It's been over a year since I've had any math, and two years since I've had anything but calculus. And, while trying to help a friend out on a trig problem today, I found out that I've forgotten mostly everything.

This is not good. I need to refresh my skills in Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus. I still have the textbooks from these classes, but I feel that just reading from the books may not be enough for me.

Are there any online resources to help me relearn the basics of these areas of math? I suppose I should throw in geometry, too, although I don't have a book for that.

You should never forget math if you learned it properly. For example, I can still recite pi to 32 digits: 3.1869012341209423999999999999912.

Why are you worried? What's the purpose of the studying? You can only fit a certain amount of information into your brain, so forgetting unimportant stuff is just the natural way to keep space available for something better.

I think most people can remember around 824 things.

I know about 30,000 words. Do you think I should reduce that to maybe 500 to store more stuff other than words

I took university credit math courses in high school, and passed them all as well as all of the other "advanced" math courses. After leaving high school I worked in construction and stuff like that. When I got back into programming, I found I didn't remember hardly any math at all that I learned in school from about grade 9 or 10 on. I had to relearn trigonometry, calculus (though I never used calculus practically so I forget most of it again, but I have a better idea of what its about then I ever did in high school), and some other basic stuff...

@Neil: x = y * z

where: y = number of posts that don't have anything to do with your question
z = number of people trying to remember how many things they remember
x = a pointless result

I'm awful at maths so that's all the help I can offer

I've also basically forgotten most of what I learned in high school math. I used to be quite good at math (it was basically my favorite subject, except for perhaps computers) so I just hope all of this beer that I drink isn't destroying those brain cells... It would be nice to refresh the stuff that I've forgotten and the stuff that I was distracted from learning.

Maybe we should add math sections to the wiki.

Please do!

I never much enjoyed doing math in school. And yet I can still remember how to do most of it. It's a curse.

Well, I might take more math classes in the future, so I may actually need to remember this stuff.

I guess I'll just try studying out of the textbooks. I was hoping for something a bit easier, since I'm already predisposed to hate math.

Instead of studying for the sake of studying, how about actually doing something more enjoyable that happens to use some math?

For starters, create a simple 2D game that uses trigonometry.

Math seems different to me than most other courses, economics 101 or World History can be absorbed by just reading it, but to "understand" math you can't just read, you have to DO SOME PROBLEMS. It's like weight lifting. Billybob must be some sort of mutant, or he hasn't actually tried doing some of these problems he seems to recall.

That said, we now have computer animations that make concepts easier to grasp.

{"name":"350px-Pi-unrolled-720.gif","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/8\/98d2d4447d17f3bfc1638aca5edce37b.gif","w":350,"h":111,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/8\/98d2d4447d17f3bfc1638aca5edce37b"}

Dont listen to them. Pi is exactly 3. I think the only way to learn anything is by applying it. Following the book is okay, but you get to the point where you have to ask "What does it all mean?".

I second this. I keep up my reasonably high level of math understanding because I always use much of it in my programming. There is a problem of knowing exactly what to use though... so some quick review will still be necessary.

3.1869012341209423999999999999912 ?

Oh wait, my sarcasm detector is failing again!