Now if im understanding right (quite a few concepts im remembering here from physics and math) math vectors are these: v = (a, b, c) in which case yes i do have an understanding of them

Right, basically, and what vectors are good for is representing a magnitude and a direction, say the position of something relative to the position of something else, or, say, the velocity of a spaceship.

Now, imagine someone came up to you and said, "I understand what regular numbers are but I don't understand what a fraction is" You could explain it to them by telling them what fractions are good for. You could say, "If you have x units of something and you want to evenly split it up among 3 people you can figure out how much each person gets by multiplying x by 1/3".

Well, similarly what matrices are good for is what they can do to vectors. Say you have a 2D shape represented as a set of coordinates in 2D space. If you wanted to rotate the shape around the origin by some angle you can think of each coordinate as a 2D vector and multiply each of these vectors by a particular matrix. This is the sort of thing that matrices are good for.

Matrices represent linear transformations. While the concept of linear transformation in general may be hard to grasp, there are certain types of linear transformations that you will definitely be interested in: rotations, scalings, translations and projections.

It's relatively easy to start with 2x2 matrices acting on 2D vectors. You can represent scalings, rotations, flippings and shearing transformations with them (actually, that's basically all a linear transformation in 2D can do). Once you understand that, you can try to learn how 3x3 matrices represent interesting transformations in 3D. Then there is a "trick" of adding an extra variable so with a 4x4 matrix you can also represent translations. I put the word "trick" in quotes because there is a solid mathematical background that explains what you are doing, and it's not a trick at all (Projective Geometry), but it's probably not worth learning at this stage.

Try to learn things in the order I suggested. If you can't find material about something or if you get stuck trying to understand something, feel free to ask about it here.

You may also want to head to Khan Academy and see what they have on vectors and matrices. I don't really know if it's any good, but it's probably worth trying.

pretty much this.

although i don't have much to add to this conversation beyond what has been said, based on your avatar+name, i'm inclined to:

/)*

edit: also, i'd like to point out that this in no way is a "pathetic" question, and is perfectly valid to not have such knowledge when you first start working with 3D graphic's api's.

This is a thread about matrices, not about API choice.

API choice narrows the focus about matrices, so it is very relevant in my opinion. Albert Einstein had the same philosophy of wanting to learn only that which he needed at the time or in the conceivable future, making him a mediocre student but high achieving physicist. If one chooses, the same strategy can save the XNA user much learning of things not used with XNA. Beginning and intermediate programmers are in heavy need of completing tasks through the workflow pipeline and not exploring the whole world of matrix theory which can lead to a PhD by itself.

I still stand by my recommendation to get a couple good books about XNA which include the math, particularly the matrices.

A general understanding of Math and Physics will come in due time.

Wolfire also has a decent intro series on their blog, if you are looking to a soft intro to matrices/vectors/etc.