Books for a friend interested in mathematical physics but...?

  • #1
Tukhara
15
2
Okay, I have a good friend and he is into the idea of becoming a Mathematical Physicist; however, there's several issues at hand. He's in his mid 20's and attends a really cheap community college. Apparently his high school was horrible at teaching students good material; in other words, he ended up falling behind on the pace he was at his studies and this was certainly not good for anyone but in particular for him, since he has a passion for learning mathematics and physics for becoming a mathematical physicist, not only was he behind on the basic math required for general purposes he also was massively held back on the track to going forth and becoming what he desires. I decided to help him out thereon.

I recommended for him to read books from here:

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicmath.htm

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~abhishek/chicphys.htm

Of course starting from the very beginning but even the most basic books on this list were hard for him. He told me he wants a way to learn as if he never was taught mathematics in his life before; as if he were completely blank. I recommended for him to teach himself mathematics the proper way starting with set theory and logic but he found that difficult as well (Halmos book) also he was at a dangerously slow pace. So my question to you guys is, what would you recommend for him? I want him to become mathematically mature and also start being able to be quicker in understanding material. So what can we do? He wants to just be treated in his reading catalog as if he never took math in his entire life.
 
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  • #2
Starting from scratch will be a long, hard effort, but it can be done. I would recommend starting at basic high school math and working up from there. The Schaum's Outline series has a wide variety of books that are relatively inexpensive and have many worked examples and exercises. He should look at precalculus book and see if that is the right level, too hard, or too easy, and proceed from there.
 
  • #3
I would recommend the book No Bullshit Guide to Math and Physics by Ivan Savov. It's a great book, it teaches high school math, physics, and calculus very well
 
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  • #4
It also has practice questions with the answers to the questions in the back of the book
 

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