When I came out of high-school some years ago I had the same problem. I really wanted to learn the math needed to do 3d-programming so I could to do fancy demo-

When I came out of high-school some years ago I had the same problem. I really wanted to learn the math needed to do 3d-programming so I could to do fancy demo-scene stuff (see www.scene.org), but the high-school level math just didn't cut it and I didn't manage to learn it by my self. I started at a university to study CS, and took some calculus courses there. It was a fairly advanced calculus course which focused on proofs, and I worked really hard on it through cooperation with others and the help of great teachers. Although this experience lead me to end up doing a PhD in math, it was this first more advanced mathematical experience which made me able to really _get_ it. It took a lot of hard work, and after helping some younger people with high-school level stuff, I now see that the math-books at this level often suck. The "proofs" are more heuristic justifications that unfortunately often simply hide the real point of what is going on. My advice would be to take a proof-oriented math-course at university level. Even if the curriculum is not the math you would like to learn (for example a calculus course might be ideal even though you would like to do discrete math stuff for CS), I do not think that mathematical maturity needed to go on by your self is possible to get in any other way (except if you are a genius).