<p>I'm horrible at math. I mean....REALLY BAD. I do study for the tests, but I always bomb them. It makes me feel like a total idiot, especially when I see students ace the same exams. I even failed my final after studying 5+ hours for it. I'm trying to get better at math, and I'm trying to become an A student in it. I really am determined to do well in my math class, but I don't know how. I don't mean to get racial, but how are Asian students so stereotypically good at math? What are your secrets? How do you guys study for it?</p>
<p>Do practice problems in your textbook. Not just the ones assigned to you, but the ones that you think would challenge you. Tests test your ability to take a concept you’ve learned and apply it to a problem you’ve never seen before.</p>
<p>Did that help you? Are you acing your tests?</p>
<p>I’m actually done with math. I passed Calc II with a B- over summer (stupid little calculation errors cost me some points on exams, though) and don’t need to take anything beyond Calc II for my major.</p>
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<p>There’s your problem, you’re not studying enough. Try studying 20 hours for your next test and I’m sure you won’t fail it.</p>
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<p>They study more than 5 hours for a final? Did you mean to append another digit to the front or back of that?</p>
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<p>I don’t mean to call you out, but you got racial right after you said you weren’t going to get racial.</p>
<p>I agree with the other responses. Try studying more than 5 hours for your final (that’s not that much). Do problems daily (instead of doing a bunch the day before the tests) and check your answers with a solutions manual. Find out what you don’t understand and seek help from your professor or TA.</p>
<p>next semester, use the help room. just do your homework in there, and there will always be a TA around</p>
<p>Practice is how you get better at math.</p>
<p>Study every day! I worked hard all semester on calc so I didn’t have to study very hard for the final and still did really well. You need to constantly work at it, ask for help, and do practice problems. I’m not very good at math (concepts are really hard for me to understand) yet I succeeded because I never stopped working.</p>
<p>^^ That hits it. You can’t ever let anything be unknown for more than one day. So if you are in lecture one day and y’all cover x, and x doesn’t make sense, go home, look it over, and if it still doesn’t make sense, the very next day, your goal is to figure it out. Use a TA, office hours, tutors (we have free math tutoring at our school for our students). But your goal should be to figure it out the next day.</p>
<p>Ther are some people (and I know them) who are naturally mathematically inclined, and it has nothing to do with race. If you’re not, you’ll have to spend a little more time making sure you ‘get’ everything, not right before the test, but right after class.</p>
<p>What helped me was not more study time, though studying should be done as practice to certain problems and concepts. What helped me was a whole remapping of how to look at math, how not to make it intimidating, and working at it every single day (which makes up for the lack of more study time later).</p>
<p>In HS I never got higher than a B in a math class while I received As in most all other classes. The very first lesson in a math class I received in college was that “This is not a math class. This is a success training class.” The professor then went on to explain how he was on a high mountain one day trying to take a picture (photography was his hobby) and he was so high up and the ledges were so close and there was just one little rope/rail thingy for him to hold on to that it was indeed intimidating to think he had to climb to that higher ledge (he showed us pictures of it all throughout this part of his lecture). He explained, that although it was intimidating, he slowly, inch-by-inch, walked toward the higher ledge. With his accompanying friends’ encouragement he got to the higher ledge and all of a sudden the walk that he took to the ledge behind him wasn’t so scary. Of course he tells the story better than I can, but he reinforced the math lessons with stories like these throughout the course, even bringing up such things as how Einstein failed Algebra 3 times before finally passing. Even if that’s not true, it helped build confidence in the students, and I think confidence makes a difference in a lot of students.</p>
<p>I got an A in his class, but I never fully grasped what his approach did for my way of thinking until the next term when I took a different math class with a different math professor who of course had the same style and approach as most other math professors I’ve ever had - much unlike my first professor. But even in this new professor’s dense-in-material scarce-in-examples lectures I applied the same way of thinking lessons I learned previously and I also got an A in that class.</p>
<p>I did a few other things to make me successful however. If a professor has an accent, so it’s hard to interpret what he/she is saying, then I would suggest to watch the Kahn Academy videos for that topic to see it that helps you grasp it better, or form a study group so that each person can take away something from the others that they themselves did not pick up on. Most importantly, do not be afraid to ask for help. Go to office hours or the math tutoring center (if your campus has one), and go consistently. For that second math class I went to every single class meeting (you’d be suprised how many students that are not great at math still skip some classes), I took as detailed and organized of notes as I could, went home to do the homework that same day/night, and whatever I couldn’t answer or couldn’t get from my notes I took into the math tutoring center the next day to go over it. I also did more than the assigned problems - a lot more. But I paid particular attention on the concept of what I was doing and how doing something to an equation or expression made a particular change in that equation or expression, which is different than trying to memorize specific steps in any specific look of a problem. Focusing on the concept allows for that concept to be recalled upon when a look of an equation or expression changes to a different, but identifiable, look.</p>
<p>All of this has not only made me adept at math enough to keep high grades in it (my math test scores consistently increased in that second class from 90% to 92% to 95% to 99%), but has made it more interesting - so much so that I am seriously considering to minor in it if my success continues. At the beginning fo that second college term English and Art History kept me awake and interested. I slowly became more disinterested in those courses and more interested in math. With my hard work and consistent help-seeking it became rewarding and satisfying knowing I had the solution, and more importantly, knowing why it was the solution, which in turn built even more confidence.</p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>I am good at math, and I think it has everything to do with how math was taught. I was born and went to middle school in another country.</p>
<p>My advice to you is the only way to get good at math is not memorization but to start with the basics and really understand it. Don’t just memorize that a squares = b squared + c squared but understand WHY it works that way.</p>
<p>Where I grew up, the quizes/test always had a problem that you never saw before the test, and you couldn’t get a top score unless you got that new problem. The point of that was to make sure that you actually understood how to apply the concepts, not just memorized a bunch of stuff or solved 100 of the same type of problem.</p>
<p>I hope this makes sense - you may really have to go back to the basics, because if you had a bad teacher or didn’t really understand something, it will impact you as you study more advanced math.</p>
<p>^^This same “confidence” professor had the philosophy that no one is ‘bad’ at math, they’ve just had bad expereinces with math. A single good experience with math can turn the tide of interest for the student.</p>
<p>I am a former math tutor/current physics and computer science major who is very strong on math, and I am also self-taught. I’m not saying this to brag, I’m saying it so you will take my advice seriously. IF YOU DON’T FOLLOW MY ADVICE, YOU WILL CONTINUE TO FAIL. And here it is:</p>
<p>Practice every day. Math is like learning to play an instrument. Some people have a knack for it, but even they will practice every day. Practice steps:</p>
<p>1) Do a set of practice problems, either from the examples in the book or from the problems in the book that you can get the answers for in the back. Were you assigned problems 1-20, even? Then do 1-20 odd so you can get the answers (or flip the even/odd depending on how your book does it), and do those as practice. The end of each chapter should have a chapter review set of problems or even a practice exams. These are perfect for studying before an exam.
2) Check your answers. Mark each one you did wrong.
3) Redo the ones you did wrong until you get the correct answer.</p>
<p>When doing the example problems in the first part of each chapter section, don’t just read through, actually do the problem with pen and paper, reproducing each step. Make sure you understand how to get from one step to another.</p>
<p>Here are some BAD ways to study that you should avoid:
- studying once or twice a week
- learning new material before a test (studying before a test is to reinforce material you’ve covered already, not introduce you to it)
- just reading through the book and not actually doing problems
- getting a problem wrong but not redoing it
- not going through homework and exam problems you got wrong to fix them
- not asking somebody, like your professor or TA, about a question you have
- not getting free tutoring either in the form of office hours or the free tutoring services that most colleges seem to offer (usually called peer tutoring)
- studying around distractions (tv, smartphones, laptops, noisy places)
- not doing enough practice problems
- over-reliance on calculators (they are for checking answers and doing arithmetic)</p>
<p>First there is no secret or shortcut to become perfect in Math.
You have to practice more and more to become perfect i.e hard work.
You can get a help from a tutor also.
Best of luck:)</p>