How to be good in Math? (more info inside)

I don’t think you will have to work with big numbers in your head. Calculators are the norm in college now.

@YARNLADY , Oh…hope what you are saying is true because I am really stressed.

I went to engineering school back in the slide rule era, where we used many tricks for handling mathematical operations mentally. I have yet to meet an engineer who trained in the last 20 years who uses these tricks though. Calculators have taken over completely now. They won’t help you much with calculus though; with that you need to understand the concepts and manipulate the equations according to the rules. Once you get past the concepts, calculus is fairly simple. Some instructors love to baffle the students with deriving everything from scratch, unless you’re a math major that’s really unnecessary.

Add, subtract and or divide random numbers you see through out your day. Add phone numbers you have to dial, multiply people ages and birth dates…just start crunching numbers all….day….long and don’t stop, do it all year long in school and you will get good at it quite quickly. Take up playing darts and total your scores in your head. I used to be instant at adding the score in my head when I was in a dart league but now that I hardly play any more I have to use the chalk board. Use or lose it!

You don’t have to do math in your head, but you should understand how to do basic math and algebra on paper. The more you understand, the easier it becomes to do the math in your head. The best way to get good at math is to practice and put time into it. Make sure you really understand a concept before you move on to the next one, which could mean doing extra work or getting tutoring. Much of math builds on previous concepts, and if you move on without fully understanding something, you get lost very quickly.

When you work problems on paper, make sure you show all of your work. Students seem to want to skip this step and just show the answer, but it’s important because if your answer is wrong, you can’t find your mistake. Also, rework problems that you get wrong, so that you fully understand why how to get to the correct answer.

This will be a lot of extra time and work at the beginning, but as your skills build and your foundation becomes solid, it will take less time.

Mental arithmetic is not necessary. I have never seen that as a requirement. Make sure you know your basic algebra. That is much more important. Do you know how to use the quadratic equation? Can you solve simultaneous linear equations? Can you plot equations? Can you expand and simplify algebraic expressions? Can you work with exponents and logarithms? If the answer is yes to all of these then you should be in good shape. Otherwise, it may help to look at material on these subjects.

Alexandre Grothendieck, one of the biggest hotshots in algebra in the 60’s, once suggested during some high-powered seminar to work out an example of some problem involving primes. They needed a specific prime. He suggested 57.

(Ooops. 3×19 = 57.)

Don’t worry about doing mental arithmetic involving large numbers. Do your utmost to understand exactly why you are doing what it is you are doing. The majority of undergraduates taking science and math courses treat the material as a black box and get by through memorizing techniques to solve particular types of problems. This leads to complete disarray and dismay should a conceptual rather than a numerical question be asked. Math and science are not collections of problems associated with completely arbitrary sets of random techniques to solve them. They have conceptual unity and internal logic. Crack this and you have it made!

ahh sorry I also forgot to mention that I have been studying (learning) everything in Icelandic since 7th grade so I maybe not know what most math words mean in english:/
That adds to the problem, but if I see the algebra problem I can easily solve it . ON PAPER!

Teachers will generally want you show your work on homework and exam problems, so I wouldn’t be worried if your algebra skills are good. I would recommend spending time on learning specific English vocabulary for math rather than doing arithmetic excercises in your head.

Ok:D I will get on that , school starts after three days so when I get my school book – math I will always train myself every single day,
I am taking Pre-IB

I think you’ll do just fine. :)

@Thesexier If you can do the work on paper, you’ve got it. Don’t stress out about it. :^)

AHH THANK YOU GUYS!:d
bUT I’ll keep my training everyday, after school I will be doing some extra math and reading and comprehending.

I sometimes use my calculator (an HP 48G) for the complex stuff, but more often I resort to scratch paper, especially for those things that require me to make or manipulate an equation.

Using something like a calculator or scrap paper is not a sign of weakness or stupidity; it’s a sign that you don’t have the memory of an inanimate object that is designed specifically for the purpose of holding information. If you know what buttons to press or what to write down and why,then you’ve already done the hard part; understanding.

I studied nuclear propulsion and God probably doesn’t have the security clearance to know what @stranger_in_a_strange_land did in his youth, and you won’t catch either of us doing the heavy stuff in our heads.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land That reminds me of a joke about the difference between Mathematicians and Physicists. It’s rather long, but the punchline is, “The physicist puts the pan of water on the stove while the Mathemetician puts out the fire and dumps out the water, thus reducing the problem to one that has already been solved.”.

@jerv , thank you. So I am not stupid. Just because I can’t do math in my head it doesn’t mea that I am stupid. SCHOOL STARTS AFTER 2 DAYS:d

See the connection to the real world. Like depending on the angle of your roof and the direction of your house, how many photons will reach your solar panels? Or before you play the lottery what are your chances of getting 6 out of 49 numbers right? I could go on for hours.

No real life connection, no motivation. And this is key. Math is not about memorizing formulas.

@mattbrowne , thank you. Though because I moved to Denmark and here it’s much more expensive than Iceland where I am from, so everytime I want to buy something I always have to multiply it by 20 to get the see how much it costs in Icelandic Krónas. It takes me a bit of time, but sometimes I just give up knowing that I can work the numbers out in my head without them written. I also use the calculator in my phone to help me out :D

@Thesexier – Oh, maybe I should have read the details section more carefully. Mental arithmetic is only a tiny portion of math. So if your question is about how to be good with mental arithmetic I would give you a different answer, although motivation plays a certain role as well.

This is what I told my kids:

The multiplication table up to 12×12 must be memorized in a way that when I wake you up at 3 in the morning and ask you 7×8 the answer must come out right away without even blinking once. We trained for in our car this during longer trips. Any hesitation meant that they hadn’t accomplished what needed to be done. Never ever use a calculator for something like 60×90 I told them later. And after a couple of weeks of intense training usually you don’t need one anymore. It’s a matter of discipline. There are other ways complementing the learning approach, for example funny pictures. 7×7 could be a dinosaur trying to swallow a piece of paper with 49 on it. 5×8 could be a huge sign in a valley with a plane flying through the zero of the number 40. And so forth.

There’s a rare medical condition related to grasping numbers so this most likely doesn’t apply to you.

@mattbrowne I know at least one person who is quite intelligent but incapable of things like memorizing the multiplication table due to a learning disability. It’s not exactly dyslexia, but it’s close. She is fine if she can write stuff down, but (as she puts it) she has no “mental blackboard”.
That also makes it hard for her to drive since she can see a car in the rear view mirror but the instant she takes her eyes off of the mirror and looks at the road ahead of her, she has no idea where that car she just saw is.
She can do math with scrap paper and isn’t bad with numbers in general, but she has a hard time writing without a word processor that allows her to move words around someplace outside of her head. Needless to say, she relies on a calculator when it comes time to balance her checkbook or do the other sorts of math that you or I would do in our head.

@jerv – Yes, someone mentioned this to me a while ago. I think it is this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia

@mattbrowne , well I guess I gotta start again learning the multiplication table:)
And that’s a brilliant idea for kids to learn multiplication!:*)

@mattbrowne That isn’t quite it either, though her symptoms overlap.

1. stop using your calculator.
2. do your homework and then some.
3. try not to stress, not everyone is equal when it comes to the logical processes associated with math achievement. Most people do fine with just a basic undertanding of algebra.