Hi Chocobean,

I can sympathize. Completely.

I had a horrible math education in high school (more detail is provided elsewhere on YC.) I hate the plug-and-chug rules approach, and I'm fairly math-phobic. I completely avoided math during my first college experience, even taking a class in C++ once just to avoid taking Calculus for an analytics requirement. I had no interest in programming at the time, and the C++ class was probably worse than any math I could have been subjected to. The instructor was just learning English, so we practiced (inflicted?) our developing skills on each other. Anyway, I taught myself math before going to college the second time. I have no idea how I did it, other than tons of practice problems and a tutor. Youthful ambition, I guess. All of the math related to econ and finance examples, so I think that made it easier for me. I needed to have a conceptual understanding of why you were doing something in order to understand the 'rules.'

Then I 'lost' what math I had learned on my own after a mini-stroke around age 30 (or maybe it was lost from the brain lesions, who knows.) I work mostly in software and finance now, so math is kind of important. Attempting to cram again, I found that the same learning techniques no longer worked for me. Nothing stuck. I bought about $15,000 worth of self-instruction materials, in part because I hate streaming video or reading lengthy books online, and also because there was less material available online at the time. Most of what I bought sucks and was wasted money. I stopped reading any books that lost me in the first few minutes, or that had many obvious errors. I procrastinated quite a bit. I eventually rebuilt my basic math foundation (up through basic Calc), but I've never advanced to the level I want to be. Someday.

If you're a visual learner and willing to spend some dough: Thinkwell, Chalkdust, and MathTutorDVD were pretty good and were better values than the rest of the 'courses' I bought. Thinkwell was easily the most entertaining, and their courses covered a good bit of material, but their interface is kind of a pain. MathTutorDVD was good, but it has less of a conceptual overview or explanation component. It's just a dude working out problems on a whiteboard. Chalkdust, like many multimedia math courses, is spendy - but the guy speaks clear English if that's important to you. [If you can, watch a sample of any training before you buy it. I spent $300 on a course from a professor in NY, and I wanted to stab my eardrums out from his voice and accent (mostly his specific voice, the accent just made it worse.) I had a similar problem with a course from an Indian professor... I couldn't understand about every other word. It was like the C++ class all over again.] Now, of course, there are tons of FREE online video courses at MIT OCW, UC-Berk, FreeVideoLectures.com, etc. etc. Try those first. If something doesn't click or you don't like the presenter, move on. I'd definitely try to find materials that balance concepts (why, how) with completed practice problems. Just keep trying...eventually something will stick. I'm pretty much hopeless, and some stuff eventually seeped into even my melon. I'm sure you'll do well...the fact that you're worried about it at all is a good sign. Good luck.