Can you recommend any books/websites that would help me (re)teach myself math?

Asked by sailor (80

) February 21st, 2011

I am historically god-awful at mathematics. I still add with my fingers, even.

In high school, I passed geometry only because the teacher was incredibly sympathetic and let me retake test after test; I failed Algebra II and then barely squeaked by when I retook it; then in college, with a liberal arts major, I took “liberal arts math” (finite math) which I failed and had to retake. (I said I was god-awful at math, right?) That is the end of my math experience.

For my own personal development, I would like to be better at math. I want to start at the basics and just reteach myself from there. I have looked into taking a class at a community college, but the registration has already passed so I’m SOL. I have a lot of free time now, so I figured I’d just teach myself.

Thanks in advance.

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8 Answers

Totally: KhanAcademy.org is excellent. Otherwise Brightstorm.com is very good too.

cockswain (15276

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iTunes U is an awesome free resource for watching lectures and reading handouts on various subjects. Here is a link for a search on Math showing the top 10. There are probably thousands of courses on there to check out at your own pace though, just follow the link at the bottom to launch iTunes and see the rest.

gorillapaws (30519

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These are great. Thanks!

sailor (80

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Purplemath has been a godsend for me having to go back to study math after 10 years away.

Blueroses (18256

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I recently needed to revisit some algebra and found algebrahelp.com really useful. The site itself is not much of a looker, but the content was very helpful.

Good luck in re-learning this stuff, I think a lot of us adults could benefit from going back and refreshing our memories!

forestGeek (9310

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freerice.com

Neizvestnaya (22657

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If you’re willing to pay a bit of money (about $150 a course) you should sign up for independent studies with Thinkwell Math. Professor Edward Burger is the teacher and he is hands down the most gifted math teacher I’ve ever seen.

He also is half of the team that did the lectures for The Joy of Thinking which should inspire you to complete the Thinkwell math classes.

tranquilsea (17775

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