Mathematics

I was thinking to maybe connect programming with math but I don’t know how.

Try reading about the computer science topics that basically are pure mathematics. Read about automata (very simple models for computers) or about computability theory (which asks what problems are literally impossible for computers to solve, even with unlimited time and memory). There won't be too many numbers or equations involved in getting your feet wet with these topics.

Let's say you have a keyboard with only three letters: 'X', 'Y', and 'Z'. That's our "alphabet", it has just three letters in it. Let's plug this keyboard into a monitor that's really broken, actually all that works is one pixel that has four possible color options. We can have our machine start at white when you press the power button to turn it on, and when you hit black it shuts down. We could still teach a kid some basic programming ideas with this limited setup - If we're on white and press 'X', change the color to green. If we're on white and press 'Y', change the color to blue. Maybe pressing 'Z' from blue will get you back to white, but pressing 'X' will take you to black. Maybe some other rules too. This simple machine is called a finite automaton.

What "words" (strings) can we type in after powering on to shut the computer down? From what I've laid out so far, we power on to white, can press Y to go to blue and then X to go to black. "YX" is a string that works here. We could also do "YZYX" or "YZYZYX". The set of all strings that will power down our machine from boot are called its "language".

An automata theory question might ask if we can write a program on this machine that has both words "XYZ" and "XYX" in its language, but not "ZZZ".

If you've tried read this and have trouble following, that's because math is hard! (and totally not because I can't explain for shit.) If you've tried to read this and don't feel like it's hopeless to learn, that's probably because you're not even seeing this as math at all. (Theoretical questions like this are absolutely math problems.) If you've read this and have already figured out an answer to the question I posed in the last paragraph, then your problem with learning math definitely isn't that you're hopelessly bad, so we'll have to troubleshoot elsewhere.

If you learn these subjects you'll eventually need the groundwork from more basic mathematics, but you'll have some motivation for why they might be needed.

I started writing this intending to tag on a rant about how math being used as a gatekeeper in schooling poisons everyone's idea of what math actually is and makes a ton of people wrongly feel hopeless, but this comment is long enough as it is.

Do carpenters like hammers? Or do they just like completed projects? Hammers are pretty boring usually. Some may geek out about hammers, but that’ll be rare.

Math is also a tool. You can learn to use it well—without necessarily enjoying it—to accomplish things guy do enjoy.

Here's a slightly more refined version of my Pi calculation formula, for QBasic/QuickBasic

FUNCTION CalcPI# X# = 0: Y# = 1 FOR N% = 1 TO 26 R# = SQR(X# * X# + Y# * Y#): X# = X# / R#: Y# = Y# / R# P# = (2 ^ N%) * SQR((X# - 1) ^ 2 + Y# * Y#): X# = X# + 1 NEXT CalcPI# = P# END FUNCTION The number 26 can be increased for other more advanced BASIC languages, that's just the max level of accuracy I could achieve with the semi-recursive subdivision technique under QBasic. 26 is the binary subdivision level.

In order of priority:

• Stop your thoughts from becoming a barrier. How? I tend to suggest acceptance and commitment therapy and, on top of that, mindfulness practices. Let me know if you want specific recommendations here. Note that other approaches can also work.
• Learn to learn. You can learn this in many ways. Just make sure it’s evidence-based. There’s Barbara Oakley’s texts, the book Make It Stick, and some techniques in the book Making Thinking Visible or more broadly in Harvard’s Project Zero.
• Learn what you’re missing and start there. I’m sure free solutions exist, but a paid one that I know of is ALEKS. It’s not cheap, but I know of a couple of home-schooled kids who swear by it.
• Prime your brain to learning. You can do it by training in relational frames. Let me know if you’re interested in this.

For now you might want to study math separately from programming. Later you'll combine them more.

It sounds like you are well on your way to becoming a great programmer, but I would caution you. Computer science formal isn't about programming; it's about the science of computation. You'll be learning things like how to implement search and sort algorithms from first principle and then determining for the worst case scenario how many steps it takes that algorithm to achieve its goal. That is the math. Don't fall into the trap of thinking CS makes you a good programmer and will net you a good job. As the joke goes "the only thing a degree in CS will prepare you for is graduate school"

Your problem might be that you are missing the fundamentals.
I'm not placing blame here, just trying to point out a problem that might be or not.
In high school math was always fun to me - because it was always logical and always followed the same rules. But without foundation it is just random things.
Here are some things that could be considered "basic" math tools to learn.

Do you know your multiplication tables? Without thinking do you know all the answers?
Do you know which symbols you understand and which you don't?
Do you know some formulas by heart? Like these: (a+b)^2=?
Do you know how to solve quadratic equations, cubic equations?

For mistakes it is easier to avoid them when you do everything in steps.
Calculus and Matrix calculations can be really hard if it wasn't broken down from the beginning.

The universal international language about world, nature, universe... for people...

May I ask you why do you want to invest your life time into math exactly?
Is there any actual personal task to accomplish with math?
What do you want to actually do with math?
Why do find math interesting?
Why math of anything?

In my junior high to high school years, I excelled in mathematics, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus even. But I get it, math isn't for everyone, it can be and indeed is a complex subject the deeper you go.

What I learned for myself that helped me really understand things better, was taking interest in side projects like learning to program simple 3D graphics, along with raster image processing techniques, at home, on my own, as something of a hobby.

For me, studying math algorithms on paper (or computer tests these days), seemingly with no real purpose other than solving the presented formula, was outright boring as hell.

I had to find actual functional and useful things that I found interesting all on my own to help mathematics make more useful sense.

The math itself is still fucking boring, but when it all adds up to a more or less finalized project that actually does something useful, that's when the dopamine kicks in and you're like 'okay, this works so far, how can I improve it and make it even better?'

Anyways, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

I dunno, try coding a simple game, it'll give you a purpose to figure out the math, rather than just reading and solving boring stuff on tests.

Edit: Oh, I absolutely loathe the Greek letters and symbols in oldschool formal math, but those are just symbols, which aren't typically used in computer programming all that much (well, it depends on the language used, but still)..

There are many ways to express mathematics, not all of them rely on unfamiliar Greek symbols, but the underlying concepts are still the same.