Math Tips?

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I can't focus at all in that class D:

What kind of math is it? Different disciplines of math take different approaches. And why do you find it difficult to focus? Do you find it to be uninteresting or rather taxing? It will be hard to answer your question without understanding the exact difficulties.

A tip... make it fun! Or at least practical..

I'm good at analogies, for example: 1/h = x

H is the persons height, and x is the number of times they have to get a ladder to reach something.

As H gets bigger, they have to get it less.. so the bigger the fractions denominator (bottom) the smaller the overall value is.

Meaning x gets smaller as h gets bigger.


Now, as you think about that, think about a hardware store with lots of tall shelves. Which employee would be best? Use the formula to test out different heights of people..

basic arithmetic and both

I would like to know the secret, but I think you just have to be wired for it. One thing I've always found very disadvantageous about math is that its not "visual" at all. Numbers and symbols have values in their world, but in mine they have none. If I cant picture what someone is talking about, I cant retain it. Math teachers always point to numbers on a board and talk. Then they make me do the same thing at a desk. They might as well be speaking Finnish. Audio instructions/basic short term memory storage = epic fail for me.

I had a conversation with an art teacher about visualizing math. It can be done, usually, but it just isn't the way it's taught since the people that teach math really didn't learn it that way.

For example, in algebra you lean "FOIL" to separate and then multiply, say, (a+b)^2 and get = a^2 + 2ab +b^2, right? But... why?

You can visualize this by drawing a square with sides of length a+b and connecting the lines into different sized squares and rectangles to find that the big square of sides a+b is the same shape as what is made up by the sum of the a square, b square, and the 2 ab rectangles. Maybe it's obvious or boring to you, but I thought it was cool. Nice when things make sense.


I love graphs. I wish I could work off of graphs instead of equations. That would be interesting. huh.

A good way to visualize multiplication is as a rectangle.

3*5

* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *

If you turn the rectangle sideways, you change which edge is which, but the number of things hasn't changed.

5*3

* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *

Which is why 5*3 = 3*5, and in general a*b = b*a.

If you do the process in reverse and take a number, form a rectangle out of it, then take the sides and form rectangles out of the sides, and then take those rectangles and repeat as long as you can, you eventually run into numbers that can't be formed into rectangles. Those numbers are called primes, and since you can take a number that can be formed into a rectangle and work backwards like this, every number is either a prime or a bunch of primes multiplied together.

3 is prime:
*
* *

So is 5:
* *
* * *

You can make a rectangle out of 30 like this:


* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *

Which has sides of length 5 and 6.
5 is prime, but 6 isn't:

* * *
* * *

6 is 2 * 3, and both 2 and 3 are prime, so we're done, and 30 = 2*3*5, which is called the prime factorization of 30.