About

Mom’s Basement University is a free, unofficial math resource for adults who want to learn or relearn mathematics properly, without a classroom, a deadline, or anyone watching. It is not an accredited school and grants no credit or diplomas.

People who never got a fair shot at math the first time, and people who did fine but forgot most of it. There is no placement test and no assumed starting point. The Foundations group genuinely begins at counting.

It is also for people who already know some math and want a specific tool: how quaternions work, why a shader needs a dot product, what backpropagation computes. That is what the Applied track is for.

Core Mathematics is the rigorous track: eighteen subjects in learning order, from arithmetic through topology. Every lesson has worked examples and a quiz, and the upper-division subjects prove their results rather than asserting them.

Applied Mathematics is the practical track: seven modules aimed at a craft - games, 3D, shaders, AI and more. Two are finished, the 2D and 3D game development modules, at 43 sections between them; the rest are in development. Applied is structured as a guide and reference rather than a lesson sequence. There are no quizzes, and the emphasis is on showing how the math works in context rather than building it from axioms.

Core is a sequence. Applied is a set of entry points that lean on Core and link back to it wherever they need something proved.

Every lesson follows the same shape: what you will learn, the concept, worked examples, where it shows up in the real world, and a quiz. Figures are drawn from computed values rather than by hand, so a diagram cannot quietly disagree with the text beside it.

Progress is tracked per lesson. It works without an account using local storage, and syncs across devices if you sign in.

Written by April, a solo author. This is not a school.

No department, no editorial board, no team of contributors. One person writes the lessons, draws the figures, builds the site and answers the mail, which means a math error you report gets fixed by the person who made it. It also means the queue is real and the pace is what one person around a job can manage.

Eighteen Core subjects, all with lessons published. Seven Applied modules planned, two of them finished — the 2D and 3D game development modules, 43 sections between them. The other five are in development, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.

Nothing to read. Every lesson on this site is free and none of it sits behind a login or a paywall.

There is no advertising, no subscription and no email capture, and the site is not taking payments of any kind. Signing in is optional: it exists so your progress follows you between devices, and that is the only thing it does. Progress tracking works perfectly well without an account, using your browser’s local storage.

Free to reuse, as well as free to read. Lesson text and figures are CC BY 4.0 and the code samples are MIT, so teachers, tutors and programs can use it in class, print it, or assign a module without a fee and without asking. Attribution is enough. The License page has the credit line to copy.

Mom’s Basement University is an unofficial free math resource. It is not an accredited school, it is not affiliated with any university, and it does not grant credit, diplomas, certificates or transcripts. The name is a joke about where a lot of us do our best thinking.

It is written for adults relearning mathematics — people who never got a fair shot at it, and people who did fine and forgot most of it. It is not a children’s education service and is not directed at children under 13.

See the Privacy Policy for what the site collects, the License for what you may do with the lessons, Accessibility for what works and what does not yet, and Terms of Use for the rest.