This chapter deals with some fundamental mathematical rules and ideas we will use in the rest of the book. It is very important that you become comfortable with them. Going through the basic material may be a tedious experience for you, but much of the confusion in studying mathematics that I know appears to stem simply from a lack of appreciation of these mathematical conventions (if so, what a pity…), so I will spend some time on them.

To become a good user of a foreign language, we need to know some grammar as well as a bit of slang of that language. Sometimes one gets lost completely during conversations because of the use of slang. For example, if I received a letter saying, ‘There is a BBQ party; BYO’, I would bring my own drink since I know what BYO means. However, some of you whose native language is not English may have to consult with their dictionaries in order to figure out what BYO means.

Learning mathematics has a similar flavour. You will need to know the basic rules as well as some advanced techniques that stand on them. As you don't expect you can master a foreign language overnight, you also should not expect that you can master mathematics overnight. You will need to work hard in order to learn mathematics. The reward from it, though, should be fairly large. If you have studied a foreign language and have been able to communicate with people – who you otherwise wouldn't have been able to – using it, you know how fun and exciting it is.