krepsj

I quite liked Stewart's Calculus. http://www.stewartcalculus.com/ And it is really helpful to use some CAS (like Maple, Octave or Maxima) to visualize problems.

And in addition -- it greatly enhances ones ability of abstract thinking. At least in my case it was true :-)

The same pays for Czechia and I think for all Central Europe.

I would quote Stevey's Blog here. It says: "The right way to learn math is breadth-first, not depth-first. You need to survey the space, learn the names of things, figure out what's what."

It comes from his own experience. He decided to renew his math skills and declared plan "Math every day". After 15 months he posted another article about results of this experiment. You can read both articles as they are inspirating in many respects.

About his motivation: http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/math-every-day

and about his results: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for-programmers...

I would add that you should really enjoy math. If you only want to quickly understand one particular thing and seek for some miraculous explanation, this approach will surely not work for you.

I play harmonica. Not at very good level but good enough to be able to jam with my friends guitar.