Me Do Math Good?

June 5, 2008 7:32 PM

How can I be better at math? I don't hate it, but I'm not good at it.

At some point in high school, round about when linear algebra reared its ugly head, math became hard. I failed grade ten math twice and crept into lower level grade 11 math without completing grade 10. As a result, further math courses, physics and other math based things are arduous. Mefites following my wails for help in previous posts might recall the B- I got in Stats (boo!), and I can't help feeling that this is the fault of poor mastery of the basics.

Whether this be due to bad luck with genetics, crappy teachers, or the fact that I dealt with my teenage mental health crisis by hiding in my sketch book and learning how to draw instead of completing my class work, I'm starting to feel the sting of not getting stuff.

So, mefi, what do I need to do to figure out where I have knowledge gaps and work my way from algebra to calculus? Is there a workbook I could do for ten minutes a day? A super smart website with witty tutorials? I'll take just about anything mefi can throw.

posted by Phalene to education (21 comments total)

Take a placement class. You might discover that you were missing some fundamentals. That's what happened to me. I had a couple of bad math teachers in 9th and 10th grade, so, when I got to grade 11, I had some major holes in my knowledge. This caused me no end of grief.

But you can improve. When I decided I wanted to do an MBA, I took a refresher course. I filled in the gaps. As a result, I got top marks in my econ class and an A- in stats. I actually got singled out for my statistical analysis in a marketing course. Me, the English major. I kept studying, kept practicing. A couple of years after I graduated, I started teaching prep courses for people who wanted to do MBAs. Suddenly, I was teaching engineers, programmers, scientists, accountants and people from non-mathy areas to do math. You can bet I had to be on my toes. But I did it.

So go back and start with the basics. Find out where you are. Maybe you never learned to do fractions. Maybe you can't do long division. Maybe you never learned about triangles. When I was teaching, I realized that some people were missing a 3rd or 4th grade concept -- and that it had been holding them back for the rest of their lives.

You can learn math. You can be doing calculus, stats and all that jazz. If I can do it, you can do it.
posted by acoutu at 7:47 PM on June 5, 2008 [1 favorite]

Are you in school right now?
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:49 PM on June 5, 2008

What you want is the book Engineering Mathematics by Stroud and Booth. Don't panic at the title; this is the best book for self-learning math in the world. It starts at the high school level and then progresses smoothly into calculus, differential equations, statistics, probability, and so on.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 7:51 PM on June 5, 2008

You had linear algebra in high school??

It would help to know which topics gave you difficulty - a placement test would be one way of doing this, but if you can remember what you had a hard time with, I'm sure we could give more specific suggestions.
posted by pravit at 7:54 PM on June 5, 2008

Where do I get a placement test? I tried the one and only offering my university had for a basic math class... It was a disaster because I only learned about 25% of what was being taught and I dropped the class at the last possible moment, to avoid an F (it probably doesn't help that it was intended as a grade 12 math course refresher).
posted by Phalene at 8:10 PM on June 5, 2008

There's a really important missing piece of data: why do you want to be better at math? If the answer is "it just seems like a good idea", the road ahead of you is very hard. If the answer is "because I want to X," then tell us, because the answer to your question depends on X.
posted by escabeche at 8:19 PM on June 5, 2008

I have really benefitted from cheap math review books I've picked up at used book sales (especially Friends of the Library sales). They have answers in the back (usually just for half the questions, but that's enough), so you can check your work. And if you start with the basics, you get to feel really good about acing all the stuff you DO know!

Sitting on my shelf right now:

Math Review for Standardized Tests; covers basic arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and word problems.

Mathematics Made Simple; covers basic math, fractions and decimals, measurements, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and probability.

I'm guessing these cost me a dollar each.

Also, seconding acoutu - you can do this.

Good luck!
posted by kristi at 8:24 PM on June 5, 2008

it seems like a good idea, and so I can understand economics, chemistry and physics. And so I can do calculas.
posted by Phalene at 8:26 PM on June 5, 2008

Also: free math teaching and learning resources from the government, and a list of free math courses.
posted by kristi at 8:27 PM on June 5, 2008

The way to learn math is to - one way or another - do lots of math problems.

I think what escabeche is trying to get at above is that if you want to learn math so that you can break the bank at monte carlo or decipher code from aliens that goal can be an organizing principal for what math problems you should be doing and a motivating force so you keep doing them for more than a week.
posted by shothotbot at 8:28 PM on June 5, 2008

An FPP about free online math classes.
posted by rtha at 8:48 PM on June 5, 2008

I don't know where you live, but, here in Vancouver, you can take placement tests at the community colleges. They let you know what level you're at. I took one at VCC once.

I see you can also do math placement tests online -- although I haven't tried these.

You could also get student workbooks from the library and work your way through till you stop getting 100%.
posted by acoutu at 8:51 PM on June 5, 2008

The way I managed to do even remotely well in university calculus was simple:

Do every problem in the textbook, assigned or not, and

Graph _everything_. Over and over.

Then when I was writing the exam, I was able to just envision in my head what an equation should look like and whether an answer I was getting made sense based on whether my mental image the curve came close to the value I had worked out.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:04 PM on June 5, 2008

I have to say that Brain Age for the DS completely improved my mental math. Granted, that's not going to give you a fast pass to calculus, but it made me so much more comfortable with numbers.
posted by radioamy at 9:47 PM on June 5, 2008

If you're still in school, your university might have some sort of math placement test that determines what level of math you can start at. Here is a math placement test from the University of Maryland; you can find lots of similar exams by Googling. It would be really helpful to know what in particular is giving you problems - are you comfortable with arithmetic? Basic algebra? Functions? Graphs of functions? If you do find time to take one of those tests, let us know what you had trouble with (or if it was below your level).

You mentioned that you learned 25% of what was taught in the basic math course. Does your university have any sort of math tutoring service that could help get you through? My university had a "Math Learning Center" where people could go to get math tutoring; does yours have anything similar?
posted by pravit at 10:15 PM on June 5, 2008

Ugh, wrong link above for the University of Maryland test, it's here, sorry.
posted by pravit at 10:16 PM on June 5, 2008

acoutu is exactly correct. I've worked as a physics tutor on the side for several years, and the painful thing about it is encountering people who clearly didn't get what math "was". They didn't understand that an equation is about relationships between quantities, or that derivatives are about change. People will have huge gaps missing in their understanding, and because they can fumble through the equation and get the right answer they don't realize it, so work on your basics.

The other part isn't just the math, but the applications. If you want to be able to apply it, you have to learn not only how to solve math, but how to translate real-world concepts into math as well. So while you're solving practice problems and such, hunt down some word problems, and solve them "out of context". Try not to cheat by looking at chapter headings. Just see if you can figure out how to express the situation mathematically, and then solve from there.
posted by Lady Li at 12:46 AM on June 6, 2008

I've always been partial to Hogben's Math for the Millions for a readable walk thru of basic concepts all the way into calculus, one step at a time. It will fill in the blanks for you. Also, Asimov's Realm of Algebra is a wonderful way to understand the algebraic process out of basic number manipulation like multiplying.
posted by ptm at 6:42 AM on June 6, 2008

pravit, I'm in a similar situation to the poster. Freshman year was Algebra, Soph was geometry, junior was College Algebra and Trigonometry (precalc, like a 121 college level course), Senior year was Calculus. I flunked Junior year and was still put into Calculus. Bad news, it was a living nightmare. Good news, even after failing miserably and basically getting a gentleman's D, I went on to college and passed their Calculus for Engineering class (like a 141 level) with a C, having done NO work on that class, basically showing up for most of the lectures and the midterm and finals.

Anyway, yeah, take basic classes (community college or self-directed) and fill in the missing spots. I think more often than not, a lack of mathematical understanding comes from style incompatibilities between teacher and student. Reading a different text or taking a different class usually clears that up no problem.
posted by gjc at 8:46 AM on June 6, 2008

I'm a couple of chapters into A Tour of the Calculus, which is kind of a chatty nonfiction account of how calculus came to be invented and why it's important. In the course of it he's actually explaining calculus. It can be a little annoying but I'm finding that all the digressive narrative exposition kind of gives my brain time to ponder the math parts. I think it's the kind of book that would drive some people nuts, but I'm kind of enjoying it for now.
posted by yarrow at 9:58 AM on June 6, 2008

lial's basic college math gets a good rap as a self study refresher course.
posted by kjs4 at 10:50 PM on June 6, 2008