Why I'm Re-Learning Foundational Mathematics

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As of recent, I've been pushing myself harder to learn the basic fundamentals of mathematics once again just as I did when I was in secondary school (June 2016). Apparently, it's been a long 6, almost 7 years for my brain! However, I should not really be all that shocked as I've learnt numerous other topics in this timeframe and have put mathematics in the back of my mind for quite some time now.


Regardless, the primary reason I've been learning foundational mathematics once again is really quite simple:
  1. It looks better to employers in the field I aspire to work in.
  2. Understanding mathematics is more or less half understanding how computers work. 
  3. Not knowing enough Mathematics has left me confused, and left me behind when learning new computer science concepts. 
  4. I've hit a roadblock when it comes to learning about computers; to understand more I need to go back to the basics. 

So, what's the bottom line, and what really are the practical applications of learning foundational mathematics and beyond? If I had to summarise this with a single answer I would have to state that with my new knowledge of foundational mathematics I could at least understand with more ease how algorithms work and why they are the best option developed by mathematicians. I may even be able to develop my own algorithms which could fit very specific use scenarios and business requirements.

If you're an aspiring programmer and are feeling like you are also struggling with how to develop or expand your skillset; you've learned the most you feel is personally possible and cannot understand how the expressions in computer science books are written nor understand what they actually intend to illustrate then perhaps it's time you do the same thing as me so that you can give yourself the extended skillset to learn more.

I've been working on a small GitHub repository that contains some of the learning I'm doing with relearning mathematics; I'm currently covering foundational topics but there are also some "Project Euler" code snippets in there too that you may find interesting.

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