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by codazoda·7y ago·view on hn ↗
I'm a self-taught programmer and I turned that into my career. I didn't go to college and I didn't pay a lot of attention in Math classes in High School. I'm regularly reminded that I should have focused more attention on math. There are occasional challenges where understanding complex math would have been extremely helpful in solving real problems.
4 comments
I think the most important thing is to perhaps be cognizant of your limits and strengths, and try and learn about what's out there that could be employed to solve problems, even if it's not you doing it.

I once worked with a guy with a PhD in math, and was really impressed by some of the stuff he was able to do. On the other hand, his coding skills were not stellar, and I was able to give him a lot of advice and help in terms of improving the structure and quality of his code.

Working with diverse teams is fun!

I was in the same position and did some research to get better and I seriously recommend starting with Gelfand's book on Algebra (and another Gelfand book on Trigonometry. These are educational books developed by one of the best Soviet mathematicians translated perfectly to english. It starts with the absolute fundamentals of Math, but asks such critical questions that you develop a much more nuanced understanding of maths you thought you already understood.

From there I plan to slowly make my way through the entire Gelfand library and Spivaks Calculus. Maybe down the road Category Theory and Engineering Maths, or Physics.

There are so many amazing resources online that I don't see any reason why a motivated learner with spare time can't achieve an education on par or better than a University undergrad.

This 100%. So is there any good way to revisit all the maths in a correct order of operations as they would apply to a topical area of CS in general?

I've picked up a few overview text books and have bookmarked a copious number of math related refreshers but the subject is hard to gauge if the material is good or not. Any MooCs have good tracks that don't cost an arm and a leg?

This isn't a popular suggestion (and by that I don't mean to say it's rejected or people don't like it, I just haven't heard it suggested before in this context) but at university for electronic engineering we used K.A. Stroud's Engineering Mathematics. This book is surprisingly little focused on actual applications to engineering, it takes you through calculus by introducing the derivative, for example, and then some linear algebra stuff. But what surprises people is that it starts off with the properties of addition and multiplication - it's that simple. It's a book that starts from zero and takes you very, very far. It won't take you to a mathematician's 100 but it'll take you to any serious engineering undergrad's 100.

If I recall correctly it also has problems for you to do - which is key for understanding mathematics and developing a sense of intuition.

I mean, the college math I had was: calc 1-3 and differential equations (4 classes total), and probability/statistics (1 class). I didn't have to take linear algebra, but I got a good enough understanding from calc and my algorithms class (we studied algos from a theoretical perspective with math, like the CLRS book, so we did some vector and matrix stuff).

Paul's Calc Notes are awesome for calc. But it seems like you have plenty of resources right now, so probably the best thing to do now is actually pick one at a time, and go through it.

The best collection of resources I've found has been on https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmath/ of all places.
Find a well-regarded college math curriculum and read the textbooks?
Similar situation, and I'm considering going back to school. Well, except, I forgot a ton of basic mathematics! Even made a thread about it a couple weeks ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20446796