Last Updated on February 16, 2023 by Editorial Team
After classroom teaching, or before the examinations, one may need to spend some time alone with the academic books to prepare. While one may be clear about their goals, about what to study and practice, they may look for quick tips that can make this quality time alone further efficient. For subjects like math, these hints are more crucial as the individual may need to be versed with multiple sets of data like formulas and other values. To make the study sessions easy, convenient, and engaging, here we will look into some tips, insights, and strategies to make your journey gratifying with math.
Quick tips to improve math alone – Here are some insights
With numbers and logic as its core elements, math is a unique subject, and accordingly, giving it exclusive attention with an amalgamation of meticulous yet resourceful learning is important.
Here are some handy tips that you may choose to master math even if you are alone in preparation:
- Plan for the perfect time to study to avoid distractions. Some may prefer to sit with volumes at early hours, while others may like to prepare at late night. Choose the appropriate time, feel convenient and then ensure other tips.
- Look into having multiple resources at a time. Usually, reference books and notebooks along with calculators may be ensured. But, since the preparation needs to be done alone, additional resources like websites and online tools may be assistive. A few choices of the same are depicted in later sections.
- Ensure you study in a peaceful location. Usually, a closed room, park, or beside a campfire is a great idea
- Make a habit to take a short note of every concept that you have been learning. These notes are often handy when referring the notions back again.
- Understand the derivation and formula. Start with solving the examples of books before stepping into complex sums.
- Craft a quick reference sheet that contains formulas, crucial values, and log values to assist in easy calculations.
Strategies to employ these resources better
While self-studying math might be something you are just venturing into, nonetheless, we have enough insight to know how well we study and under what circumstances. Here are a few instances:
- If a person studies best under pressure, then a personal strategy would be to work with a goal that’s time-bound.
- If you function better by completing complex concepts beforehand and completing easier ones later, then the best strategy would be to align your chapters in decreasing the order of difficulty and studying them.
- Another strategy that could be really helpful is to explain your learning to someone, and ask them to question you if they don’t understand, which would allow you to know how far you have actually understood.
While the below-mentioned tools come in handy for a self-study enthusiast, strategy is always important along with the zeal to achieve a directed goal. Committing to a subject as polarizing as Math, one may look into ensuring a plan of action like:
1. Develop a map
A mental map, with distinctions on “how” and “when” to study a particular chapter, can prove to be highly effective for in-depth understanding.
Combining interlinked chapters to be studied together and aligning the remaining chapters on the basis of their difficulty level will definitely improve the time management around the study plan with a result-oriented work plan to avoid burnout while studying.
2. Dive In Deeper
With a map in hand, we are sure to reach our destination. Nonetheless, it is important to be able to enjoy the view alongside. Diving deeper into the concept implies that the learner needs to start by comprehending what the topic is all about. Later, they may organize the points learned in the hierarchy to make sure they may retain them easily later. Finally, a few examples of the same well-formatted may ensure a better understanding of the notions. This may also ensure that the concept is well-understood.
3. Practice
With a core understanding of the concept at hand, try to find problems associated with the portions you have read, and practice through them to allow a wider as well deeper understanding of the application of those concepts.
This could involve understanding the formula by practicing their derivation and interlinking them with your daily activities without using gadgets like calculators.
4. Scoop out the Confusion
While practicing can make an individual efficient, there are always some concepts that seem ambiguous and require an intuitive understanding rather than memorizing the steps to it. Accordingly, understanding the “Why” of the math behind a concept or a problem works through various sources can help with questions that would be typical for average arithmetic problems.
5. Above and Beyond
The ultimate goal may be to learn the subject apart from scores. Consequently, applying the concepts learned above and beyond classrooms is necessary. For instance, with a resource like citizenmath at hand, one can definitely work to use linear equations of concepts in relation to real-world problems, like increasing health issues or homelessness.
Last-minute trick- Admirable packets of solutions!
While hard work has been a constant through this journey of self-studying math, smart work can prove to be extremely instrumental in the remaining crucial minutes before an exam.
So, now it’s time to quiet your mind and feed it with small pills of information that you should create and consume when the time comes for them to show their quick and effective work.
These pills can be created by:
#1 Skimming through the content allows a quick revision to the tricky and lengthy formulas and definitions that might otherwise take longer.
#2 Make sure to highlight the crucial steps where multiple concepts are used simultaneously to reach the solution.
#3 Jotting down notes and preparing cue cards never goes wasted for personal understanding and a personalized course of revision.
Math learning platforms for self-study
There are a few websites that can assist students in a distinct way. Some of these mentioned
below, are extremely user-friendly, with a free interface for the most part of it or at least for the initial few services they offer. Being creative and interactive, these are great for students who wish to learn the nitty-gritty of mathematical concepts.
1. Better explained
Better explained is a website-based free resource for students trying to ace self-study in mathematics. It hopes to create a student community that doesn’t memorize but understands math. This website allows students to view a map of the subject and the way they want to learn it instead of pushing them into directions that have been proven useful in eras that no longer exist.
It offers articles that explain topics on the basis of the concept one might want to learn (e.g.: calculus, algebra, geometry, etc.), and also, on the basis of the learning technique an individual might want to employ (eg: intuitive learning, cartoons, analogies, etc.). This website can allow a student to harness their potential for self-studying mathematics in a way that not only makes them competent but refines their concepts with a resource offering a helping hand from the beginning of their journey to a more complex and futuristic career in the subject.
2. Coursera
With a total of 1114 courses, this platform may ensure a vast exposure to the subject of mathematics; Coursera is available both as a website as well as a mobile application. This resource offers training that is certified by extremely prestigious institutions, like those of John Hopkins University, MIT, and Stanford University.
All you have to do to access the abundance that this resource has to offer is Sign Up, Search the course you are looking for, use keywords, and begin. Coursera may be a noteworthy resource with its authentic information to the affiliations and recognitions it offers an individual. These features may make it apt for both learning and professional development.
3. BRILLIANT
Brilliant is a web cum application-based resource that has an outreach of over 11 million credible users, with it being featured in articles of The Atlantic, and The Guardian.
This resource curates a learning path based on the individual’s needs through those courses, allowing them to choose the level of difficulty they want to begin with, and all you have to do is sign up to access the best possible experience.
BRILLIANT is again a recommended resource because of its ability to concisely and refurbish the mundane process of mathematical learning through heavy books into dynamically visual and interactive ways that are not just limited to learning by reading but learning by trying.
4. ZEARN
ZEARN provides a mathematics-friendly space to one and all with not just a singular and most popular approach to problem-solving but a rather global and holistic approach where solutions to a problem can be multiple with even more ways to discover them.
It provides a research-backed and evidence-based approach to learning mathematics and only minimal supervision by adults. The resource requires an adult, either an educator or a guardian to sign up and create the account, followed by which it allows learning through digital manipulatives and a differentiated support system, built-in for students, who might be struggling to understand certain concepts.
5. citizenmath
Citizen math might seem to be just like another free resource providing supplemental guidance to your child. However, it offers something more than just education to an individual. This resource is a little different from the others mentioned above as it allows a well-read child who has understood concepts to apply them above and beyond just their classrooms.
This interface connects mathematical problems like compound interest with poverty and house rent to homelessness, which boosts cultural knowledge, engagement, and morale and a holistic viewpoint for future researchers in the field.
Online and offline tools- Handy reckoners
Apart from the resources mentioned above, there are multiple other alternatives as well. These may assist in developing such platforms that make learning in the present world as easy as possible. These are both online and offline. A good online instance is Cuemath, which is an application that works quite alike to the websites discussed. These could be offline as well, which involves books offering question banks or questions that require a deeper and more complex understanding of the concepts, which is definitely what we look to practice when we are studying for competitive exams. Here are a few other tools for you:
1. Prodigy
In the recent trend, a mind-numbing increase in the use of online gaming by kids may be noticed. What if that could be used for something bigger than just entertainment. If you believe that can be the way forward, Prodigy might be the resource you are looking for, for your child.
It caters to students from grades 1 to 8, through gaming necessitated by mathematical problem-solving. It is a free-of-cost platform, for both educators and students, with a compulsion of an adult to create the account if it is to be used by a child.
While the website provides a gaming-based learning environment, it is inclusive in its nature as well, with an array of options to choose one’s avatar that is inclusive of almost all races and languages, depending upon the countries it caters to.
2. Fraction Talks
This site is a tool to learn about shapes and play with them to ensure better grip. Opening the site, the user can observe a simple interface with multiple concepts to learn and play with. These include Squares, Triangles, Manipulatives, Polygon, photos, and Miscellaneous chapters.
Users may choose squares, triangles, or polygons to interact with various shapes and formations. By choosing photos, one may get access to real-life images where these shapes can be inferred. Finally, learners can choose miscellaneous to get access to other random shapes like circles and curves.
For pupils who are interested in the exploration of shapes and geometry, this tool/site may be a noteworthy pick not only because it is free, but also for its serene and distraction-free interface. Further, this tool also provides some unique insights. Users may check the same by choosing the In the classroom in the menu bar.
Concluding thoughts
With the zeal to self-study the subject of mathematics, a major chunk of the journey to effective learning stands traveled already through traditional pedagogies; nonetheless, the gaps may require some guidance and support along the way, which we believe can be provided for effective and efficient learning through the resources, tools, and strategies mentioned above. Accordingly, check out the above choices and strategies to ensure a fitting set of tips for your little one.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,