Nephew Michael and I were trading texts last night. He was working on test prep for his latest quiz, involving logarithms. Now I haven’t even thought about logarithms for 30+ years, so I had to brush up myself to help him sort through the issues. We got through it, but I must say he is really a lot more on top of his game than he realizes. Which brings me to the point of this post.

There’s been a fair amount written lately about math – call it meta-math, which is what you call it when you’re writing about a subject instead of performing in the subject. There’s a lot of myths about math (say that fast three times… ahem) like women as a group are just bad at it, or that some people are just never going to be able to balance a checkbook because – well, because numbers just elude them.

Stuff and nonsense, I say, stuff and nonsense! What most folks don’t realize is that math isn’t like reading a book or listening to music or watching TV. In order to work with mathematics, you have to treat it like a wrestling match. Huh? OK, you have to understand some basic notions that I’ve developed over many years of working with the subject, and tutoring kids from arithmetic to calculus. Here’s what I’ve determined:

You have to spend time with it, saturating your left brain with effort, to build it up like a pectoral muscle. In this instance, familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds understanding and facility with manipulation of the elements of mathematics. So my rule of thumb formula for him was for every hour you spend in class, you should spend 2.5 hours at home reviewing, working with and mastering your math topic. Then you will be about 1/3 the way there (fractions – the bane of every child’s existence…)

The second piece of advice I offered was: use your resources! Back in the day you had a math textbook that was about as helpful as a Latin dictionary to assist you in working through the problems. Math books are written by math teachers, and math teachers ostensibly are good at math. But not so good at writing about it, and less good at explaining it because…well, because it’s easy for them, why isn’t it easy for you? Duh!

But now, thanks to this glorious invention called the internet, you have a wealth of information available with a click of the mouse. I particularly like a site called:

mathsisfun.com

Don’t ask me why maths is plural – maybe mathisfun wasn’t available. Anyway, they take topics that are written in math teacherese and simplify them for mere mortals like us. When I went to school a very long time ago, I’d always get 5 A’s and a C, and guess what the “C” was in? Why, math of course. So how come I can do it now? See rule #1 above, with one additional, scientifically proven fact.

THE BEST WAY TO LEARN SOMETHING IS TO HAVE TO TEACH IT.

So when I was a math tutor, that was more chutzpah and financial desperation than ability. But I managed to keep up with fifth graders until I got better at it. And thus I developed notion #1.

But is that enough? Michael was smart enough to think maybe there was more to it than just grinding effort to become a math genius. And yes, there is more. Let’s say you look at a math problem and figure, I have no idea how to do that problem – don’t even know where to begin! After the 2.45 hours spent and a fruitless search thru the internet for help, you do like they did on that Millionaire TV show – you call a friend. It’s never a sin to ask for help, and if that friend is supportive and friendly (and hopefully math literate), sometimes your just explaining the problem provides you with some insight into how to solve it.

So there you have it – easy as 1,2,3! So the next time you have to solve a tiny little math problem, use these steps and you’ll be considered a math wizard or wizardess!