What is Reddit's opinion of Algebra I For Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyle))?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Dead serious: If you have the patience for it, check out Algebra I for Dummies on Amazon. I went from being unable to doing math to surviving my first year in a graduate-level STEM program in two years, and I started with that book. A disconcerting amount of upper-level math is just algebra but fancier, and often with some Greek letters for flavor (which can be weirdly demoralizing once you actually get what you're doing and understand how simple it all is and how much you psyched yourself out before learning it).

Aside from that, yes, check out YouTube tutorials. The trick is really to find what actually works for you. I gravitated towards text because it was easier to focus on and revisit and just plain make sense of, and the author does a fantastic job of not wasting time or overcomplicating things.

Also: Don't worry if you don't understand all of every kind of math. Focus on getting the extreme basics down and then focus on whatever specific type of math you actually like. In the real world (and in a lot of university settings), you'll have calculators and software programs to handle the rest.

Also, also: It helps to think of it as grammar. You don't make unfixable errors in math. You make typos. Just like you can backspace and fix a spelling error, you can backspace and fix a math error.

I don't count myself as having fully caught up yet, but I will die on the hill that Algebra, Calculus, and Statistics for Dummies are all solid and useful tools for closing the gap. You can also check out MIT's OpenCourseWare series on YouTube (and check out the actual OCW pages, like Topics in Mathematics with Applications in Finance). Wyzant, EMathHelp, and MathPapa have step-by-step calculators that let you see exactly how a problem breaks down, which can be really useful early on (this got me through the initial hurdle of solving for X; seriously, use one if you're not already).

It also might be a good idea to poke around at Python and Visual Code Studio. Reddit has lots of Python-related subs, including r/Python, r/pythontips, and r/learnpython.

Also: I started closing the math gap at around the same age you're at now. It gets insanely goddamn frustrating and is routinely very triggering whenever I realize (1) I'm actually pretty good at this stuff (re: at least as good as my peers who had public school/private school backgrounds), and (2) I'm still working at a steep disadvantage because of educational neglect and a lack of long-term guidance. There's no real easy way around those feelings; you just have to sit with the anger until it passes, then keep hitting the wall until it just becomes normal for you.

Some stuff that helps in general:

• Treat math more like a grammar. Did you make a mistake? That's just a typo, no biggy.
• A truly staggering amount of supposedly complicated math is just algebra that somebody slapped Greek letters on because they were too lazy to write out the whole problem.
• In many college-and-above-level classes, you will have access to a calculator. In my last few courses, the professor even let us use phones so long as they were disconnected from the internet.
• A lot of math instruction will assume you know things that nobody has taught you. This is frustrating as Hell, it's not your fault, and there's no easy way around it. You just have to keep Googling and occasionally ask around. I've tried to include a few things below that might be helpful in this regard.
• A lot of upper level math problems have noise/static that's irrelevant to finding the answer. You just have to do enough practice problems to start recognizing the noise/static when you see it.
• Microsoft Excel is your best friend. Google Sheets is a close second. When in doubt, slap things onto a spreadsheet for ease of organization. Learning how to use Excel/Sheets functions is also a solid gateway to learning basic programming languages.
• "Visualizing data" just means making and interpreting a chart, with varying degrees of fanciness.
• The most useful thing you'll ever learn is Order of Operations. It's included in the Algebra for Dummies book. Once you've got that down, you can successfully stumble, scream, and battle your way through the rest. I say this from experience.
• The second most useful thing (for me at least) was learning that you just swap stuff around in order to add, subtract, multiply, or divide like with like. Let's say you've got something like 1200 - 12Q = 32 + 2Q:
  • 1200 - 12Q = 32 + 2Q becomes...
  • 1200 - 32 = 12Q + 2Q which leads to...
  • 1168 = 14Q which then becomes...
  • 1168 ÷ 14 = 83.43 (rounding up from 83.42857)
    • This is from an actual problem I ran into in university, by the way. That's basic algebra as applied to economics.

There's some more specific stuff in the next comment; this one was apparently too long for Reddit...

Sorry to dump a novel on ya, but I've been there and I hope this trims some time off your journey. You got this!