How hard is "Principles of inorganic chemistry" for someone who never had a chem class? (college)?

You should be fine, given your math skills. Algebra *is* involved in manipulating or figuring out unknowns in chemistry equations (and such equations are pretty basic in the introductory chem classes.)

It's not like I am an expert on chemistry. I only took one class in it high-school 30 YEARS AGO. (Sorry for the all caps ;) (I was a mathematics major in college.) Anyways, someone left a college textbook like what you are talking about in my apartment building lobby. (It was among a bunch of other books left on the lobby table, so it wasn't an accident that they got left there. They were give-away books, so I took the chem book, just out of curiosity.)

Well, about 8 months later, I'm pretty much finished with that textbook. It wasn't that hard. (I also have a mathematical type brain, at times, when I need it. I also have a creative type brain, at times, when I need it.)

At any rate, so long as you *take interest* in the subject (and/or any subject you study), you'll be just fine.

I'd say see the 'beauty' of the atomic structures as well as the 'logic' of the atomic and molecular structures.

Algebra will come into play in that textbook and the class. A little bit of geometry/trig as well (that's part of the beauty.) I didn't see any calculus being used in my introductory college chemistry textbook.

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For me, I pretty much 'got all of it', with the exceptions of acids/bases , and to some extent oxidation/reduction reactions. Yet that was just me, studying on my own out of a textbook and doing problems. Were I to have been in a classroom scenario with an actual professor (regardless of how 'good' or 'bad' or 'great' the professor was), I am sure I would have come away with a better understanding of those concepts. Hey, I still have the textbook (and the internet), so I can review those concepts at any time. :)

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As a perhaps unnecessary aside, there's a concept in psychology called 'self-serving'.

I don't think that you are one who would do this, but I just wanted to point it out, seeing as how you mention a 'great professor', like that will somehow make things easier (and perhaps it would).

The 'self-serving' concept (which you can see many times a day here in various Yahoo Answers categories) is embodied by statements like :

" My teacher/professor sucks ! He (or she) never showed us how to do these problems! "

(Are you sure? Yes, the teacher/professor most likely *did* show the class how to do those types of problems; it's just the student is often these days goofing off on their cell phone or laptop instead of paying attention in class.)

That's the 'self-serving' concept.

It's always someone else's fault if you don't get what you want (in this case, high grades.)

Watch out for that 'trap'.

Principles Of Inorganic Chemistry