Free Math Resources for Learning & Practice

[Rhine720]

I'm sort of budgeted at the moment.. So freeware would be nice, but feel free to list what ever resources. I want some program that can help me learn math or atleast give me extra practice. Saying upper level of algebra and geometry and trig and calculas

 

[Sankaku]

There are a number of other threads reviewing FOSS for Math. Try...

CAS: Maxima (also Axiom, Yacas, etc.)
Numerical: Scilab, Octave
Geometry: Geogebra
Stats: R

They all have wiki pages.

Edit: Ooops. Sorry, I think you meant software for math practice. I don't know of any. Sorry.

 

[socrunningman]

you could go old school and check a book out of the library. The nice thing about math is that it doesn't change much. The bad thing is that teaching it gets better and better as the years go on, and calculus is almost never "easy" when someone is trying to learn it on there own.

 

[Sankaku]

In thinking some more, this is probably the best free reference for basic algebra:
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/index.htm

For problems, I agree with socrunningman. Just get some books from the library and do the exercises. Try to find ones with a good answer key so you can understand how they got the solution. For calc, something like Stewart has a good range of questions and a decent answer key book. It is also easy to find an older version (like the 5th edition) for about $5.

Try http://www.betterworldbooks.com/

 

[Villhelm]

While this may not be exactly what you are looking for, I'll throw it in there anyway.

GNU Octave is an open source "clone" (of sorts) for matlab. It may not help you learn maths, but it'll maybe be of some use if and when you do matrices, it's very convenient for checking your solution or doing some of the grunt work when you are quite happy with the basics like multiplication and finding determinants and just want to get to the bits that are challenging for you, especially on 4x4 or greater matrices.

It's available for linux and windows (via cygwin). Dunno about mac's.

As for learning calculus, I'd have to agree with the other guys - camp out in the library. A book I've been using and find reasonably good for self study is Calculus a complete course by RA Adams. It works for me, though I've not read many similar books so I can't comment on it being "best".

Also, there's a good deal of stuff online if you look, here's one such resource. You could also check out the parent site, there's a lot of stuff but finding something useful and appropriate may be hit or miss for you.

http://www.freescience.info/Mathematics.php?id=343
http://www.freescience.info

First link is the calculus section.

 

[Sankaku]

GNU Octave is... very convenient for checking your solution...

Unless you are a person who already knows that they need something like matlab, then Octave is probably not the right tool.

wxMaxima will do pretty much any homework checking you will need: Calculus, Linear Algebra, 3d surfaces, etc. It still takes some learning, but the language is similar to Maple and Mathematica, so an investment of time is well spent.