/sci/ - Science & Math

fuck anyone who always recommends this god awful book as a beginner, i fell for the meme and upon the very FIRST exercise set

The first few exercises ask me to justify each step using commutativity and associative to in proving the following identities:

Ex prove. (a+b)+(c+d)=(a+d)+(b+c) using a bunch of commutative and associative laws
what the fuck where do i even start isnt this equation already equal to something so whats the point ? what am i supposed to do ? fuck you guys am i getting trolled

now someone better reccomend an actual good intro book not this bullshit

worst

Am I doomed to life as a brainlet if I was unable to solve 80% of the problems in Lang's Basic Mathematics that began in "prove" or "show"? I read through each chapter and every example problem, can do the plug and chug just fine, but more often than not I'd be having to copy the answers out of the back of the text for anything that involved me having to come up with something on my own.
It's sort of depressing, especially considering it took me half a year to work through it. I'm wondering if this experience is normal or am I just below average IQ?

Will this teach me mathematics from the ground up? Like pre algebra, algebra, algebra 2 (if there is such a thing). I'm not familiar with the basics of math, but I know there's different things like physics, geometry, and algebra. I'm not even sure which one I want to learn, I just think I want to learn math. Will this give me a good groundwork so I can figure out where I want to go from here? I'm pretty sure that I want to understand calculus because it seems that when physicists talk about understanding the laws of the universe, they talk about Isaac Newton, and Calculus is his theory.

Will this teach me mathematics from the ground up? Like pre calculus, calculus, algebra 2 (if there is such a thing). I'm not familiar with the basics of math, but I know there's different things like physics, geometry, and algebra. I'm not even sure which one I want to learn, I just think I want to learn math. Will this give me a good groundwork so I can figure out where I want to go from here? I'm pretty sure that I want to understand calculus because it seems that when physicists talk about understanding the laws of the universe, they talk about Isaac Newton, and Calculus is his theory.