You might find the couple of books that i mention in my other comments here useful;

Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart - https://store.doverpublications.com/products/9780486284248

Elements of Mathematics: From Euclid to Gödel by John Stillwell - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691171685/el...

Both of them give a nice tour of various domains within modern mathematics and their inter-relationships which is what i believe is most important to understand for a general reader.

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hirvi74 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Could a clever idiot understand such books? If so, I might be willing to check them out. Thank you for the recommendations either way.

	▲	rramadass 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Absolutely! Any person willing to study and think can understand the above books. As i mentioned, they cover a broad swath of mathematics and are meant for the general reader. You can checkout reviews on Amazon and elsewhere on the web. Mathematics can be approached in two ways; 1) For understanding 2) For techniques of usage. The above books help with (1). Textbooks focus on (2). A very good succinct (< 150 pages!) introductory text for (2) is George Simmons' Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry. It is available at https://github.com/enilsen16/The-Math-Group One word of advice; most people's phobia of mathematics arises from not knowing/understanding the notation. It is just a shorthand language which you need to get familiar with. When you come across a formula, just expand and read it out aloud in your own version of easy English. You will understand better and lose your fear of mathematics. A book like Mathematical Notation: A Guide for Engineers and Scientists by Edward Scheinerman is of great help here. There are of course lots of free resources for this on the web starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_mathematical_symbo... and https://mathvault.ca/hub/higher-math/math-symbols/