How does an adult learn real mathematics then? I study computer science, so if I had mathematical ability of the kind that Jeremy Kun (who wrote this post, his blog is fantastic btw) and Paul Lockhart talk about? Can I be saved? I really want to be.
Thanks for the answer. I've had to learn some combinatorics and graph theory just to solve problems in CS, so they're definitely good ideas for further learning. I'll check out the book, I am not that confident writing proofs and will definitely need to know that stuff if I am to do something more mathematical (not sure what that'll be at the moment). Yes, I've tried looking at group theory and category theory as it has a bit of a link to computer science - I applied to Oxford for my MSc (rejected) and they do quite a bit of research using abstract algebra. I found it pretty heavy going.