I saw this thread that was meant for testing Reiku and I realised that I can get the physics, but I cant do the Math! I cant do any matrixes or complex equations and I dont know anything about calculus - I dont know anything above everyday use math. I am a student of animation and film-making and my knowledge of science is based on lectures [that dont explore the math] and that too mostly about biology. Please help, anything basic I can do/read so I know more of this stuff?
Yes there is something you can do, but it's going to take a lot of effort and dedication on your part, so a lot of it depends on just how badly you want to understand this stuff, and how much time you're willing to dedicate to it over the next several years. You're going to be exposed to a way of thinking which is very different from what you're used to, and it's going to take a very long time for this thinking to settle in and feel natural (even then you'll run into a never-ending series of bumps, but they will be bumps in understanding advanced concepts and applying them to new problems). The first step I would recommend is to pretend you're brand new to all this stuff and start with the very basics, as if you were 14 years old all over again. Try purchasing a popular, well-recommended textbook in introductory mathematics covering basics like simple algebraic expressions, polynomials, probability, graphing and permutations. If you covered these topics when you were younger, then it will still serve as a good review for you to gauge your knowledge level and see if you're ready for the next step, which will be higher-level high school math leading up to the beginnings of calculus and linear algebra. Sound good? Edit: An intro book in geometry and trigonometry at the high school level (or earlier) is also a good idea. Try searching amazon.com and a few other places to see which books are well-recommended and which ones suck. There are lots of idiots out there trying to push for fruity education methods which don't teach any real understanding of what's being done or why. Educators who teach their students how to pass some standardized multiple choice test are basically teaching nothing at all.
Rule One: Know the rules. Math and Logic are about manipulating assumptions (inputs) to arrive at results (outputs) with no further corruption of the reliability of the the results. If Jeff is my sister, and Jeff's son is Lester, then Lester must be my nephew. This has to be true, regardless if you think it is likely or unlikely my sister's name is Jeff. Assuming z = x^2 - y^2 and x + y = 0 allows us to reliably conclude that z = 0 even if we can't tell you if x is larger or smaller than 1,000,000. Rule two Math is not just arithmetic. So calculators are harmful to your sense of mathematics. Even those fancy graphing and equation-solving calculators can lead you astray. Math has a lot of specialized areas. For example the product of two matrices can depend on their order, which makes multiplication from the left distinct from mulplication on the right. \( \begin{pmatrix} 1 & a \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix} \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ b & 1 \end{pmatrix} - \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ b & 1 \end{pmatrix} \begin{pmatrix} 1 & a \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix} = \begin{pmatrix} a b & 0 \\ 0 & -ab \end{pmatrix}\) And there are special rules for determining that (in certain cases) multiplying by a matrix can be replaced by multiplying by a (very special for the case) number. Rule Three Respect the equals sign. Those with math-induced anxiety sometimes get flustered when an equation uses \(\Lambda_{\Omega_{14}}\) instead of x or \(\frac{12 + \sqrt[3]{19842}}{\sin \sqrt{7}}\) instead of 3, but the important part of an equation is that an equals sign connects left and right sides. If you add to, subtract from or multiply one side, you must do the same to the other side or you have broken the equation and it no longer reliably reflects the assumptions you started with.
This site may help, especially for those on a budget, athough I agree a good introductory text on mathematics is a very good idea. http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html It may be useful if for no other reason than to guage one's level of knowlege in math.
There's also the Khan Academy which has lots of video tutorials and exercises you can do, going from very basic addition and subtraction up to quite advanced topics.
