And for even more open source textbooks: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/
My hope is to generally increase my math abilities so I can do some electronics design classes and some study about how to start applying ML/ AI tools.
But I've found studying math to be quite fun and useful in its own right. It's fun and I feel like it's helped my general intellectual abilities.
What sequence of courses do I take on the site to get to calculus, starting from the beginning with the basics?
Here is a good review of the algebra you'll use in a Calc I course: http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Extras/AlgebraTrigReview/Alge...
What I'm trying to say is that you've made a good decision by jumping way back. Once thing I realized pretty quickly is that to do well in math, you need to know the prior content pretty well. And for the next thing, the current content pretty. And so on. If you can stay on top of it, it 's a lot less challenging (and more interesting).
I program for a living, but was having trouble, like, with multiplying fractions and that basic level. But it's not hard to learn if you do it every day.
I mean, it's slow going, and I am certain that there are folks who think that integrals are pretty basic math, but its fun and interesting to me, and derivatives have helped me understand quite a few things I never quite groked already.
I took a silly path and spent all my 20s in school, largely working on a PhD in English while I raised my kids.
"silly path"? What exactly did you miss out on? Raising children is one of life's great joys. Working towards an English PhD (regardless of whether you obtained one), provides a unique experience that many dream of.
Would you trade that for a few extra years of a larger salary at a tech company? Sure, maybe you would be making 20% more now, but would that give you a significantly different life? It sounds like you used your time as a "CS dropout" wisely, or at least productively.
I'm more concerned for folks who drop out of unnecessarily challenging technical degrees and end up working at fast food shops for ten years, when they can be doing something far more gratifying and lucrative.
It hasn't been until the last couple of years that my undergrad degree in Philosophy started to pay off.
But yeah, it's not a bad life.
And you're right about CS education, in general.
Why not use the correct terminology and call "counting" numbers "natural" numbers, it's what we've been taught in schools for tens of years, if not hundreds now.
Sure, explain that naturals are "countable" at the beginning, but this redefinition is verging on dumbing down.
edit:
reading further:
"Counting numbers are also called natural numbers."
But they seem to keep calling them "counting" numbers. Just call them their proper name and re-enforce this.
And then in this first intro... below a terrible graphic.:
"The point labeled 0 is called the origin. The points are equally spaced to the right of 0 and labeled with the counting numbers. When a number is paired with a point, it is called the coordinate of the point."
WTF?
> Just call them their proper name and re-enforce this.
I'll tell you a story. When I learned math in college I was stuck by a Galois theory, I just was unable to understand it. So I decided to look different authors, to find some other approaches to explaining things. I found at least one textbook which I was forced to read from a very beginning, because it used a very different notation which I couldn't understand at all.
It was not the first time I have meet a new (for me) notations for things I already knew. I spent two more years learning math, and finally I understood one thing: there are no such a thing as "proper name" in a math. If you need to refer to a some thing, you need to define it. Math is all about your ability to name and to define things, to invent a math notation to write this things down, and to stick your mind to live inside universe which was built by your definitions, names and notations. It is doesn't matter then how original your notation is. All that matter is what results you can achieve.
From all the branches of math algebra is the most about different notations for the same thing. Just take a look at multiplicative and additive notations for groups. You can use either with any group, nothing matter just your convenience. If you like to use a plus sign and write "a+b" then use additive notation. It you prefer to use no sign and write "ab" then use multiplicative one. In algebra it is your respected right to use notation you like. But it comes with a cost: you need to respect other's right to use any notation they like.
I find the badly kerned math typography of the Open Stax offering, and the PDF version of the modern Schaum's study guide, to be distractingly jarring.
Front end is not my forte. Clearly. :(