<p>I'm having some trouble getting satisfactory grades (B+ or above) in my Precalculus class. I do all of my homework to the best of my ability. Obviously the teacher is below par but I don't want to make excuses.</p>
<p>Anyway, in my process of brainstorming study methods, I came up with the idea of copying the HW questions on notecards and writing the answers on the back and every single day doing 10-20 random questions (on separate paper, obviously) from the chapter (~100-200 questions at the end of the chapter before the test) I figured maybe random repetition would help me remember the process for solving different types of questions and help me understand the concepts.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how well this will work but I'm going to try it for a chapter or two and see if it helps. Anyway, for you regular people who actually need to study to accomplish good math grades, what are your methods? For some reason doing random problems out of the book doesn't help me.</p>
<p>Go through all your notes, do homework problems over and memorize the different processes for formulas and problem soving and studying the way questions are worded sometimes helps too:)</p>
<p>Alright, so I’m on the right track with doing lots of problems and many different varieties of them. Notecards are just a medium for the process.</p>
<p>Yeah I just go back through and do homework/review problems since thats really all you can do…and make sure you get the concept and method to solve the problems</p>
<p>Do lots of problems. Review your notes, review the book. Do more problems. Make sure you know the proper method for solving problems even if they’re out of context. IE you know that problem a) uses geometry, and problem b) uses pre-calc. Or whathaveyou.</p>
<p>First, make sure you understand the concepts – what you’re doing and why you’re doing something – how everything works. If you feel lost, consult your textbook, or I guess you could go to the teacher. Personally, I’m too lazy to go to tutorials… so I prefer textbooks.</p>
<p>As everyone else said, do as many problems as you can, solving them out. Repeating the same question is not pointless. It’ll help you to become faster. I don’t think you’re flashcard method will work too well unless it’s like, trig or something. </p>
<p>During the test, if you’re pretty fast, you should be able to go over some of the test at the end, and make sure you haven’t made any stupid mistakes. Being steady and accurate is better than being fast and wrong though, so keep that in mind…</p>
<p>I like to go over the problems I miss often the day before the test and to write down details that I tend to miss, and to quickly glance at them right before the test so I’m on the lookout for those things during the test. High grades in math comes down to really nit-picky details; you can never be too meticulous.</p>
<p>If the questions you’re talking about writing on notecards are the kind of questions that don’t require a lot of working out, and that you can just look at and know the answer, then I guess flashcards can work. But I’m in calc now (we don’t really have precalc at my school, it’s part of trig, which I took last year) and a lot of the problems we did were a lot of writing. </p>
<p>I don’t see why doing random problems out of the book wouldn’t help you, if those are the kind of problems that are on the test. I would think that would be a lot more effective than making flashcards, which really only work for term/definition type things. What I would do if I were a more motivated math kid would be to look at the sections of the book that we were assigned for homework, and do all the problems the teacher didn’t assign (e.g. if he assigned all the odd problems, do the evens, or if he skipped around do the ones in between). That way you know you’re doing the right kinds of problems. </p>
<p>If that doesn’t help, the problem might not be a lack of understanding, but rather test anxiety or something like that. You should look over your tests and see if the mistakes you made were silly mistakes due to stress, or mistakes from not knowing the material. Maybe it would help to go in and see your teacher.</p>
<p>really there’s not much studying you can do…just try to understand the CONCEPTS.
dont try to memorize a bunch of stuff (except in certain circumstances).
but honestly, i am in AP calc now and I dont recall ever actually going home and “studying” math…but I do my hw? I guess thats studying.</p>