August 22, 2022
Hello Mathies!
Just wanted to give you a few tips for tackling your new math class as you venture back to school! Math isn’t that bad – just think of it as LESS MEMORIZING as compared to your other classes! Yep, that’s why I always preferred my math classes to my say history classes – I wasn’t that crazy about memorizing.
YES – YOU CAN AND SHOULD MEMORIZE IN YOUR MATH CLASSES! But the trick to doing your best is to know how much to memorize and how much to understand. This varies from student to student.
Here are more points about learning math, as I show on the home page of mathhints.com:
- You can’t study for math tests without doing problems! A lot of times, I think I know the subject I’m tutoring (by looking at the book), and then when I get in there and start solving problems, I realize that I didn’t know it as well as I thought I did!
- Learning math should be an active experience and should relate to the world. And always use “simpler numbers” if a problem’s numbers are complicated. For example, paying $4 for 2 oranges makes it more obvious that you need to divide than paying $5.88 for 3 oranges.
- Learning math requires an understanding of what to “memorize” (for example, the tools), and what to “understand”. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel; it’s already been invented. Don’t worry if you have to memorize something with math without “understanding” it!
- Learning more advanced math is no more than building on what is already known: if you can add 2+2, and build with math tools, you can be taught to solve a complicated Calculus problem.
- Math books tend to “brag” and try to explain things with difficult words that sometimes don’t make sense! Math can be explained more easily with every day words.
- Sometimes there’s just one little concept that isn’t known or understood that makes a whole new math concept difficult. We need to find that and learn it!
- Math = Rules + Examples + Practice, Practice, Practice!!!
Let me know if you have any questions at lisa@mathhints.com.
Happy Mathing,
Lisa