Recently retired at 63 yrs old I decided to take some online math classes that I wished I would have taken years ago. I dropped out of school fairly young and never went past algebra 1. I was always good with math and self taught geometry and trig pretty well.
The problem I am having with the online classes is that they give you say 40 questions or problems, if you get 100% they advance you. ( I may be off as I dropped out several months ago and am restarting) Anyway, I do pretty well figuring out the method or pattern that will answer the questions but nothing seems to stick, especially the terminology. Is their something I can do to reinforce this? before I move on. A few months ago I got discouraged and quit but want to try it again. I don’t have any problem advancing but I feel it is useless if it doesn’t stay with me.
I wish I knew a good tutorial or book to recommend; I just wanna say Good On Yer, and I hope it works out. Math can be fun, and it is so often surprisingly lovely.
For pure entertainment, you might enjoy some of Martin Gardner’s books, especially his old collections of “Mathematical Games” columns from Scientific American from the 1960’s and 70’s. They aren’t rigorous, but, rather, descriptive, and quite light-hearted. He brought a lot of people to their love of math.
There is a math site called purple math that does a good job of explaining. If you go to teacher tube, you can watch short videos that might help, and the Khan Academy site is also a help.
You can also get books like Algebra for Dummies (don’t take the title personally) or ACT and SAT review books at your local bookstore that might help, or textbooks on eBay.
It seems to me you’re understanding it as you do the questions, but that it’s not sticking around in your memory. This is pretty normal, especially with things you’re not used to having to remember.
Different tricks work for different people but I would consider writing down (longhand) what you learned from each lesson, with the terms / formulas / etc. I find the act of rewording things in your mind and then committing it to paper really helps. And you can always go back and re-read your notes later on.
The Khan academy is the one I was registered with, apparently after a year or so they delete your history so I will need to start over. I will find out how much I retained. Work problems or finding a practical application seem to make them stick a little better.
A few years ago I was asked to build a bow for a Da Vinci catapult on the discovery channel and I was surprised at how much math I needed for that. It renewed my interest in wanting to advance my skills a bit.
No matter what else, you need to do as many problems as possible. In addition to Khan Academy, there are a bunch of books with titles like “Outline of Algebra” or similar. Get one of those, do all of the problems in it, and repeat until you’ve got the material down cold.
I was going to suggest the Khan Academy, but I see you’re already taking it.
Sounds like you need to revisit the material more frequently. If you grab a used math textbook/ math for dummies (as others have suggested), go back every week or two and do a couple of problems from an earlier section, or a chapter review or test. You’ll find that you won’t need to do a whole chapter or page worth of problems, just 5-10 to refresh your memory and keep your skills sharp.
I agree with this. Drill the hell out of each skill before moving onto the next one. Often, insight comes from doing the work, rather than the explanations of things.
Most all of my hobbies involve more math than anything else. I also like statistics and the ability to predict odds and probabilities. Once I advance bit I may be better able to decide which directions I want to concentrate on.
Just don’t be tempted to apply your new skills at the craps table.
I went through that stage about 40 years ago, started off lucky convincing me I had it figured out and it took a couple more years to realize it was just luck.
Not to be discouraging, but I was a math major in high school and unless you have a good, innate ‘feel’ for it math is something that you really should not try to learn any other way than in a classroom taught by a human. Not saying it’s impossible, but you will learn it a lot better (& faster) by taking an actual class.
You had majors in high school? Not saying I don’t believe you, but I’ve never heard of such a thing—did you mean college?
From what the OP said, he may be one who does have a good feel for math:
I started taking the courses from the 1st grade on. Glad I did, I am finding things and terminology I wasn’t familiar with that will help me later on. I had a similar problem early in my working career, I would qualify for these employee sponsored correspondence courses at a much higher level than I was actually at and end up dropping out. This has been on my bucket list for a long time. Feels great, most everything else on my list I have finished or in some cases abondoned for one reason or another. Beats the hell out of suduko!
I’m throwing in another +1 for doing the problems. It’s important to understand what you’re doing, but the practice is what makes it intuitive. That makes it easier to pick up new stuff.
It varies state by state but I went to high school in NY in the early 80s. You generally got one credit per full-course per year. You needed 17 (or more) credits to graduate, and you had to have at least four in English, three in Social Studies (used to be called History, don’t know what it’s called now), one in Math, one in some kind of Art, and one in Phys-Ed (one year of gym was only ¼ of a credit so you had to take it all four years to complete the one credit). The rest were electives. If you completed four full credits of anything other than English (or if your English consisted of at least two years of non-remedial English) that was considered your ‘major’. If you completed advanced English and four full years of another subject you could ‘double-major’. Didn’t really mean that much other than for getting into more advanced colleges.
Back before the focus was “no child left behind” some high schools in the United States offered “majors” that emphasized a core concentration in a specific area (usually arts, sciences, or vocational areas) that prepared the student for a career in that academic or vocational pursuit. Aside from magnet schools, this concept of concentration has largely disappeared, but at the time in which the o.p. went to high school it was probably an option.
As for studying independently, while having the availability of an instructor or study group is sometime helpful, I often found lectures in mathematics useless or worse, especially when the instructor had a poor grasp on the course material or did not work problems clearly in lecture. It was also less than helpful if the prof only worked problems but did not connect them to the fundamental method being applied. Most of mathematics above the basic algebra, analytical geometry, and calculus levels is sufficiently abstract that describing it in lecture terms without working problems is not useful, and just repeating methods by rote doesn’t give the student the grasp to understand the applications.
Mathematics is a language, and as with all languages, you learn by using it and playing with it. Lectures and texts provide you with the rules for the “grammar” and “formatting”, but only by working problems–both within the text, and then applied to real world problems outside the text–can you really come to master any part of it. So you need to learn (from text, lecture, or assisted study group) and then work problem sets (Schaum’s Outlines, REA Problem Solvers, others). How you learn best and what kind of instruction you need depends on individual aptitude and discipline.
One other point should be made: many people seem to believe that mathematicians, and the scientists and engineers who use advanced mathematics like differential equations or information theory, have some kind of specially endowed ability like a “math gene” that makes them capable of comprehending mathematics. Well, it may be–as with natural languages–that some people have a knack for picking up the concepts and being able to apply them seemingly without effort, but for most people–even professional mathematicians–the skills are developed only through long and concentrated effort the same way that you learn a language, and they unfortunately atrophy just as quickly when left unused. There is no special method or innate talent that most people use to master one field of mathematics; just hard work and discipline.
Stranger
The Catholic High School I attended in the 9th grade ( when I dropped out) did have majors in science, math and english as far as I know but only in the top level.
I am enjoying the heck out of my math courses. I have always saw everything in a mathematical way and used basic math for nearly everything I did throughout my life. Doing these courses one thing became abundantly clear, like a flashback. When I was young and came across something that required me to memorize or study I would quit. If I could figure it out with logic I would proceed. I still have that lazy demon in me that wants to quit when they throw a bunch of symbols at me that I have to memorize but I have been forcing myself to do it no matter how many times I have to do it over. So far I am progressing real well and I may be looking for a math mentor incase I have an occassional problem that just does not soak in. I would not wear out or abuse my welcome in a case like this. I am hoping in another week or two I will start entering into a little more advanced courses but I am taking no shortcuts this time no matter how long it takes.