About

Mom’s Basement University is a free math site for adults who want to learn or relearn mathematics properly, without a classroom, a deadline, or anyone watching.

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: six subjects aimed at a craft - games, 3D, shaders, AI and more. 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.

Nothing. There are no ads, no subscription, no upsell, and no email capture. Signing in exists so your progress follows you between devices, and that is the only thing it does.