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Author Topic: Unable to do well in math.  (Read 3722 times)

Grek

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Re: Unable to do well in math.
« Reply #15 on: November 10, 2012, 01:31:45 pm »

Go to your local community college. Locate a math professor. Extend your proboscis, carefully inserting it into the ear. Continue until you have sucked the math professor's brains out and claimed their power for yourself.
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xXEldestXx

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Re: Unable to do well in math.
« Reply #16 on: November 13, 2012, 10:52:02 am »

Have you tried Khan Academy? The guy who runs the site has videos posted explaining almost any math concepts you might need help with, from 1+1=2 up through high level calculus. I used it a couple years ago and brought my math skills from nearly failing to a solid B.

Here's a link: http://www.khanacademy.org/
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gimlet

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Re: Unable to do well in math.
« Reply #17 on: November 13, 2012, 12:12:42 pm »

One thing I would suggest is getting several different books, not every text explains every concept equally well, and different wording/approaches can give you another slant on the problem.  The cheap way is to get 'em from the library, sometimes professors will have a pile of review copies of other texts that they will be happy to lend to a motivated student, buy em if you absolutely must.  Sometimes you have to read the stuff over and over, and even keep going back and rereading previous chapters you didn't understand 100% because new concepts build up from the previous ones, and once you fall behind you will be in a mess if you don't get caught up.

You say you're doing the problems OK, but make sure you're not falling into the trap I fell into by looking in the book while doing them, or even just knowing what chapter they're from so knowing the approach that's expected.  I had to get books of problem sets and mix in problems from older chapters so that I had to figure out which methods to apply instead of starting out with a huge clue because I knew it was a problem from chapter X.  I had to force myself to keep going back until I could do a whole set 100% perfect, without peeking in the text at all.

It was like suddenly hitting a wall - up to that point I was able to skate by by half listening in class, banging out homework while watching TV and just learning the mechanics without needing to study very hard or work and review to understand the concepts.  It was an awful feeling as I got farther and farther behind and the new material was getting to be gibberish because I didn't have the foundation of understanding the previous stuff.  It took a lot of hours but it was a great feeling to get back on top - I remember the rush from finally "getting it" to this day, decades later.

Another part of it was expectation - instead of the self defeating "This is too hard I'll never get this" I knew I was a pretty good student overall and I figured "Hey, millions of people have gotten through this course, I am NOT stupider than every one of them - I just have to buckle down and put in some work FUCK YOU JOBU I DO IT MYSELF! (I love Major League)"
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