I wrote a book that is exactly what you describe (high school math review for adults), which you can check here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/099200103X/noBSmath (~200 pages = compact review of high school math topics with lots of exercises and practice problems)

The green book is a subset of the longer book that also covers mechanics and calculus https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001005/noBSmathMechCalc (see preview here https://minireference.com/static/excerpts/noBSguide_v5_previ... )

High school math is very deep, so I will not claim to cover all topics, but I present the most useful parts (equations, algebra, functions and inverses, math modelling), so it would be a good starting point.

Independent and in addition to the above, you can check out this printable tutorial on SymPy that can also be helpful as a review of lots of high school math material: https://minireference.com/static/tutorials/sympy_tutorial.pd...

Could have been us — we have a "free PDF if you email me proof of purchase for print" policy for all our books[1,2,3]. Currently, I handle this manually via email, but I wish this was more automated somehow (e.g. shopping cart plugged into print-on-demand fulfillment API + digital delivery of eBook in all formats).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001005/noBSmathphys (high school math review, mechanics, and calculus) [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0992001021/noBSLA (linear algebra) [3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/099200103X/noBSmath (high school math review)

Yeah, private tutoring is the best. The custom, just-in-time curriculum that a tutor can prepare is the most efficient way to learn. I think equally important is the transmission of a relaxed, exploratory attitude towards the STEM subjects. When a learner sees their teacher take on positive attitudes towards complexity, they too develop this attitude and can go on to solve problems on their own.

Unfortunately, this transfer of attitude works in the negative direction too. If the teacher is out of their comfort zone (e.g. parent touching math for the first time in 20 years), then the learner might pick up on the anxiety and start to consider the subject to be unpleasant or hard---if your parent was stressing out about helping you with algebra, then algebra must be a thing of formidable complexity!

As another example, you can think of a teacher bored with the subject (e.g. prof who is teaching this course for the 17th time this semester) who will then transmit "this is stupid shit you have to know, because you're forced to take this course" attitude and students will pick up on this too...

Luckily these days there are really good resources (youtube, free books, interactive demos) so hopefully we'll have more STEM people in the future. We won't make 100% of the population into STEM-experts, but it's not unrealistic to hope that everyone can become at least STEM-literate. I'd like to believe that I contribute to this with my books. This one in particular would be good for adult readers who want to rekindle their relationship with the subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/099200103X/noBSmath