Question: I'm currently working on my MS in CS and have developed an interest in astrophysics. Luckily one of my professors is a astrophysicist and is currently doing research through computational physics and he agreed to help me get started.

I'm currently reading through Tao Pang's "An Introduction to Computational Physics" ([TOC](http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~pang/cp2_cont.html)), but the book's lack of detail on the mathematical methods used leaves me pretty lost at times.

My question is, are there any books that cover the topics in a more in-depth fashion or any books that I could use as a reference for the mathematical methods?

EDIT: The best way to describe my mathematical background is that I've studied calculus, linear algebra and differential equations, but remember very little.

Answer: 
You might look at James Nearing's book. It's available [Here](http://www.physics.miami.edu/~nearing/mathmethods/). I don't think it's very academic, but I learned a lot from it. [One reviewer](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week260.html) said about it: *Unlike the usual dry and formal textbook, it reads like a friendly uncle explaining things in plain English, trying to cut through the red tape and tell you how to actually think about this stuff.* The graphic about the Taylor's series of a sine function is actually quite moving. For free, what could go wrong?
You might try: Bertil Gustafsson: *Fundamentals of Scientific Computing* to get an overview, and for a more encyclopaedic treatment of the mathematical methods Gander, Gander, Kwok: *Scientific Computing.*