Pre-requisite knowledge before diving into algorithms

Question

I'm having some difficulty trying to follow what the authors of some of the more highly recommended books on algorithms. I ran into the same problem when trying out some online courses. My goal is to prepare myself to start learning fundamental algorithms for use in low-level languages by means of understanding them mathematically. So far, a guide on wiki is a good resource to decipher the symbols, but I'm not sure that will suffice.

Is there anything besides this page that a person would need before learning algorithms besides basic algebra concepts?