geoGreeting
Happy New Academic Year (using geoGreeting) (Click on the image).
Many of you will still be enjoying your holidays but holidays are perhaps a good time to make some resolutions for the next academic year.
Firstly, remember the ten eleven commandments!
To elaborate a little more on some of these:
5 – looking it up – there are several excellent resources online for you to look up definitions or find extra examples. Never rely on just one source if you are finding a topic tricky, it can be helpful to see explanations written by different authors.
6 – To learn Mathematics you need to do Mathematics. You can never do enough examples! There are plenty of questions here (with answers included). Have you looked at the problems on Brilliant? New problems are published regularly and are suitable for younger school students all the way through to university students. Or perhaps you might like to try some of the trickier problems from the challenges set by the University of Mississippi. (These problems from the Problem of the Week category are open to people of any age).
9 – if you want to practise your arithmetic you could play some games! If you enjoy Maths games there are many excellent free resources available.
10 – on writing the language of mathematics correctly – see this clear guide to writing Mathematics from Dr Kevin P Lee and from John Kerl some excellent tips for mathematical handwriting, many of these tips these apply to students of all ages – do you distinguish carefully between a 1 and a 7 for example? Perhaps it is hard to tell whether you have written a 2 or a z or perhaps your 5s look a bit like a letter s?
Have a look at Peter Alfeld’s guide to Understanding Mathematics which he wrote for his students at Utah University.
Are you familiar with all the excellent (free) resources online to help your studies? Have you tried the brilliant Desmos graphing calculator for example, or used WolframAlpha to check your work?
Some more thoughts for you.
- Are you guilty of making any of the classic mistakes?
- How are your problem solving skills? There is plenty of good advice available – see this publication from Arizona State University for example
- If you are studying at university then have a look at Kevin Houston’s ‘How not to get a good mathematics degree‘ and ‘How to get a good mathematics degree‘. He also has provided a pdf file you can download: 10 Ways to Think Like a Mathematician. Kevin Houston works at the University of Leeds in the UK.
If you are trying to get organised generally then some of the resources on this page might be useful. I recommend Evernote highly (it’s free).
Wishing you all a very happy and productive new academic year!
Mathematics for Students 