I bailed on high school math, thinking I'm math dumb.
In my late 20s I decided to try again, but jumped straight into calculus. And at first regretted that decision. However, I got lucky by stumbling upon this book:
It "reads" like a book, with the ideas given context. I had an "ok" connection with Algebra, and the book explained the rest well enough for me.
In school, the textbooks were loaded with symbols, but not enough description -- I guess they relied on bored teachers making minimum wage to do that part. I went to a school with poor academic showings (but connections to state superintendent of ed got them a grant for football facilities).
Coincidentally, this book goes well with the technique described here:
If you've never read it before this book is a very intuitive introduction (and refresher): http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/d...
Unfortunately, not much. I was pondering that after my post. It's been a long time since I was a math student, and professionally it's had zero to do with my career. A lot of books ended up boxed up at my parents' home as I moved around a number of times right after college. I'll check my own home tonight to see what I still have, but my shelves these days are mostly filled with fiction, programming, RPG, and history books.
https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/...
It seems easy to find a pdf on the web, but I didn't want to post that.
In my late 20s I decided to try again, but jumped straight into calculus. And at first regretted that decision. However, I got lucky by stumbling upon this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/...
It "reads" like a book, with the ideas given context. I had an "ok" connection with Algebra, and the book explained the rest well enough for me.
In school, the textbooks were loaded with symbols, but not enough description -- I guess they relied on bored teachers making minimum wage to do that part. I went to a school with poor academic showings (but connections to state superintendent of ed got them a grant for football facilities).
Coincidentally, this book goes well with the technique described here:
http://www.pathsensitive.com/2018/01/the-benjamin-franklin-m...
EDIT:
Off the top of my head, for CS:
Introduction to Algorithms: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Michae...
Math:
Calculus Made Easy: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312185480?ref_=cm_lmf_tit_... - I'm really not sure how good this one is for a beginner, I picked it up while assisting my sister in refreshing her calculus skills for grad school (Aerospace Engineering)
I can't remember the algebra and geometry textbooks (my dad's or my grandfather's) that I used, in addition to the assigned text, in high school.
Anything by Knuth. Seriously, one summer a professor and I just picked up copies of Concrete Mathematics and worked through large portions of it for fun. Technically I got some math credits for it, but it was really just because we wanted to. Actually, this one helped me a lot with understanding calculus. Somehow, up to that point while I knew calculus, may brain had never made the connection that integration was summation until I saw the discrete counterpart to continuous integration. I had a mechanical understanding, but no deep understanding until that moment.
http://www.amazon.com/Calculus-Made-Easy-Silvanus-Thompson/d...