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Comment by boothby | Hacker News Reader

No specific book, but generic advise about how to use a math book. Homework, homework, homework. Read the whole thing, but focus on the exercises. Do every exercise as soon as you can manage: don't wait until you've read the whole chapter -- once you get confused and stumped, the lesson of the chapter becomes urgent and I find that sharpens my attention.

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For a case study in how specifically to do this, see this post about how Cal Newport studied discrete mathematics in college: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/11/25/case-study-how-i-...

I usually enjoy Newport but... this was rather underwhelming? It's basically "do a lot of proofs and study consistently not just 48hs before the exam".

Most if not all of my math and some comp-sci courses would require this, they were very proof-heavy, specially Algebra, Logic and Graph Theory, and there was no way you could even pass just studying for a week after let alone 48hs before.

I mean it's underwhelming if you've done it before, but for people who are unsure about how to succeed in a proof-heavy course, seeing it laid out like this in concrete steps is helpful.

You've outgrown being in the target audience for it, but that doesn't mean the audience wouldn't find it helpful.

I would add understanding the reasons for definitions, how they fit together with theorems, lemmas, corollaries, proofs, and some basics of the format of proofs. You can find good explanations through Google.

For more applied or computational branches of math, I'd also add how to check your answers by using numerical methods or a computer algebra system if possible.

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