[theking1]

Good at Humanities subjects, not at the sciences and it really pisses me off. I'd really appreciate some motivating anecdotes/tips and advice, and not comments on how 'you're born good at certain subjects'.

[Aquar]

Sorry to break it to you but some people ARE just naturally good at subjects. However, this doesn't mean that you can't be good at Maths because you're not naturally gifted.

I think the most important thing is to understand the absolute basics, and understand them well. Make sure that you're absolutely fluent with algebra as a minimum, because I find that anyone can learn mathematical concepts and apply them, but having fluency in basic principles is key to being able to tackle any problem you may come across.

Next time you're revising Maths, don't take what your book says for granted. Explore what it's saying, apply it to your own problems. What works for me is to look at WHY something works in Maths, not simply THAT it works and just apply it when I need to.

Just a few basic things that I think help me, but good luck!

[theking1]

(Original post by Aquar)
Sorry to break it to you but some people ARE just naturally good at subjects. However, this doesn't mean that you can't be good at Maths because you're not naturally gifted.

I think the most important thing is to understand the absolute basics, and understand them well. Make sure that you're absolutely fluent with algebra as a minimum, because I find that anyone can learn mathematical concepts and apply them, but having fluency in basic principles is key to being able to tackle any problem you may come across.

Next time you're revising Maths, don't take what your book says for granted. Explore what it's saying, apply it to your own problems. What works for me is to look at WHY something works in Maths, not simply THAT it works and just apply it when I need to.

Just a few basic things that I think help me, but good luck!

thank you Sir.

[lukas1051]

The only way to get good at maths is to practice. You learn a method or a concept and then you practice it. Nothing can really help it click, some people are just naturally more able to do this. Maths is about logic, not memorising facts, which is why IMO it is much harder to 'be good at' if you aren't already.

[Manitude]

Practice, that's about it.
I don't know how many thousands (or even tens of thousands) of questions I've done in my time, but without that I'd still probably be struggling with basic addition.

[Jodin]

Hullo, this is all super vague, but I was quite dreadful at maths until I had one good teacher in year 10 who taught things in a more abstract manner, now at uni doing maths I've found the most important thing is to look around for alternate explanations of things, I can never properly understand something if it's presented in a wishy washy way or via analogy or anything like that. Given a problem which something I'm being taught apparently solves I like to try and think about how I might solve the thing, if it's complicated I might not get all the details but usually my picture and the 'method' somewhat match up. I find that helps.

Example: I remember at A level being told that sin(x+y) = sinxcosy + cosxsiny without any reasoning, I was never going to remember that, so I tried to work out why it was the case, having spent a bit of time to do so I don't think I'll ever forget it now.

Edit: Don't forget to practice! My major downfall is usually just focusing on theory which I find I get along with quite well, neglecting actual examples and hence doing less well in the questions other would deem nice, like finding eigenvectors or something trivial, my arithmetic is quite dreadful and is always causing me problems, it's more important than you might think that you practice applying theory.

[anonstudent1]

(Original post by theking1)
Good at Humanities subjects, not at the sciences and it really pisses me off. I'd really appreciate some motivating anecdotes/tips and advice, and not comments on how 'you're born good at certain subjects'.

I would say try to understand the basics of what you are doing, make sure you understand what it is you are trying to do, rather then mechanically answering questions.
Any particular areas you are struggling with?

[beckycat]

Practice, practice, practice.

[tory88]

Until university level, get a decent understanding of the concepts. Then do a past paper, mark it and redo what you did wrong. Rinse and repeat.

[theking1]

(Original post by anonstudent1)
I would say try to understand the basics of what you are doing, make sure you understand what it is you are trying to do, rather then mechanically answering questions.
Any particular areas you are struggling with?

Cheers for the reply. My main areas of struggle seem to be algebra equations, angles... I could go on

The thing is, I recently started doing better at finance part of maths; because it started to interest me, however I don't see the significance of labelling the circumference of circles.

How could I improve my general logic?

[anonstudent1]

(Original post by theking1)
Cheers for the reply. My main areas of struggle seem to be algebra equations, angles... I could go on

The thing is, I recently started doing better at finance part of maths; because it started to interest me, however I don't see the significance of labelling the circumference of circles.

How could I improve my general logic?

Hmm i don't know how to improve your general logic lol, but maybe its the fact that you are not understanding the question or the method on how to answer questions that mean you struggle, not your logic.

Try typing your problems or the general area you are struggling with into youtube. Theres a lot of great teachers there who start at a really basic level and then go quite advanced.
Heres a teacher who I think is really great and makes things very clear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyLRpr2P0MQ
Thats for circumferences but he does a wide range of stuff and theres other good lecturers to. Let me know if you found it helpfull.
If you are struggling with a specific question, you could always try typing it on here. The maths people are generally very helpful.

[Melikeyflute]

I'd really like to know the answer to this question too.. so bump x 1000

N.b. I mean beyond the scope for A-level.

[Anythingoo1]

(Original post by Melikeyflute)
I'd really like to know the answer to this question too.. so bump x 1000

N.b. I mean beyond the scope for A-level.

Well I'm not sure how right I am but here's my 2 cents,

My dad, a lecturer at uni for engineer and mathematics undergraduates has always told me, if you wanna be good at maths, you need to loads and loads of practise. Maths is all about following a strict set of rules, and to familiarise yourself with these rules, you need to do as many questions as you can find on them. This is pretty much the only way you get good at maths. No one really looks at Calculus and thinks, yeah this really easy. It's all about practise.

[matty123]

Just practise. There is no other way. With maths, practise does really make perfect.

[Torpedo Fish]

Watch the mathematics videos on Khan Academy and do the practice questions until you fully understand the concepts and can apply them in a number of different ways to different problems.

[ThatPerson]

(Original post by theking1)
Good at Humanities subjects, not at the sciences and it really pisses me off. I'd really appreciate some motivating anecdotes/tips and advice, and not comments on how 'you're born good at certain subjects'.

Start with basics. Do you know your times tables? To some it seems like a silly question, but often I've seen people stumble at basic multiplication. Knowing times tables makes lots of things later much easier. As if you have something like 9x=54, you can easily know that x=6.

I was really bad at Maths at KS3 Level until I had a careers meeting before picking GCSEs and realised that I would like to achieve a degree in Physics or Computer Science. Both of those subjects are heavily mathematical.

With this knowledge in mind, I actively tried in lessons and paid attention to everything that was said. I managed to change my self assumption that I was terrible at maths and always would be.

I'm now at GCSE Level and I find maths pretty easy and have begun to read beyond my level into things such as Complex Numbers and Matrices.


My bottom line is that you must have enthusiasm for the subject. When I thought everything was hopeless and that I hated maths, I was terrible at the subject and couldn't even rearrange algebra. Borrow/Rent/Buy a CGP book and look through everything KS3 level, then GCSE Level and make sure you fully understand the topics and can do questions on them.

Also use www.khanacademy.org ; it is very helpful because your teacher cannot judge you and cannot have an opinion on what you're doing. In other words, you work at your own pace and you won't be embarrassed if you find that you don't know a simple topic such as multiplying fractions.

[Melikeyflute]

(Original post by Anythingoo1)
Well I'm not sure how right I am but here's my 2 cents,

My dad, a lecturer at uni for engineer and mathematics undergraduates has always told me, if you wanna be good at maths, you need to loads and loads of practise. Maths is all about following a strict set of rules, and to familiarise yourself with these rules, you need to do as many questions as you can find on them. This is pretty much the only way you get good at maths. No one really looks at Calculus and thinks, yeah this really easy. It's all about practise.

Just to clarify, when I say good at maths, I mean being able to absorb different concepts much faster than the average person. I don't think A-level maths really teaches you how to think this way. For exam prep I agree that if you familiarise yourself with a lot of the rules then it's very possible to achieve full ums but that's not what I was talking about.

[lebron_23]

(Original post by theking1)
Good at Humanities subjects, not at the sciences and it really pisses me off. I'd really appreciate some motivating anecdotes/tips and advice, and not comments on how 'you're born good at certain subjects'.

Do past papers. In studying for my GCSE's and i found maths a killer. But now i've moved myself up from a D (3 months ago) to getting consistent A*'s in the 90+ bracket. It was bothering me that i wasn't good at maths, and the fact that i was an A* student in every other subject made me just want to work harder at it. So i sat down, pulled up every single past paper that i could find (2005-2012) and went through all of them (after some light revision) and then religiously memorised how the mark schemes gave the answers if i got anything wrong. It goes to show that you can change how you perform in a subject. Look at me; i've hated maths with a passion from a very young age, and i've never ever passed a maths exam at high school (except for my mock in which i got a B, but that was because the grade boundaries were ridiculously low) but in the last 5 weeks, i've slowly started getting my hands on and working through all the maths material i can possibly find, and now i find myself sitting comfortably in the A* bracket with just over a week to go until my final exams although i'm not going to get complacent and just sit around!

So, the moral of the story/anecdote: DO PAST PAPERS AND LEARN THE MARK SCHEMES. And if you dedicate a certain amount of time to something and begin with the mindset that you WILL succeed no matter what, then anything should be possible (with in a limit) and no matter how late you leave it (again, being reasonable here - don't wait until the night before!) you can achieve great things. All you require is a positive frame of mind and the necessary resources to study your subject!!!

Good luck in whatever you're hoping to achieve!!!

[weirdnessandcoffee]

I have the same problem as you- my strengths are really high in humanities and languages, I'm ok at science- but I'm a failure at maths.
I'm always three or four marks off a C grade at maths, and personally- I'd prefer to have a C grade in maths than 7A*s in everything else.

[The Polymath]

(Original post by Aquar)
Sorry to break it to you but some people ARE just naturally good at subjects. However, this doesn't mean that you can't be good at Maths because you're not naturally gifted.

I think the most important thing is to understand the absolute basics, and understand them well. Make sure that you're absolutely fluent with algebra as a minimum, because I find that anyone can learn mathematical concepts and apply them, but having fluency in basic principles is key to being able to tackle any problem you may come across.

Next time you're revising Maths, don't take what your book says for granted. Explore what it's saying, apply it to your own problems. What works for me is to look at WHY something works in Maths, not simply THAT it works and just apply it when I need to.

Just a few basic things that I think help me, but good luck!

You must have read my mind

Fluency in the language of mathematics
Understanding of what you're doing

^ Keys to success

Plenty of people can follow instructions from teachers to get good grades, but give those people new questions and they will fail miserably. You need to have absolutely solid foundations to rely on and not have to think about using.

Now, some people will be naturally good at this (questioning where formulae come from, quickly picking up idea etc.) but there's no reason why you can't become good at it through hard work.

(Original post by lebron_23)
Do past papers. In studying for my GCSE's and i found maths a killer. But now i've moved myself up from a D (3 months ago) to getting consistent A*'s in the 90+ bracket. It was bothering me that i wasn't good at maths, and the fact that i was an A* student in every other subject made me just want to work harder at it. So i sat down, pulled up every single past paper that i could find (2005-2012) and went through all of them (after some light revision) and then religiously memorised how the mark schemes gave the answers if i got anything wrong. It goes to show that you can change how you perform in a subject. Look at me; i've hated maths with a passion from a very young age, and i've never ever passed a maths exam at high school (except for my mock in which i got a B, but that was because the grade boundaries were ridiculously low) but in the last 5 weeks, i've slowly started getting my hands on and working through all the maths material i can possibly find, and now i find myself sitting comfortably in the A* bracket with just over a week to go until my final exams although i'm not going to get complacent and just sit around!

So, the moral of the story/anecdote: DO PAST PAPERS AND LEARN THE MARK SCHEMES. And if you dedicate a certain amount of time to something and begin with the mindset that you WILL succeed no matter what, then anything should be possible (with in a limit) and no matter how late you leave it (again, being reasonable here - don't wait until the night before!) you can achieve great things. All you require is a positive frame of mind and the necessary resources to study your subject!!!

Good luck in whatever you're hoping to achieve!!!

Or not. This is the main reason that some people fail so hard at Maths A-level => they learnt mark schemes, relied on textbooks and teachers telling them every single step of working, and never became independent 'mathematicians'. It's all about *understanding* maths.