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[Red Fortune]

Alright, I was talking to Vector (who woulda guessed? ) in my other thread about maths, but I thought it strayed to far from the topic's original intention, so I'm making this thread.

Over my school life I've been winging pretty much every subject (that matter is for the other thread), not studying much/at all, and in every subject, I've done well, getting the equivalent average marks that would get an A in the American school system on most of my reports. I'm now in year 11 (15, will be 16 when graduated, also, year 11 is equivalent to junior high school students in the US I think)

Now, this is now not the case for maths, a subject I've always viewed as an annoyance at best. My brain is not so happy to calculate things, and I'm often straining my brain for minutes over one particular test question, or even one little part of it, for no apparent reason. I make numerous counting errors, and I often only get 50-70% on tests, which I've learned to expect.

The problem? I've never payed attention. The only mathematical principals that are locked into my mind are addition/subtraction/area/volume/all the other basic stuff etc. (obviously), simple trigonometry, algebra, some quadratics stuff, geometry and such... Basically the stuff from year 9 or so... Anything after that I just remember for the test and forget afterwards.

The trouble with this is that I don't have a very deep understanding of the principals, and what this translates to is that I never know how to bend and rearrange the formulae or even know which one to use to get the answer; I'll look at a question and feel lost and extremely depressed, I might throw a few rules at it and see if it works but even then I usually don't know what I'm doing.
What's more is that these counting errors always screw me up when I do know what to do; I'll get to a certain stage and go "WTH I CAN'T FACTORIZE IT I GIVE UP" or something similar, and not realize that I wrote down, say, 12x^2 instead of 16x^2 for (4x+7)(4x+2)...

I need help, what should I do? Should I get out my old textbooks and go from the basics? I don't have that much time to study, either, and it will often take me hours just to do a textbook exercise...


Sorry if there are copious spelling mistakes or confusing sentences... I feel tired.

EDIT: Oh yes, "Maths", I know it might sound dumb or incorrect to you, but that's what it's called down here in Aus.

[Greatoliver]

I sort of know what you mean... I'm revising like a crazy man for about 5 exams over the next two months or so, and basically, it's come down to just practising.

The reason we're doing 5 exams in maths is because we're taking a two year course over one, which means that as a class, we've been bombarded with crazy stuff... The first problem is taking it all in.

Here, practice really helps, as it puts the idea into context and slowly drills it in, the more you do.  For example, I'm now going to do about 6 hours of questions on things I find hard, and by the end of it, I'll not only remember the principles, but also be much more aware of how they can be used.

For counting errors, there are two parts. One, take it slower, and make sure your sums are right when you write them down on the page. Go through all of the steps and make sure it's right, and then put it down on the paper.  The other thing is to check your working to the same detail... Look over each step, check the basic things, like addition, and you can ensure your answer is correct.  It doesn't sound like you have a problem with adding, so don't go back to basic textbooks, but it's more like you just need to check... And yes, I often drop marks because of this as well 

And practising will really help this... Checking your work is a skill, and to get to the stage where you can look over your work quickly and guarantee it is correct is one that that is built up with doing sums.

I can say that, if you're taking a long time over questions, a really firm hold on basic manipulation of equations really helps.  If you're looking at a question and not knowing what to do with it, being able to change what it looks like can often open this up for you.  In this case, I would say go back to some more basic algebra and learn some of the skills... It is useful to have a bunch of tools, like multiplying by -1 to change signs, which you can then use to build upon for the harder stuff. Of course, this will also help with errors.

Hopefully Vector won't slaughter me 

[Siquo]

Alternatively, you can just flake out, and become a programmer, and take Invader Zim as your avatar. 

(Had the same problems as you do)

Also: memorising the basic trigonometry rules "identities". Not knowing those severely limited my solving-abilities...

[Red Fortune]

I see I see.

I meant basic textbooks as in textbooks from year 7-10...

Ok, two maths tests within the next 7 days, both on cubics... Fun...
Division of polynomials takes me forever and I make up with denominators and signs, I'm forcing myself to check but things don't appear wrong no matter how hard I look at them until I check my answers... And I suddenly realize I had a wrong sign somewhere...


Anyway, problem is, I don't get that much time after school to study... I.e. 4-5 hours..... I get home at 4-5 PM... Unless I stay up late, in which case I go to bed and only get 6 hours sleep (I wake up at 6:00-6:30AM), lots of my time is spent doing FUCKING ENGLISH HOMEWORK ARRGHHHH. Because my English teacher sucks and sets us like an essay a night on something we've already done 4 times before and is frankly just plain boring... I DO NOT KNOW WHERE TIME GOES.

I guess I can give up my leisure and/or drawing time completely in order to get extra math study.... Then again, this is year 11, what the hell is it going to be like next year?


Aghhh I should be asleep.

[Jude]

Same here except the problem wasn't that I didn't pay attention, it's that I was (am) mathematically retarded. My grades were the shit too, aside from math. Oh well.

The bad thing is, I will have to use a decent amount of math in my career, basically statistics related stuff. I had one math class in college (elementary stats) and somehow pulled a B, although I understood a D worth of the material. When I did my senior project and had to crunch numbers for my experiment I relied on computer programs and my prof. Grad school stats is gonna be a bitch. Eff math.

[Shades]

Probably you just need either a good teacher or to find a way to make maths mean anything to you. As everything is applied maths then just find out what hobbies or the like you enjoy and look at the maths within them, with any luck you'll get a better understanding of formula and maths because it now relates to something you enjoy.

[Red Fortune]

FFFFFFFFFFF- Jude.
Sucks, man.

Well, off to bed, I wonder if I'm going to have more horrifying nightmares and not be able to sleep afterwards and then feel even more tired tomorrow? YAY!!!!

 

[Duke 2.0]

 Interesting how your problem involves general fumbling around with the accuracy of how you olve things, switching signs and forgetting to calculate things correctly. To some extent they can be solved by being more careful and taking things in smaller chunks. I know I can't remember more than four numbers at a time when solving a problem, so I always do things in chunks.

 My problem is that I can't ever remember how things are done. I see a problem and I have no clue as to what I need to do. General simplifying with factors alright, then try to isolate the variable... But often that doesn't work, or in order to simplify one needs to use some obscure rule involving that specific problem. Doesn't help that I can't associate the names of various math terms with what they mean. Say a bunch of math jargon and I'll be completely lost. Show me the exact same process and I'll identify every step, just not with the official names.

 But yeah, I feel for ya man. Math wrecks me, this semister advereging around 60% test scores.

[Greatoliver]

Well yeah, that's what I was talking about  The earlier textbooks will not be as hard, nor will they give you problems that may be applicable to your studies, but they'll give you the opportunity to build up on skills...

When you say you don't know what you need to do, how wide is it?

For example, if you see a squigly sign, it is going to be integration, or is it more that you know it's integration, but you don't know whether to use the quotient rule or the product rule etc.?

[smigenboger]

You may hate this answer, but I didn't understand why many equations are the way they are until I took calculus. Once I learned about derivatives, many other things made sense. I understood why the area of a circle is the way it is, and how the circumference is a derivative of the area, and how they are connected.

The problem is that your teachers to you HOW without explaining WHY. I see this very clearly in my algebra class in college. If I didn't already know the stuff, I'd be as clueless as the rest of my class.

I can see Vector explaining this better than I can, although for all I know she may have already in this thread.

[Heron TSG]

HOW without explaining WHY.

This is what used to screw me up so badly. Once you know why, the how makes sense. The best thing you can do is find your teacher and ask them why a particular problem works that way.

For the writing 12 instead of 16, the only solution is to pay more attention.

[Red Fortune]

  Thanks guys.

Yes, I need to do the equations more slowly, but I already do them very slowly, my abilities being what they are..

YES YES YES!! THE WHY!
It's the way by brain works (and hence I know a lot of science and find it interesting), I can remember the process of polynomial long division, for instance, but I don't know why it's like that, being retarded at these things as I am... And nobody ever tells me, not even my teacher; if I ask they'll just say "You only need to know how for the test" or "There's not much point in that"...

GAASDHGASGAARGHHH

[Heron TSG]

Try telling them that you need to know why before you can start on the how. If you ask enough times, they'll understand.

[eerr]

When did school transform from understanding, professor-style to wrote memorization?

Explain that you need to know why so you can get away with wrote memorization bullshit later.

or be more vague and ask for: where can I find more information on this topic unrelated to wrote memorization for tests.

[Virex]

Around the same time people started measuring how well schools do. Wrote memorisation's a good way to level up the average school grades, at least for most students.

Also, I find it interesting that so many need to know the basics behind an equation. It's perhaps because I'm used to working with wonky empirical formula's, but I usualy have little effort in using formula's that havn't been properly explained beyond: It works very well and fits the data to boot. But then again, more then half of chemistry is "it fits the data well enough so it's probably true", not to speak about rheology or related subjects.