When I was a teen interested in amateur astronomy I actually considered learning astrology in order to learn how to calculate the positions of the planets. My t

When I was a teen interested in amateur astronomy I actually considered learning astrology in order to learn how to calculate the positions of the planets. My thought was that material written for astronomers assumed a level of math and physics sophistication that I did not yet have, whereas material written for astrologers would be written for people who didn't an astronomer-level understanding of math and physics and thus take a more "blindly follow this algorithm" approach. This was in the mid '70s and I was not able to find anything in my county library that actually told how astrologers find planetary positions, so nothing ever came of it. I had a similar idea 20 years later when I took a break from programming to go to law school. Some thing in a couple of my tax law classes were unclear to me and I really wanted to see how they were actually applied. I went to the university bookstore and found the section with textbooks for the university's business school and bought the textbook for their taxes for accountants class. After reading the examples and explanations there I then found the corresponding material in my law texts much more approachable.