As a self taught programmer who did no math in university, the most valuable thing to me was the discovery that the math really isn't scary. Once you understand the symbols and notation, most concepts are rather easy, given you commit time to learning it.

I strayed away for so long until I watched the MIT lecture series on algorithms and it all just clicked. The best feeling was was seeing the math on the chalk board for how you determine the complexity of operations on various graph layouts and just getting it. I struggled in high school math and rarely got that feeling in class.

It was just one of those, "holy crap... It's all just an array and how we organize the data in that array that gives various benefits and drawbacks!" Incredibly empowering.

Edit: This is the series I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtSuA80QTyo&index=1&list=PLU...