Comment by commandlinefan

I started going down that road decades ago myself. I had a degree in computer science already, but I'd only learned just enough math to graduate and then forgotten everything, deliberately.

Years after I graduated, I was browsing comp.lang.java (I think it was) and somebody asked for help developing an applet that could draw a 3-D arrow that could orient itself in any direction. For some reason, that sounded interesting to me, so I started trying to work on it and I realized I needed to go back and re-learn all of that "point-slope" stuff that I'd made a point of learning just enough of to squeak through college.

That sent me down the path of re-learning all the things I now wish I'd put more effort into learning when I was a teenager. I ended up working through my old undergraduate calculus textbook a few times and I understand undergraduate calculus _really_ well now. I was able to coach both of my kids through high school calculus and they both remarked that none of their friends parents were able to help them beyond algebra.

It makes me wonder how many people are great (or even adequate) at math and how many are just faking it - as interesting as I now find it, math skills aren't actually very practically useful.