/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.2872768]

Hi /sci/. I wanted to know, what makes a person good at math? I just started the chemistry series at my school and the math of it overwhelms me. Sometimes word problems just don't click to me and it's kind of discouraging. What helps or has helped you in the past?

[Anonymous No.2872979]

bumping

[Anonymous No.2872991]

Practice.

Work every type of problem you can.
Make tons of mistakes, and then learn from them.

[Anonymous No.2873001]

All intelligence is just realizing and memorizing patterns.

You must into patterns.

[Anonymous No.2873058]

>>2873001 Yes, practice makes nearly perfect...sometimes.
>>2872991 I get what you mean. I think I'm weaker on the memorizing part than I am the realizing part.

Seriously /sci/. What's your ~secret~ advantage when it comes to mathematics?

[Anonymous No.2873068]

>>2873058
There is no "secret." That's the only way to effectively learn a subject.

[Anonymous No.2873073]

>>2873058

/sci/'s secret? 95% of /sci/ is math-tarded, but everything you needed to know has been mentioned...

Get good at problem solving by doing more and more problems... I mean there's other small things you could try...

Try doing math at different times of the day to approach the material when your mind is thinking "differently"... you probably tend to think better in the morning, so cram some math there... actually enjoy what you're doing...

[Anonymous No.2873074]

Buckle down and study, faggot

[Anonymous No.2873087]

There is no secret to math.

You just have to memorize sets of rules on how to manipulate numbers and then you practice those rules.

Anyone who says they are not a math person or bad at math, is just saying that they don't practice enough to be better.

Of all things, math is the most learnable. There is nothing subjective about math. You either do it right or wrong.

Get some high school book pdfs and go to khan academy and work your way up from there.

[Anonymous No.2873088]

>>2873058
I just get it. Everyone's got talents. I can't draw. I can't write that well (creatively, at least; I'm great at grammar and syntax and whatnot). I compose music but I'm VERY analytical about it; it's all theory-based ideas; catchy melodies are really hard. Basically, my brain is wired for analysis, and it takes lots of work to break out of that mindset. Your brain is most likely built with other talents, but logic and abstraction takes work.

[Anonymous No.2873098]

Study and think about problems independently, the thing that helped me the most when I was young was reading about special relativity and working out conversions which is like all of first year chemistry. Just practice bro, its the only way to get better.

[Anonymous No.2873105]

Do not think of math as a series of independant rules that must be memorized. It isn't.
Work to understand the greater meaning behind it.
I'm not sure how to explain it, like, you can know the volume of a sphere is given by 4/3*pi*r^3
You can memorize that formula as a fact.
Or you can realize that it's the answer you will get if you integrate a sphere in spherical coordinates. If you understand integration, this derivation and many others that seemed to just be indepedant facts can be derived at will.
Math is not a subject matter to be memorized, it is a tool to be learned, understood and utilized.

[Anonymous No.2873111]

>>2873073 Try doing math at different times of the day to approach the material when your mind is thinking "differently"... you probably tend to think better in the morning, so cram some math there

Okay! Thanks, this sounds like a good idea.

>>2873087 go to khan academy and work your way up from there.

On it as we speak.

>>2873088 Your brain is most likely built with other talents, but logic and abstraction takes work.

Yeah. Seems like mine is less wired for more practical things.

[Anonymous No.2873114]

It also helps to be cognizant of what kind of mind you have. I have some friends who, say, if they see a flock of birds flying overhead they tantalize themselves with how the air is behaving in and around the birds whereas if I see birds flying I usually cop out on instinctual motivations of each individual bird and the overwhelming effect of the presence of a group and its effect on the actions taken by an individual bird. You might assume that my friend may enjoy physics and that I may enjoy social psychologies.

How do you, OP, see the world? Do you see at all? I regret going into an inductive field of study (computing) when I see the world as a psychologist does (deductive). Protip: if a field isn't in line with your mind get the fuck out now.

pic related to my earlier points

[Anonymous No.2873136]

Yea to build on what was said earlier... there have been times where I'd work on a concept for like an hour in the evening, but then after sleeping on it and thinking about it again in the morning, it just comes to me.

[Fr 87 No.2873143]

Honestly?

For me it was moving to the US and really having to try hard to understand English in all its complexities that really opened me up to math.
You know how they say that math is a language? It's not some bullshit analogy, it's completely true. Except that math is EASIER than trying to learn a petty human language because there are no random exceptions to rules.

For me it really helped to understand that just as you need to say things a certain way to get your meaning across, you need to do so in math.

You also need to stop thinking of math in terms of "GOSH! I'm just such an angsty teenager and this is never going to help me in TEH RAEL WURLD why am I being taught this? I'm so much smrtar than the teacher and everyone else!"
and more in terms of a complex network, some of which will be useful in some regard (Shit son, I use some pretty complex math in my daily life and I think it makes it easier!). In order to know how to write a sonnet or a love letter you first need to know how your ABCs if that makes sense.

Fuck the rules, the tips and the tricks that your math teachers teach you and try to form your own relations and understanding with the patterns in your problems.

[Anonymous No.2873155]

>>2873111
Yeah whoever mentioned Khan Academy that was a good choice. There are plenty of free math lectures online by really great people. If you get into the harder classes MIT has entire lectures on calculus 1/2, 3 and 4 and linear algebra. Calc 1 and 2 is a one semester course there.

[Fr 87 No.2873166]

Patrick JMT

is another awesome source for math help along with Khan Academy.

[Anonymous No.2873175]

>>2873105

This. Go learn to motherfucking integrate right now. Fuck.

Integral of x^2? (x^3)/3.

Integral of x^8? (x^9)/9

Motherfucker this is so easy! Fuck!

Integral of e^x? FUCKING e^x! How the fuck, do you even understand how cool that is!? You can find area under the curve. Fuck you you can do it. Integrate yeah!

Want to know the area of a circle?

INTEGRATE!

Want to know the area of a weird fucking lamina?

FUCKING INTEGRATE!

Want to know the area of the universe?

GOD DAMN THERE IS AN INTEGRAL FOR THAT, FUCK.

Take those important concepts and apply them to all that shit! Yeah! Triangles are fucking important! Use those goddamn triangles!

[Anonymous No.2873226]

lol math

I'm not sure why i'm good at it. I'll struggle through problem after problem, over and over without really getting it. Then i'll do one problem, and suddenly it all clicks, and I understand it.

[Anonymous No.2873238]

>>2873175
I FUCKING LOVE INTEGRAL. FUCK DERIVATIVES INTEGRALS ARE WHERE IT'S AT YO

[Anonymous No.2873257]

>>2873175
You haven't integrated it, you just took the anti derivative. You did take the indefinite integral, but you forgot the plus C at the end; which makes you wrong.

[Anonymous No.2873283]

>>2873257
>implying antiderivatives and indefinite integrals aren't identical

[Anonymous No.2873302]

>>2873283
I implied they were the same thing, thus my second sentence... are you retarded?

I also implied that the term integral doesn't imply indefinite integral...

[Anonymous No.2873305]

>>2873257

Motherfuck I need no arbitrary constant!

The arbitrary constant is the magic of the galaxy!

Look at the shining sparkling invisible limits of integration. Do you see them? They are glorious! That integral is not indefinite! It is defined you pig!

[Anonymous No.2873319]

>>2873305
Now I'm not sure if you know what a definite integral is... you didn't have any constraints, i.e. [x1,x2]

[Anonymous No.2873406]

Thank you /sci/.