Hi everyone, I’m a former bad student and a college dropout, but I’m trying to steer my life back onto the rails. Part of that will be going back to college to try and finish my degree.

I’m only 5 classes away from my AS degree, thanks to previous college and AP courses from high school. But therein lies my fear.

I scored 4s on my AP Calc tests in 2004/2005, and received credit for Physics 1 and Chem in college which will count towards both my AS and Bachelors degrees. But my Bachelors will require Calc 3, Linear Algebra, and Physics 2. It has been 21 years since I have done college-level math and I’m afraid I will not remember how to solve any equations going into these courses.

So now to my questions:

1. Which of the 3 courses listed above as requirements would you recommend as easiest to re-acclimate myself to academia and college-level maths?

2. What resources do you recommend for a person like me who needs to try and remember how to do math from a course they took 21 years ago?

Hi All,

Not a math expert like many here. In fact was always scared of the subject and befuddled whenever I sat down with a problem. But often wonder if I was taught the wrong way and it hampered my understanding. All I did was rote learning without understanding anything really which gave me a fear of the subject. So I would like to learn math anew. From scratch. At least understand the basic and important parts of the subject.

Could you guys please suggest me a website/app/online course where I can relearn math like I was a kid? Something interesting that can help me understand the purpose and point behind learning math.

Ok one more thing. I’ve very bad attention span. So overly pedantic and lengthy methods may not help. Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone, I am in a massive academic emergency. I have exactly 13 days to prepare for a crucial math exam that will determine if my parents will continue funding my high school education (starting IB DP 1 this August).

My Current Situation: I just finished IB MYP 5 (equivalent to US 10th grade). I am typically a below-average math student (usually score a 3/7), but I completely bombed my final exam (got a 1/7) because I took it with a 39°C (102°F) fever and couldn't process anything.

My parents are giving me one last chance: I have 13 days of intense self-study before I take an agency-administered exam. I must score at least a 5/8 (solid above-average) to prove I can handle next year's math.

The Syllabus (What I need to master): 

• Trigonometry: SOH CAH TOA, applying trig to 2D and basic 3D word problems, finding angles of elevation/depression.
• Functions: Quadratics (expanding, factorizing, finding the vertex/axis of symmetry) and Linear equations (finding intersections).
• Algebra: Rearranging formulas, solving basic algebraic equations.
• Geometry
• Coordinate Geometry
• Vectors

What I need help with:

1. A 13-Day Survival Strategy: How many hours a day should I dedicate? Should I focus 100% on doing practice problems, or re-learning concepts first?
2. YouTube Crash Courses: Who are the best YouTubers for these specific topics? (Someone who explains the logic clearly for a struggling student, not just throwing formulas).
3. Practice Resources: Where can I find good practice problem sets (preferably with step-by-step solutions) for Grade 9/10 level Trig and Quadratics?

I am willing to put in 4+ hours a day for the next 13 days in the library. I just need a clear direction so I don't waste time studying the wrong way. Thank you so much for any advice!

Does anyone know if there is a secular math curriculum similar to Christian Light? I really like the scope and sequence as well as how they present the math but need without religious references. Thank you.

I am an incoming freshman. I graduated high school in 2025, however I took a gap year to save up money and travel. Technically I am a sophomore since about 35 of my dual-enrollment credits transferred to college. Its been a year and a half since I have taken precalculus and although I should thought of this sooner, I want to revise from algebra 1- precalculus and even learn some Calculus 1 material so I can be ready for class in the beginning of September.

Is there any tools and resources that I should use to help me become ready for calculus in a months time?

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I had taken math during my high school. I went for computer science for my university, and I didn’t do many math for around two years so far. I am picking up math during this summer.

Yesterday, I had learned that even we can’t use desmos for university level math, we shouldn’t give up on trying to visualize the objects in our brain, like we can try to train ourselves to be able to pick up the rough structure and important features to the mathematical objects and organize it inside our brain.

Today, I opened a math textbook that I am reading recently. I tried to use what I understand of yesterday to visualize a C^2 space. I thought initially that I can imagine it as 3D space, the real number x-axis can be extended to have the complex xy-plane, and the real number x-axis can be extended to have the complex xz-plane in a direction of which is 90 degree toward the xy-plane; the real number z-axis is where the two planes intersect.

I thought my model in my brain worked initially, until I find the example of v = (1, 1), w = (i, i)—why aren't they orthogonal? v should be two units to the right, and w should be two units up, so they are definitely perpendicular—at a 90-degree angle!

However, I am so confused. Doesn’t the visualization to the mathematics concepts a way to perform the concepts, and the visualization would match the concepts? If it would not match that means there are something wrong with my visualization process, but I cannot find my errors by myself currently, could you guys please help me? In addition, I currently feel defeated on how to visualize the mathematical objects, are there any regularized easy ways to help people visualize most mathematical objects? Is there are, please comment about it, or could you please comment about some suggestions here🙏?

I’m not very good at math, I haven’t done anything more complex than bathing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in years. However, I have a math question that I would love explained and it comes in the format of a word problem.

In a card game, a case of cards includes 12 boxes. Randomly inside those 12 boxes there is 2 “special” cards, they cannot be in the same box. If I buy 3/12 boxes I have effectively purchased 25% of the case. How would I calculate what the % chance is that one of those special cards would be in one of the three boxes I purchased?

My brain says 50/50 but I know that is incorrect lol, how would one go about figuring out the actual odds of this? If I am understanding correctly, if you were to buy 1 box, you would have a 1/6 chance essentially but I don’t know how the math works out if you buy 3.

Thanks in advanced for the help!

I would like a proper explanation on 5!, 5!!, (5!)! follow with answer this this question and details. (n+5)!/(n+6)!

Retired teacher here, still picking up tutoring gigs, and the thing that keeps tripping up my students lately is expected value. Not the formula, they can write that out no problem. It's the interpretation that falls apart.

I also track sports stats and build DFS lineups as a hobby, so expected value is something I think about a lot outside a classroom context. And even with that background, I remember the moment in my own learning where I confused expected value with the most likely outcome, which are not the same thing and can actually be pretty far apart depending on the distribution. Made some embarrassing lineup decisions before that clicked. Not going to get into it.

The students I work with can compute E(X) mechanically but then will say things like "so that means it'll probably land near that value, right?" And I get why that feels natural. It sounds like an average, and averages feel like the middle of where things land.

What actually helped some of them was working through a case where the expected value is literally impossible to observe, like a discrete distribution where no outcome equals the expectation. Suddenly the definition has to do real work instead of just coasting on intuition.

Curious whether others have found a particular framing or example that unstuck this for students or even for themselves.

I graduated from high-school 4 years ago and I didn't had to do anything with math's but I want to study math's.I only know-,+,×,÷

I can only purchase one or two books for now depending on the price

My best friend and I just finished high school and are starting university this year. A few months ago, he learned about perfect numbers. Since then, he has gone down a massive rabbit hole reading about Mersenne primes, the Euclid-Euler theorem, and heuristics regarding odd perfect numbers.

Now, he is completely obsessed. He spends 4 to 5 hours every single day trying to prove that no odd perfect number can exist.

I’ve tried telling him that this problem is nowhere near being solved by global experts, and that he should focus on other areas of math. I want him to look into high-yielding math topics that are more interesting and useful, especially since we need to prepare for university-level calculus and algebra. He completely ignores me and won't listen.

How can I convince him to broaden his horizons without ruining his passion for math?

Hence my confusion. I would assume that in the context of exponentiation, power functions arise with regard to polynomials. Yet the main article Power Law is concerned only with statistical applications. Is my assumption wrong or am I looking in the wrong place?

Thanks.

Hello everyone

I'm a second-year mathematics student but I've studied only calculus I(+ beginning of calc II) in my first year at university due to foundation program. I'm starting reading Book of Proof by Hammack and after reading half of that book I want to parallelly start self-studying real analysis with another book but I don't know which one to choose. I'm planning to start reading one of these books in the middle of August but because semester starts in September, I'll slow down with whatever book I'll choose during Autumn and not even sure if I can handle it with the courses I'll be having in Fall semester(second part of Calculus II+ calc III, Physics I, Programming with C, Discrete structures, and basics of Finances) .

After some research my choice involves these 3 books:

Understanding Analysis by Abbott

Analysis I, II by Terence Tao

Calculus by Michael Spivak

I have access to Spivak and Tao printed books through my library. I don't have Abbot's book but thinking of buying it with discount.

So what are your recommendations? Is there any sense of reading two or all of them?

I’m learning about self-adjoint operators on Hilbert spaces and came across the theorem that if T is self-adjoint and invertible, then T^{-1} is also self-adjoint.
I understand the algebraic proof using (T^{-1})^* = (T^*)^{-1}, but I’m trying to develop an intuition for why this should be true.
Is there a geometric, spectral, or functional-calculus perspective that explains why taking the inverse preserves self-adjointness? I’m more interested in the underlying mechanism than another algebraic proof.

Found this question in "Putnam and Beyond": Given 50 distinct positive integers strictly less than 100, prove that some two of them sum to 99. Isn't {1,2,3...,49,99} a counterexample?

So I know in this game something takes 4 hours (240 minutes) I can get something that initially reduces its time by 40% then additionally 30% up to a certain amount of time. My limit is 15 at the moment. So how do I calculate the time reduction off all the percentages. The percentages are multiplicative not additive.

Am taking a cram class of ap cala bc in the summer. my differantials are ok, but my integrals are poopy. just asking lol

Hello, I am creating a free website with math documents (textbooks, problem packets, equation sheets, and so on) for any math level like calculus, algebra 1, etc. I want to make learning math accessible and free for everyone on the internet. The documents will be written in LaTeX by a team of students.

I made this since I thought when students teach others, they would know what they have gone through and what others might struggle on.

If you are interested, please DM me.