How do you study for maths? (1 Viewer)

d-alarmclock

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For me, maths is the hardest subject to study for because I can never get myself motivated to start. Saying that, I do extension 2.

How do you study for maths? Especially for the topics you don't understand?
 

Drongoski

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What? Still not motivated? Your Trials are about a month or two away and your HSC finals not too long after that. Not much time left to figure out how best to study for maths.
 

britaker

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Gonna sound ridiculous but I write notes on what's going to be assessed (yeah I know how do you write notes for math, hurr hurr hurr) then work through past papers. Usually by that point I know what I'm doing wrong/don't understand fully and can go back and revise more specifically. Feel free to disregard, I'm no 4U kid xD
 

rumbleroar

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For topics I don't understand, I start from the textbook questions and work through the basics. Eventually, that helps build up my foundations and look at doing questions from trial papers, etc. But generally, I do HSC questions (by topic) and trial papers.

For lack of motivation, just think about how great it is when you do really well in a test or something :p I also use maths as a "break" for my other subjects because I find it relaxing just doing maths.
 

rumbleroar

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Gonna sound ridiculous but I write notes on what's going to be assessed (yeah I know how do you write notes for math, hurr hurr hurr) then work through past papers. Usually by that point I know what I'm doing wrong/don't understand fully and can go back and revise more specifically. Feel free to disregard, I'm no 4U kid xD
me too! :D (and I do 4U as well!)
There's nothing wrong with writing notes for maths, it's actually a good way to ensure your foundations are solidified.
 

britaker

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me too! :D (and I do 4U as well!)
There's nothing wrong with writing notes for maths, it's actually a good way to ensure your foundations are solidified.
Yeah I just like having all my formulae and what not in one place. But duuuuude. How can you find math relaxing? O_O
 

dinomyte

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Same, I study for maths by doing textbook questions first, then progressing into HSC and past paper questions. :) Right now I'm having trouble in volumes so I'm trying to start from scratch from the textbook. For me personally, when I do enough "basic" textbook questions, my foundations become solidified anyways so I don't write notes, but it's different for everyone.
Why aren't you motivated? is it the work load? Do you find maths hard? or is it just you're seriously not bothered? I think you should address the source of your un-motivation. And picture the end result, you want to do well in maths!! :)
 

d-alarmclock

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What? Still not motivated? Your Trials are about a month or two away and your HSC finals not too long after that. Not much time left to figure out how best to study for maths.
Trials in less than 2 weeks actually. Just curious, that's all. I'm pretty sure I've burnt out.
 

d-alarmclock

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Same, I study for maths by doing textbook questions first, then progressing into HSC and past paper questions. :) Right now I'm having trouble in volumes so I'm trying to start from scratch from the textbook. For me personally, when I do enough "basic" textbook questions, my foundations become solidified anyways so I don't write notes, but it's different for everyone.
Why aren't you motivated? is it the work load? Do you find maths hard? or is it just you're seriously not bothered? I think you should address the source of your un-motivation. And picture the end result, you want to do well in maths!! :)
I think the reason for my un-motivation is, in earlier years I used to get 95-100% in all my maths exams, but after BSc, that just hasn't been happening. The poorer my results, the more I get demotivated I guess
 

d-alarmclock

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For topics I don't understand, I start from the textbook questions and work through the basics. Eventually, that helps build up my foundations and look at doing questions from trial papers, etc. But generally, I do HSC questions (by topic) and trial papers.

For lack of motivation, just think about how great it is when you do really well in a test or something :p I also use maths as a "break" for my other subjects because I find it relaxing just doing maths.
The only topic I found fun for 3 unit was polynomial and math induction. Circle geo is easy, but frustrating.
For 4u, I cannot bring myself to do complex, I just cannot stand it. I think conics is elegant, but I haven't touched it in so long.
 

rumbleroar

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Yeah I just like having all my formulae and what not in one place. But duuuuude. How can you find math relaxing? O_O
IDK its all up to personal preference I guess
I find essay writing + creative subjects really challenging because everything needs to be "perfect" so my inner perfectionist is pretty much ruining my experiences with it haha I'm way less pedantic about maths...its like, as long as I can get it out, its done!!

Trials in less than 2 weeks actually. Just curious, that's all. I'm pretty sure I've burnt out.
if you're burnt out, just take a break. It's pointless being too fixated on being burnt out when you can be doing something more enjoyable that will eventually bring you back to a point of productivity ^_^

The only topic I found fun for 3 unit was polynomial and math induction. Circle geo is easy, but frustrating.
For 4u, I cannot bring myself to do complex, I just cannot stand it. I think conics is elegant, but I haven't touched it in so long.
hmmm is there a reason why you find some topics less enjoyable than others? maybe if you looked at determining why you feel like maths is chore and fix that, it might motivate you to study more.

Yeah complex is a pretty love or hate topic. Why don't you like it? And maybe you should start with conics first just to get in the groove before try tackling other topics you're less comfortable with.
 

Futuremedstudent

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Just think about the moment you finish your final maths exam in ur life, that could be a source of motivation.
 

strawberrye

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The only way you can study for maths is essentially to understand mathematical concepts, apply your understanding by practice questions of increasing difficulty, and checking your answers and working out with those provided by the textbook or with your teacher/tutor. Before each maths exam, I would also do a summary of all the formulas that I would need and all the tips and tricks for each topic and revise over that before the exam.

One very important tip is to avoid exposing yourself to new, difficult questions the day before the exam-you would often be panicked and this would worsen your exam performance because you are not entering the exam with a calm, clear mind.

Well, I had a habit to try to do my maths homework before it was set-so that I had more time for other subjects like English. I used an actual grid book-I found it particularly useful when I am drawing trigonometry graphs, but it is up to you, it doesn't really matter what type of book you use as long as you set out your questions neatly and in a legible manner. I did divide my pages in half, not to save space, because it was the format I was accustomed to. I would write out the question, write my working out, and ticked or crossed my own work by marking my answers with those of the textbook. And if I got a question wrong, I would re-do it several times until I get it right or I could ask my teacher. When I understood the mathematical concepts, I would then do practice trial papers to consolidate my knowledge.

One last important tip I can give you is that you need to ask questions the minute you don't understand something-don't leave any maths lessons without understanding everything about the maths concept conveyed-because maths is a sort of accumulative subject where if you don't understand something and don't clarify it, it can have a snowball effect. I have a habit of writing tips on the silly mistakes I've made or tips to do a certain type of question alongside questions I got wrong and I re-do these questions before the exam and remind myself to avoid making these mistakes.

MATHS is a subject that needs to be practiced on a daily basis, you cannot get away with studying it the day before the actual exam. You need to understand the approach to achieve a solution to the problems, not just knowing how to answer a problem, but knowing the different types of problems you can encounter in any topic and the variation in the solution method to achieve them. Essentially, practice, practice, practice is the key to succeed in Maths.
 

BLIT2014

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Teaching the concepts to others helps cement information :)
 

Shazia25

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I totally agree..... I was an A+ student in math in yrs7-10.... now I pretty much suck at 3U... it gets hard to study hard for a subject when u know the end result will not be great.. :/
 

hecticated

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I think the only way to study maths is to actually do the questions. You can write really good maths notes, sure but you really need to do the questions to solidify your understanding. Just do as many questions as you can. I think you should go through some of the past papers and realise what you need revising on and then do the questions from DIFFERENT textbooks because there are many different questions on the same topic. After a while you will begin to recognise certain questions and then you should know how to answer it.
 

iStudent

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Get a tutor for concepts you don't understand.
and besides that I find maths interesting :D (so I treat doing maths as a 'break' from my other boring and tedious subjects)
 

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