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First, I'm not trying to make this sound like a "poor-me" story. I understand fully that every decision I've made leading to this is my fault. I am genuinely looking for advice.

So, I am a high school student who is a sophomore and feel I have developed an interest in mathematics a bit late. As an elementary and even middle school student, I was always not paying attention in most math classes because they didn't grab my interest. I think the reason for this is because most of my teachers were "old-fashioned" and didn't really bother to explain the awesome things you can do with math. So on my end of things, I only saw manipulating numbers which didn't seem productive to me. I have always had a deep interest in computers and how they work (you can see where this is going most likely). So, upon entering my freshman year of high school I developed a passion for computer programming. Now realizing that large portions of math are required to major in computer science, I am beginning to worry a bit. A large amount of people I meet automatically assume I am good at math, and I feel sort of guilty for wasting those years of my life barely paying attention. Currently I am beginning to enjoy math, though.

I feel that most math teachers don't capture the interest of the students because they don't show the engineering side of things when it comes to math. I love creating original things and have been told I am very creative. I would like to use that creativity and produce creations using math, but I think I'm a bit behind.

My math final is tomorrow, so I'm rather stressed out. The actual questions in this post are:

  1. What are some good math study methods?
  2. What should I do this summer to strengthen my math skills?
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    "My math final is tomorrow". There's not much we can do here about this.2011-05-26
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    @lhf There is, I asked for advice on some good study habits (keep in mind that I have been studying for a very long time previously so I am somewhat prepared)2011-05-26
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    As suggested there is that kahn academy, which he built a practice center i guess you can say. It can be helpful. I found that practicing problems over and over helps me. You will eventually recognize the steps need to take to solve a problem. Computer science isn't really heavily reliant on math either. Calc 2 is really all you need, CS is more on theory and philosophy if you ask me.2011-05-26
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    @Matt "Computer science isn't really heavily reliant on math." I disagree. Theoretical computer science (Turing, Church et al) basically _is_ mathematics. Functional programming languages (Lisp, Haskell) are mathematics expressed as computer code. Good algorithm design requires knowledge of computational complexity (Knuth et al) which is mathematics. Good OO program design benefits hugely from an understanding of mathematics (functions, relations, predicates etc). Many programming tasks (search, optimisation, scheduling, graphics) have inherently mathematical solutions. CS relies on math!2011-05-26
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    @Chris Taylor it does, but thats more like philosophy. Like i said it's more theoretical stuff than actual mathematics. The mathematics you are talking about comes from philosophy.2011-05-27
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    Try this one, as it was written specifically for high school students, and is the main mathematical lower-division prerequisite in a computer science major (with good reason: later, you will take algorithm theory, which heavily uses discrete math): https://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Highschooler-Alexander-Sadovsky/dp/1453869670/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479166992&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=sadovsky+discrete+math+for+every+highschooler2016-11-14

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