Any KUMON students out here?

Here we go, I wanted to know if there is anyway of finding the x and y axis without having to plot the entire thing. It takes ages doing so. Also the little thing they showing right at the bottom of the page, how did they actually come to that answer?

That's really unlucky! In our centre we have some assistants who can help to some stage and the instructor is really helpful. But if it's English I'm on my own a lot of the time!
Well if you enjoy it or think if it is helping you... Why not? You only ('only') have 4 levels left. Getting past I & J is an achievement itself I think!
Maybe look at the description sheet of the levels and see if you feel they are necessary to what you want to do.
Thank you for offering to help as well!

If your equation looks like $y = f(x)$ for some function f, then the y-intercept is at (0, f(0)). Do you get why that is?

The x-intercept is harder to find in general - you have to solve $f(x) = 0$ - but in this instance it's easy because $f$ is a fraction of two simple things.

The thing at the bottom - do you understand the steps of the manipulation they did? The idea is to get it into the form "easy thing + easy thing", which can be a bit of an art. That particular manipulation is essentially just "quotient and remainder": it's expressing the numerator (x+1) as $q (x-2) + r$. That's often a useful thing to do, because it makes the function look simpler - instead of having "wildly complicated" on top and "wildly complicated" on the bottom, you get "maybe-complicated" plus fraction of "not-so-complicated" and "wildly complicated". That's easier to deal with.

I understand your first explanation. Not the second. If I do the one at the bottom I come to;

x(squared)-x+3 = 0

Would you recommend Kumon? I was set to have my sister sign up but I was told they only make you do worksheets and do not teach. Is that true?

It was not bad but didn't improve my maths skills a lot to be honest...

They literally gave you sheets of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to do and you sit there doing them with other students and you'd "level" up as well.

And then for English, that wasn't much use at all... simply learning the spellings of words and learning the definitions without actually putting them into practice was utterly pointless.

It was an alright experience but I wouldn't recommend it to others personally

I am of the opinion that Kumon English is actively harmful in its "reading comprehension" sections. It teaches you to "comprehend" text by picking out phrases and filling them into the blanks. In response to a question like "Fill in the blank: Katy thinks animals ___", it results in pupils writing things like "Katy thinks animals she likes them a lot", which they would never dream of saying. (That was made up off the top of my head, but I've seen worse than that.)

You're absolutely correct, English at Kumon was just like that. I feel that this is an absolute controlled environment almost like a lab experiment whereby the results you achieve in the study (in this case your English work) cannot be applied to other settings because findings will differ in other situations outside the research area (i.e. - the English you learn at Kumon will be of no real use in "real" life).

I did not ever feel satisfied that I'd actually learnt something in Kumon. Sad really.

God Kumon was awful. Just lots of drilling, an insult to knowledge systems.

Definitely don't go unless you believe that humans should be trained as machines.

I thought it was really fun. The fact that you didn't enjoy getting good at very specific exercises doesn't mean other people don't.

Do you believe that humans shouldn't be taught to count? To add and subtract unaided?

[Smaug123 thought drilling was fun]
That is the whole issue with the oriental education system. Just route learning. Suppressing creativity and critical thinking.

Also, not for everybody. And you really shouldn't risk it because by demotivating those who dislike it you could be setting them off forever.


[shouldn't people be taught to count?]
What does that have to do with anything? What does having the need to teach something have to do with homogenous drilling exercises?

By your logic, the above posters cannot object to Kumon English either. After all, it seems you believe drilling is not only the most effective, but the only way to learn anything. Let's just recite the dictionary instead and see how you can write a book.

You seem to be unaware of what I actually said. I never said that "everyone likes the Kumon method". I said that "some people like the Kumon method". Your argument would apply to literally every teaching method (there are always people who dislike a teaching method, and we can't risk turning them off).

The teaching of arithmetic is precisely teaching people to better mimic computers. People should be taught to be better at arithmetic. But of course, people shouldn't be trained to be better computers.

The difference between this and the Kumon English example is that I entirely agree that drilling does not much aid the ability to comprehend text (or, for that matter, to write books). I do not agree with you when you imply that it does not aid the ability to count, and I do not agree with you when you opine that I think that drilling is the best way to teach anything. (I really don't know how you got that idea, actually. I can't find it anywhere in my entire collected writings.)

Should have known it seeing how 'proficient' Japanese tend to be in English proficiency.

And drilling tend to just demotivate learners. It's also an awful approach to knowledge.

The trouble with drilling is that there's absolutely no use to train people who can calculate without a calculator. We already have computers and humans can never calculate with as much data as computers can process.

The practice of drilling undermines the entire educational process, to make learning simply copying and pasting, and constant exercising for the 'correct' answers.

Haha totally understand your point there. I too think that drilling simply defeats the learner especially when they get things wrong. Drilling is not the method to start with to gain knowledge

Haha totally understand your point there. I too think that drilling simply defeats the learner especially when they get things wrong. Drilling is not the method to start with to gain knowledge

Exactly. It's almost anti-knowledge.

It doesn't help you with mathematical 'skills'. It may make you do simple calculation faster than the average person (but much slower than a computer), but it certainly does not teach you mathematical thinking, or the ability to apply or adapt. Definitely not enough for anyone to break new grounds.

Is this not desirable in, for instance, arithmetic? (And fine, I'm happy for you not to be able to do arithmetic in your head. Extremely so, if it ever comes to pass that I'm betting against you on something.)

Ah, the aim is to drill you in getting things right drilling is for when you kind-of understand things and just want to improve your mechanical facility with them.