My high school math teacher used to say math is like handcraft. I'm a lousy student but if you have the discipline and will to learn something I'd look at where

My high school math teacher used to say math is like handcraft. I'm a lousy student but if you have the discipline and will to learn something I'd look at where you tap out in the chapter and try to learn that. Math is based on a lot of concepts. You have to solve the problem sets in order to grasp a lot of concepts. A lot of books are very dense and theoretical. Start small. Read the college textbooks for the algorithm courses and try to solve the problem sets on your own. If you are stuck join some communities. There are subreddits and forums dedicated to math. If you ask there kindly with a concrete problem and your efforts you'll get an helpful answer. That's the only thing that works for me: Solve the problem sets on your own. Everything will be easier. And don't take shortcuts. That's at least my experience. There is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms which is pretty readable. And there are a lot of MOOCs: https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partI https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algs4partII https://www.coursera.org/course/algo https://www.coursera.org/course/algo https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2 https://www.coursera.org/course/algo2 If you work yourself up from there and solve one problem after another you'll be quite good at these things in a few months time.