Aug 2Member-onlyWhy Should We Learn Math When Everyone Has Calculators?I hear this question a lot. I teach remedial math for the army and have even heard an instructor say that the only reason we didn’t allow calculators in class was that the ASVAB/AFCT doesn’t allow calculators on the test, which he thought was ridiculous. Yeah, that guy got a…Math4 min readMath4 min read
Jul 6Member-onlyFractions: Changing a Subtraction Problem with Borrowing into a Basic Addition ProblemI encourage my students to share the tricks they’ve figured out with me. A couple years back, I had a student who told me that when they are subtracting and have to borrow, they subtract the number from the 10 and then add the result. …Math2 min readMath2 min read
Jul 4Member-onlyMath: How We Teach It V.S. How We Do ItI came to teaching in an unusual route: I got my Ph.D. in Space Physics before becoming a teacher of remedial math for the army. This means I had several decades of using high-level math before trying to teach low-level math. When I started teaching, I realized that I didn’t…Math4 min readMath4 min read
Published inILLUMINATION·Jun 1Member-onlyHow to Start Liking YourselfSeveral years ago, I went through some rough times and spent some time depressed. I really didn’t like myself and thought about how much better off everyone I knew would be without me around. I recognized this as dangerous thinking and wanted to like myself but didn’t know how. Reading…Depression3 min readDepression3 min read
May 21Member-onlySimplifying RatiosRatios are handy for scaling things up or down. It’s best when we can see a clear relationship in the numbers, however, sometimes the numbers aren’t always the easiest to work with. In addition, students sometimes get confused about which two numbers you can simplify and which you can’t. I…Math3 min readMath3 min read
Apr 30Member-onlyMultiplying 2 Mixed NumbersMultiplying a fraction or a whole number times a mixed number is easy: You break the mixed number apart and multiply the fraction or whole number times each part. (I’ve talked about this in articles here and here) Multiplying 2 mixed numbers, however, has been problematical. Recently, I was working…Math2 min readMath2 min read
Apr 3Member-onlyAre We Teaching Math Wrong?I don’t have to repeat any statistics regarding America’s math scores; we all know they’re bad. I sometimes hang out on Quora and there are hundreds of questions essentially asking “Why do we need to learn math?”. They don’t see the point. I work teaching remedial math to army soldiers…Mathematics4 min readMathematics4 min read
Feb 13Member-onlySubtracting with Multiple Units: Borrowing at the EndWhen working with multiple units, be they inches and feet, pounds and ounces, or fractions and whole numbers, we have an option when subtracting that we don’t when we’re just using regular numbers: we can break the problem apart and borrow at the end (no loan application needed). The easiest…Arithmetic2 min readArithmetic2 min read
Feb 11Member-onlyMultiplying Large Mixed Numbers by FractionsThe standard method of multiplying a mixed number by a fraction is to convert the mixed number to an improper fraction, multiply straight across and then convert it back to a mixed number. …Math3 min readMath3 min read
Feb 11Member-onlyReuse/Recycle Your MathI’ve found a lot of my math hacks by being lazy. I don’t want to use any more effort than I have to to get an answer. One of the first things I started doing is to reuse or recycle the math I already did. One of the first things…Math4 min readMath4 min read
