How to avoid stupid mistakes maths

I recently had my maths exam and I had studied thoroughly for the module yet I lost a lot of marks due to the number of stupid mistakes I made. All of which I realized after leaving the exam.

For example for 1 question I was given 2 variables x and y and their ranges. Then I was given 2 further variables U = x-y and V= x + y. The question just asked for the range of u and v. And I don't know what I was thinking but it did not occur to me that I could just use to the ranges of x and y to compute the ranges of u and v. I feel incredibly stupid for making this mistake because it was so simple. I was trying something overcomplicated to do this simple question which cost me time and marks.

How can I avoid doing absolutely stupid **** like this? Because it's frustrating me!

Not sure there is a single way to stop making mistakes but some of the usual things to do are:
* make sure you check to see how questions follow on, so think about how previous parts are used in subsequent parts
* explicitly think about different ways of approaching the problem
* try and estimate/approximate an answer to validate what you calculate
* simplify the problem down, so in your example you could have imagined x = {1,2}, y={3,5} so obviously v would be {4,5,6,7} ... and youd "discover" the right approach
* try and sketch/visualize the problem, recognise patterns, ...
* try and understand results so the sum of a arithmetic sequence is n/2[2a+(n-1)d], but its easy to understand using the guass trick so
number of terms * average value = number of terms[first + last]/2

The usual advice is to think about the first couple of lines of what youre going to do before putting pen to paper. Its easy to do pages of "dumb" algebra which looks impressive but has no value.

just don't be stooopid

Thanks for your advice! I think the last paragraph was the most useful 😭 the only reason I messed up this range question is because I blindly dived into the question without even thinking. I think if I had spent just 10 seconds thinking "well...I have the ranges of x and y already so to compute range of V and U...", I wouldn't have done something completely idiotic. Do you agree?

I recently had my maths exam and I had studied thoroughly for the module yet I lost a lot of marks due to the number of stupid mistakes I made. All of which I realized after leaving the exam.

For example for 1 question I was given 2 variables x and y and their ranges. Then I was given 2 further variables U = x-y and V= x + y. The question just asked for the range of u and v. And I don't know what I was thinking but it did not occur to me that I could just use to the ranges of x and y to compute the ranges of u and v. I feel incredibly stupid for making this mistake because it was so simple. I was trying something overcomplicated to do this simple question which cost me time and marks.

How can I avoid doing absolutely stupid **** like this? Because it's frustrating me!

Thanks for your advice! I think the last paragraph was the most useful 😭 the only reason I messed up this range question is because I blindly dived into the question without even thinking. I think if I had spent just 10 seconds thinking "well...I have the ranges of x and y already so to compute range of V and U...", I wouldn't have done something completely idiotic. Do you agree?