Math (re)Education?

[Scipio]

I'd like to relearn most of the stuff in high school math, from trigonometry, to algebra, to beginners calculus. Part of my goal is to improve my general problem solving skills and build my concentration, but I also want to be able to have useful math skills for daily life.

Does anyone have any free online resources or good book recommendations for this topic? Textbooks are okay but I'd prefer online stuff. I'm also very interested in mental math; calculating numbers in the head without a pencil and paper would be very handy.

[Majesticzero]

Same here. I didn't like math at school so I didn't really care to learn it at that time.
I was looking for some ebooks about it, but I haven't found to much on this yet. I'll keep you posted if I find something.

[Hyperchiller]

Originally Posted by Scipio

Does anyone have any free online resources or good book recommendations for this topic? Textbooks are okay but I'd prefer online stuff. I'm also very interested in mental math; calculating numbers in the head without a pencil and paper would be very handy.

You might want to try vedic maths for calculating numbers quickly.

If you want to learn useful maths - learn probability - the various distributions, the concepts, stochastic modelling, time series analysis... and learn how to use Excel.

[magi13]

Originally Posted by Hyperchiller

You might want to try vedic maths for calculating numbers quickly.

If you want to learn useful maths - learn probability - the various distributions, the concepts, stochastic modelling, time series analysis... and learn how to use Excel.

Hmm, logic has math <-- simple math though. ^^

here is a link

http://www.math.psu.edu/simpson/papers/philmath.pdf

Vedic math is good.

I don't have links for this one though

[openeyes]

I would check out an SAT/college entrance study guide from the library.

[cinnabar]

I had the same idea a little while back... though I didn't do much with it.

If you want some basic practice though, this site is pretty useful:

World of Math Online

Best wishes with your efforts!

[Brutha]

I wouldn't try to learn trigonometry or calculus if you don't need it because you want to work in an area where it is needed.

I would instead recommend to learn statistics. If you want to read any scientific paper that's worth something whether it's in sociology, medicine, economics or psychology you need to know statistics to fully understand what the paper is saying.

Your doctors tell you that a test for a certain cancer has a chance of 90% of finding that an ill person has that cancer and a 99% chance of finding that a healthy person is healthy.
He also tells you that the test says that you have cancer.
How much should you worry that you really have cancer?

Those sorts of questions are important in daily life and a lot of people would think after that speech that they have a 90% chance of having cancer which isn't true.

I would personally recommand either to read the book Head First statistics or to learn R which is a programming language for statistic.
R allows you to let the computer to the calculating will you can spend all your time to actually understand the concepts.

If you for example have a website you can use R to analyse your google analytics data and understand it better.
If you have your own business and want to understand the data better, knowing statistics can also help you to make better decisions.

[lifetimelearner]

Originally Posted by Scipio

I'd like to relearn most of the stuff in high school math, from trigonometry, to algebra, to beginners calculus. Part of my goal is to improve my general problem solving skills and build my concentration, but I also want to be able to have useful math skills for daily life.

Does anyone have any free online resources or good book recommendations for this topic? Textbooks are okay but I'd prefer online stuff. I'm also very interested in mental math; calculating numbers in the head without a pencil and paper would be very handy.

word problems are good for getting your brain going
not sure of resources though
and I agree with Brutha too -statistics comes in very handy

[magi13]

Why not have fun playing with the office utility excell. <=

[ruchirkc]

I've yet to use Trigonometry in my daily life yet...

[Hyperchiller]

Yeah learn statistics too.

There are two types - descriptive and inferential statistics.

Descriptive stats is about mean, variance, mode, and simple indicators of data. So this is basic and useful.

Inferential stats is learnt at university level. You can certainly use them in the programing language R as mentioned above (it's open source and free so that's a bonus!). But ultimately I think this is a waste of time. Just use your intuition instead of using inferential stats - that's my opinion anyway. Ask your guides or Higher Self if you need to make a decision based on data...

[Brutha]

Just use your intuition instead of using inferential stats - that's my opinion anyway.

Humans happen to have very bad intuition about raw data.

Understanding when you have enough data to draw significant conclusion and when your data just shows you noise is important and it's usually nothing that people do well naturally.

[Scipio]

Okay thanks for some great suggestions so far!

Statistics is a good idea. I read tonnes of journal articles from the medical field and would like to know how they are calculating things like "risk rate."

A little hate on trig here, I remember being in high school though and it seemed useful to plot stuff like sinusoidal graphs and be able to find out a value for any location on it. But I have no idea practically where that would come up because I don't notice math in real life since I never mastered it.

I was thinking about learning calculus before because I study economics on my own. However, my school of economics is qualitative rather than quantitative (if anyone follows economics: the Austrian school) so the calculus wouldn't be that useful to me unless I was subjected to university economics classes that require calculus. I'm dropping out after my third year--this summer--so I doubt I'll study calculus.

Thanks to Hyperchiller for the hot tip on Vedic maths. I've been searching around the internet for mental math stuff, but I may buy a book that has things explained in a more user friendly way with a lot of practice questions. I find anything to do with math, comp sci, or engineering on the web seems to have low presentation quality and is basically aimed at people who must operate from a fundamentally different mindset than I do.

I am going to start studying formal logic again as well. I don't think of it as math so that's why it's easy for me--it's more like grammar. (I am a philosophy major with some experience there)

I'm planning to own a business one day and I'm interested in investment too. I'd like to learn how to do some of the math without the "online tools."

[Keith]

Unfortunately, it's not yet ready for prime-time, but Main Page - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks is a promising resource of Free (open-source) textbooks.

Those of you here with good maths brains might even be interested in helping bring some of them up to speed.

[Hyperchiller]

Trig isn't completely useless - sinusoidal graphs help you analyze vibrations - sound vibrations in particular.

I mean it would be interesting in the future if we could analyze the particular vibrations that heal certain types of cancer and other physical illnesses.

If we have the codes to specific vibrations then we would be able to access capacities of creativity, skill and expression. Trig knowledge.. though it would be basic, would give you a foundation in the study of Vibration. It's just interesting. It wouldn't necessarily be practical though - unless you're studying to be an electrical or sound engineer.

Calculus is pretty easy though. It's interesting as well. You would use it if you directed yourself to a scientific or mathematically skilled career path. You definitely wouldn't use it if you were in business units such as marketing, accounting, management, IT and servicing.

[Hyperchiller]

Originally Posted by Scipio

Okay thanks for some great suggestions so far!

I'm planning to own a business one day and I'm interested in investment too. I'd like to learn how to do some of the math without the "online tools."

In that case you might want to learn business math.

Study financial mathematics - simple interest, compound interest, annuities, loan repayments, and the use of probability in determining contingent payments for calculating Net Present Values.

These would all be covered in first year actuarial studies - so get a textbook on financial maths or basic/introductory actuarial maths.

[Brutha]

Trig isn't completely useless - sinusoidal graphs help you analyze vibrations - sound vibrations in particular.

Brainwaves also happen to have graphs where you need trigonometry to model them.

I'd like to learn how to do some of the math without the "online tools."

Why? Using programs is simply faster.
Sitting down with pen and paper just takes more time and you might also be more likely to make an error somewhere.
Some problems like wanting to know the volume of a shape can also be solved by simply modeling the problem and running 100,000,000 tries (your computer can do that in a few seconds) and calculate the average instead of doing the "math" to get to the answer.

Math that you can do in your head has value because you don't always have a computer nearby for the problem, but I don't think that there are many situations in which you would sit down with pen and paper in real life instead of using a computer unless you really are a mathematician and do really high level stuff.

[magi13]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Brainwaves also happen to have graphs where you need trigonometry to model them.
Why? Using programs is simply faster.
Sitting down with pen and paper just takes more time and you might also be more likely to make an error somewhere.
Some problems like wanting to know the volume of a shape can also be solved by simply modeling the problem and running 100,000,000 tries (your computer can do that in a few seconds) and calculate the average instead of doing the "math" to get to the answer.

Math that you can do in your head has value because you don't always have a computer nearby for the problem, but I don't think that there are many situations in which you would sit down with pen and paper in real life instead of using a computer unless you really are a mathematician and do really high level stuff.

Let's not ask why, the TS may have clearly stated that's what he wants. ^,^

@TS you hear our comments and recommendations. ^^, Now choose which you prefer to follow, and make sure it's your own choice.

[enyi]

Math is fun! And it helps you understand the world better, much more than most people think :-)

Awesome resource: The Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math

There is another that helps you solve and graph equations step by step, but I don't remember it's name

Learn how to beat a calculator (mental math): Math Forum: K-12 Problems, Puzzles, Tips & Tricks (there are other resources on this site too)

Also, resources from the legendary Mathematica: Wolfram Web Resources

Enjoy!

- Ivan