
Ask HN: Math books for a CS autodidact? - kretonian
I am a full-stack web developer in my mid thirties and am mostly self-taught. Over the years I&#x27;ve build a good base of working knowledge, but lack the theoretical backgrounds. So to rectify that, I want to start (re)building my math skills from ground up.<p>My goal is to acquire enough knowledge to properly understand &quot;Concrete Mathematics&quot; (by Graham, Patashnik, Knuth), followed by CLRS and SICP. I&#x27;m searching for books that meet these criteria:<p>1. They must build &quot;from the ground up&quot;. My brain has pretty much forgotten all of high school math. For instance, I can&#x27;t even do division on paper.<p>2. I have a full time job, so the books should be pleasant to read and pedagogically well constructed.<p>3. No skipping over details, i.e. no books that are just collections of definitions and theorems. As someone else here on HN put it, I&#x27;d prefer them to &quot;be written by mathematicians, for mathematicians&quot;.<p>4. Good exercises with solutions.<p>I&#x27;ve already found a few suggestions in other threads:<p>* An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning: Numbers, Sets and Functions (Eccles)<p>* How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method (Conway, Polya)<p>* Calculus (Spivak)<p>* Linear Algebra Done Right (Axler)<p>Can I read those in order before proceeding to &quot;Concrete Mathematics&quot;?<p>Thank you
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sublime1
For fundamentals of Probability and Counting, I really liked
[https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/intermediate-...](https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/store/item/intermediate-
counting)

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thakkarparth007
Algorithms by Papadimitriou would be a pleasant read on algorithms.

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kretonian
Thank you, that looks like an interesting read.

