At first glance, this is actually a refreshing take on "teach math to coders".
There are 1-2 other books constantly recommend here, which are (probably) fantastic but throw you off the deep end with assumptions that you understand algebra, trigonometry, fundamental calculus, and statistics.
Essentially, that you finished school and paid attention. Which is a well-founded assumption. And I don't necessarily expect an author to assume responsibility for covering fundamentals, but it's nice if there are authors willing to do this.
That seems somewhat universal. I remember attending the first suggested university course on math and barely recognising what was written on the first page of the material. It turned out that the material was written well before the high school curriculum on math in my country was substantially dumbed down, and was not very accessible for recent high school graduates. Other universities provided more verbose study material, while mine was trying to make the material as concise as possible. For whatever reason, math seems to be the only field in which conciseness usually trumps readability.
I passed the course (Analysis I) with the minimum score by memorising previous exams and their answers, without understanding any of it, or ever needing the skills on my professional career.
Logic and algebra classes were a lot more approachable, enjoyable and eventually useful. I am looking forward to learn something from this material, too.
In many parts of Europe, they actually do: if you study maths or even something related like CS or physics, you'll basically see proofs from day one. The split between "calculus" (non-rigorous) and "analysis" (with proper proofs) seems to be mostly a US thing.
It would be cool if the authors offered a list of pre-reqs. Sometime I look at a math book and don't understand the first few chapters but I am willing to build up to it provided I know what to read first.
Coding and math books frequently list prerequisites by saying something like "only really trivial mathematics knowledge that any adult should be familiar with" and then you start working through the book and realize they meant any adult that took multiple years of calculus in high school and graduated with a BS in Comp Sci or mathematics.
As a high school drop out that only later on developed an interest in learning its pretty frustrating. My BS is in Information Systems so I've missed out on a lot of math that seems to make learning computer science and programming easier. I'll have to give this resource a try. I'm a big fan of his reverse engineering material already.
I identify so hard with your comment! I’m proficient with a handful of programming languages, very comfortable with most Sys admin tasks on Unix-like OSes, and I’m almost always able to reverse engineer someone else’s similar solution to meet my needs. However, I’ve had any formal computer science education. Now, in my early 30s, I’ve found a successful career in a non-tech field but find it unfulfilling. I still love to program and I’d love to make a change, but my lack of a math and comp sci foundation gnaws at me.
I’ve tried to relearn Calc a handful times, but find myself frustrated when I have to go look up basic trig identities, and order of operations stuff just to get through practice problems. I’d love to relearn math from scratch if anyone has any recommendations.
The other one is in web format, it's something along the lines of "Visual Linear Algebra". Really unsure of title, but it's centered around visualizations of the math.
On my laptop I would post bookmark but I'm in bed on phone, sorry =/
There are 1-2 other books constantly recommend here, which are (probably) fantastic but throw you off the deep end with assumptions that you understand algebra, trigonometry, fundamental calculus, and statistics.
Essentially, that you finished school and paid attention. Which is a well-founded assumption. And I don't necessarily expect an author to assume responsibility for covering fundamentals, but it's nice if there are authors willing to do this.