Hello there:I wonder how to get good grips of the math in journals(e.g. JF, JFQA, mathematical finance,...).I am now a graduate student in finance,and I am often confused with the math in papers which the professor(computational finance) assign me to read.What I learn before was just advanced statistics&basic calculus.What can I do?I really want to be a quant/financial engineer even I haven't learned many math by now.Thank you all!

If you don't understand the maths, but you want to understand the maths, then you will have to learn the maths. In fact the same holds for most subjects.Your question would then be better phrased as "What books can I read to get a better understanding of the maths?"This we cannot answer as we do not really know your level. Improving your calculus would be a start - any undergrad book, and I would suggest one aimed at engineering & physics students as being more approachable. Then stochastic calculaus, for which you will need something like Neftci (or Oskendal, or ...). Hull, Wilmott? Zhang, Lipton? All depends on what area you are examing, and the depth of your knowledge!Why don't you have a look in your college library and see what books are on the shelves that are helpful; the same at the bookshop; and talk to fellow students & your tutors. After all your tutors should be there to help you.As far as an immediate fix goes - take a good bottle of wine, a free evening in front of a fire, a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and your tricky paper, and read it & re-read it until you start to understand more of what it is getting at. If you try to understand the conclusions, the point of the paper, the issues being discussed etc, then the maths part may become more obvious, or even irrelevant?!

Charlie:Thank you so much for your constructive and inspiring opinion!!best regards, shaotzuning

Shaotzuning.There are some weird people here and you may get aggressive, non helpful replies. This guy has tried to quote Black-Scholes but he has got it wrong, if you can decipher his notation.

in addition to what ppauper suggest, get a book on probability theory.

Not jsut any book on probability theory; visit the book forum and get a basic book on measure theory as well.And not matter how much do you get there will be much more than any human can grasp (except maybe Nonius or FDAX; but they are not human anyway). Don't pay attention to the hound, he does not know anything about nothing... he just a hound dog.

Again,I wanna thank you all for your positive advices!!Thank you!!best regards, shaotzuning