There's no one method that will make every problem easy, but there are general problem solving skills that can make things easier. I'll give you the advice I give my students. It applies to word problems especially, but it can be helpful in general.
The first thing you should do is write down the relevant information and, if applicable, draw a diagram. Seeing the problem visually can often make things a lot easier. Sometimes it might also be helpful to use a graphing calculator.
Then ask yourself if everything you wrote down and/or drew is actually necessary to solve the problem and check if you missed anything.
Read the problem carefullly at least twice. I can't tell you the number of times that a student has asked me a question where the information was explicitly given in the problem. There are also times I've missed something obvious myself because I didn't carefully read the problem.
If you're still stuck, ask yourself guided questions: What exactly is the problem asking for? Look at the information you wrote down and ask yourself, “How can I take the information they gave me and build a bridge to the information I'm being asked for?”
If that doesn't work, get more specific. What kind of problem is it? Are there strategies you know that work on similar problems? Is there a formula you need to know?
If you feel lost, ask yourself what exactly you don't understand. You might write down the relevant concepts that you do understand as well as those you don't. If necessary, get even more specific. What is it about those specific concepts that's confusing you? If you narrow down what exactly you don't get, you might be able to figure it out of you think about it. And you might even know more than you think you do — it's just that the problem seemed overwhelming and the knowledge was burried in the back of your mind. These kinds of prompting questions can “unlock” that knowledge.
If you can't figure it out on your own, Google it and/or look on youtube. If you're in any course that's Calc 3 or lower, there's a very good chance that you'll quickly find multiple different explanations of whatever topic is confusing you online. Maybe you didn't understand the way your teacher and/or textbook explained something. That's perfectly normal, as different people sometimes need things explained differently. For a lot of math concepts, a quick Google search will yield tons of different explanations, so you'll likely be able to understand at least one of them. As you get to higher level courses, you may find it harder to get answers online, simply because fewer people will be studying those topics, but I doubt you're at that point.
If you need to, ask specific questions on quora. I've gotten a lot of help understanding different math concepts from people on here and I've helped others too. There's a really great math community here, of people who enjoy helping others understand math.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment