cannot use a calculator on the math portion of the test.
The calculator thing fucking scares the shit out of me but I read somewhere there's an onscreen one that pops up every now and then.

Do you think the list of books I have will prepare me enough for this?

As far as I can tell from quick googling, the TSI only covers high school level content. So Basic Mathematics or IM Gelfand's Algebra should be fine for that.

After that, you can learn calculus in college. If you'd like to study on your own to get ahead, Thomas's calculus is find (but start at single variable before doing multivariable). Calculus by Stewart is another book which covers the same content.

Delete "all the math you missed" from your list. That's a book designed to review the entire undergraduate curriculum for a pure math major, which is very different from your needs.

Also, you can find all these books free on libgen. I recommend trying to avoid spending time figuring out which book is best and just diving into one. If it doesn't seem good, try another. It's more important to spend time working than figuring out what you should work on. Good luck!

Well alright. I guess I'll study the shit out of Basic Mathematics for 4 months, and then go take my TSI and hit up the 6 week Comp Sci class in May. Or maybe study Calculus afterwards and then next year go into Comp Sci for 6 months.

I've already got a some knowledge on programming. I have been doing it for like 2 years, but mostly just small projects here and there. I also know some low level stuff and how to crack things. I'm going to probably pick up some real books on programming too and read those while I'm at it.

Thanks for helping me out. I'm excited to get to work on this.

Bumping. Gonna go to bed. Will read any further posts upon my waking.

> Khan academy
> math
Pick one.

You shut your whore mouth.

Good morning gentlemen.
I've written a to do list and got all my stuff ready.

My point exactly.
I guess it's good for practice and for jogging your memory but I wouldn't trust Khan Academy to actually TEACH me anything. It just trains you.

Not everyone here is a genius in the making. Pretending to be one is worse than being a simple honest brainlet.

Man not even I'm dumb enough to think I'm some special fucking genius. That's why I'm on Veeky Forums asking Veeky Forums how to relearn math of all things. All you can do is just try to do the best you can. Leave the rest to the autistic mensas.

This Basic Mathemataics book is great. I just finished the foreword and it looks like it's exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for. Thanks user! I feel like I'm on the right track!

Don't overthink it user. Fractions are just another way to express a number. It's not as intricate as you might think.

people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/

Get a good footing on how to prove problems with this book while you're working on your algebra skills.

Holy shit this book is fucking amazing.
I'm actually understanding things now kind of, and I'm only 30 damn pages in.
>if a+b = a, then b = 0.
IT MAKES SENSE BECAUSE IN ORDER FOR IT TO BE A IT MUST NOT BE GOING ANYWHERE ON THE LINE!

This is the best fucking shit ever. No more training. Just learning.