You dont. Just a solution I used. Pictometry plugin worked well for Arcmap and some people are using their viewer I beleive called EFS. But in terms of webmapping last time I looked they only provided an IMS solution. Also, in our area Pictometry actually flew the obliques for Bing so we are essentially getting the same images that are sitting on our server we paid for...

While I agree that there can be a lot of math involved with things such as projections and spatial stats, most GIS academic programs I am familiar with do not require a high level of math - just that you take something at the college level. Discrete math in particular is defintely more of a comp sci thing rather than GIS, though that line seems to be blurring more and more.