How Can a Math Novice Tackle Astrophysics Equations in an Online Class?

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James Veverka
I am presently taking an online astrophysics class taught by Paul Francis and Brian Schmidt out of ANU and the math is a bit like a foreign language to me. Its the lack of familiarity that crosses my wires. I just joined PF and look forward to learning some real formulas, equations, their histories and their explanations. I am 65 and have not been involved in any math in any way except what was necessary to run a CNC and pay the bills. I have been a lover of science and have read "pop" science all my life. Some of my favorite books are written by people such as E.O Wilson, Jared Diamond, Timothy Ferris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Wills and anyone who popularizes Cosmology in the fashion of Carl Sagan. The course is at EDx and is called Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. Its the first in a series of four I signed up for. Right off the bat it was theta, radians, flux, luminosity, scale factors, redshift, emission and absorption lines, ionization and reionization so I was caught off guard by the math and found myself actually having to work my little gray cells hard. So here I am, ready to grasp it!
 
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Welcome to PF, James.
 
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Hello everyone, I'm Cosmo. I'm an 18 years old student majoring in physics. I found this forum cause I was searching on Google if it's common for physics student to feel like they're in the wrong major in the first semester cause it feels like too much for me to learn the materials even the ones that are considered as "basic math" or "basic physics", I've initial fascination with the universe's mysteries and it disconnect with the reality of intense, foundational mathematics courses required...
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