People on /lit/ make philosophy out to be a very long and dense straight line where you're going to be hopelessly lost starting anywhere but the presocratics and working your way up. In reality, an overwhelming majority of philosophy is redundant shit that only ever held water within the context of being a primitive caveman with extremely limited perspective and can be readily dismissed by a modern vaguely intelligent person; you can save a massive amount of time and energy by just skipping to whoever you're interested in reading without ever worrying about why platonic forms are stupid.

Does /sci/ think the same way about mathematics? There are parts I've been wanting to learn out of practical desire, mainly probability and statistics, but the idea of slogging my way up from the D I got in high school geometry through shit like advanced calculus and number theory just so I could tell you what the chance of drawing three aces from the top of the deck are seems extraneous.

tl;dr Can I skip straight to probability and econometrics and try to back learn whatever's necessary as I go or do I really need to work my way up from the basics?