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Ask HN: Books or courses to understand college level mathematics?

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Ask HN: Books or courses to understand college level mathematics?

#1
With high school math knowledge of geometry and algebra and quite a bit of programming knowledge, what is the best resource to get started with studying college level mathematics?

Basically I want to learn how to read and write proofs. The main goal is to understand and work through higher math books like analysis, combinatorics, graph theory, abstract algebra, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Books or courses to understand college level mathematics?

#4
Book of Proof: https://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhammack/BookOfProof/

Art of Problem Solving for if you need/want to rebuild your pre-college foundations: https://artofproblemsolving.com/store

Cal Newport has great tips on studying efficiently/effectively (and you can implement some of his strategies with Anki): https://calnewport.com/case-study-how-i-got-the-highest-grad...

Re: Ask HN: Books or courses to understand college level mathematics?

#7
Consider inquiring at your local community colleges about classes, they tend to work with the assumption that a good portion of their students already work full time, and some of them offer online math classes.

If you aren't interested in credits, you can also just audit the classes.

Re: Ask HN: Books or courses to understand college level mathematics?

#8
I hear good things about this book “how to prove it”

I also like Knuth’s art of computer programming book which is more about proving correctness of algorithms

In general, stuff like combinatorics, algorithms, etc I find to have a low barrier to entry, so it’s a nice playground

https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/how-to-prove...

Re: Ask HN: Books or courses to understand college level mathematics?

#9
2 books that are worthwhile: "A mathematical bridge" (an introduction to the lie of the land in higher math) and "Chapter Zero" (a review of material not taught in school, but wich is so basic that most textbooksjust assume you know, e.g. bijections and proof by induction)
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