title: Looking for a path to learn the math required to understand algorithm books / theory
body: <p>I've taken everything up to pre-calculus in college, but when trying to get through things like the Donald Knuth books, or even things like this link: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_binary_search_tree" rel="noreferrer"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_binary_search_tree" rel="noreferrer">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-balancing_binary_search_tree</a></a> I wind up looking at math that means absolutely nothing to me.  I'm not looking for magic, I don't expect to make sense of this in a week, I'm just looking for a good graduated plan of things to read / explore to get me there.  Any pointers are welcome, after 20+ years as a professional programmer, I feel it would be nice to have this under my belt.  Thanks in advance to everyone!  :-)</p>