I'm bad at math. How do you do it?

Don't know if this is the right forum~~
Basically, I'm terrible at math. I cannot retain numbers in my head or even copy them down accurately without making deletions/transposing them. Practice makes no difference in this matter.
Unfortunately, I need 4 quarters of math for my Biology major. (I will never understand why this is necessary).
So I'm wondering, for those Southperrians who are good at math, how do you do it?

I'm with you in this one man, math f'ucking sucks.

Wouldn't say I'm good at Math, but Calculus describes differentiable changes (continuous changes that happen over time), which are everywhere in the physical world. You can model everything with differential equations, from water leaking out of a party-hat-shaped tank to a falling leaf's trajectory. In Biology terms, I assume we can apply blood flow rate and appreciate how dangerous some clog in your veins is, the work required to pump blood across the body -> workload for your heart -> its life expectancy, what-not and what-not.

As for how to study it, I happen to have a weird liking for conceptual insight (only to a minor degree), and it kind of helps at times, other times, not so much. To do well in integration by parts, you simply have to do enough practices; but to find the volume of a donut or an ellipsoid requires more imagination capacity.

In an attempt to be a BIT more helpful:

I managed to get my wife better at math by repetition. Tons and tons of repetition and correction. I had her calculating 15% tips on made up amounts of money in her head. I told her how to do it, guided her, then had her say her steps out loud. This way I was able to see where her mistakes were.

But if repetition doesn't work for you, I generally come up with easier examples of the problem and have people solve that. Then I show them how to transition to the harder problem while keeping the steps from the easier problem in mind.

To keep numbers in your head:

Get flash cards with numbers on them. Have a friend hold them up one at a time and you say the number out loud (or just hold one up and put it face down on the table after). Do this for three cards. Now with all three cards hidden, try and recall the three numbers. Once you can do this with 3 cards, do it with 4 or 5 cards. You can do this with poker cards too if you just use 2-9.


Ex:
1) flip a card. if you flip over a 2, say "Two" Put the card face down.
2) flip over a 5 "Five" -> face down
3) flip over a 3 "Three" -> face down

4) at this point, hopefully you remember that you flipped a 2 then a 5 then a 3. You'd check to see if you DID remember them.

If you didn't just try again. Eventually you'll be able to pull it off. If you did it easily, move on to more cards in a row.

edit: bah double post?

Multiplying my prime numbers and determining the equations that add up to 10 both help a bunch. ;3

It was rather interesting to learn that 37 * 3 = 111 and 1/8 = 0.125...among many other tricks.

Lots of crying and frustration. That's how it goes for me.

math f'ucking sucks.

Amen my brotha

yah. Math is pretty lulzy, but I'm good at it

This is just as stupid as Physics is for bio majors. Yah you'll use it every now and then, but not to the extent where you should make everyone stress themselves out over it (CAL physics 7/8 series is essentially make or break- if you pass, you're home free, you fail, you just have to keep failing).

yah. Math is pretty lulzy, but I'm good at it

This is just as stupid as Physics is for bio majors. Yah you'll use it every now and then, but not to the extent where you should make everyone stress themselves out over it (CAL physics 7/8 series is essentially make or break- if you pass, you're home free, you fail, you just have to keep failing).

 ?

I'm pretty good at math, dunno how I do it.
I just kinda...
do.
y'know?

Well, what are you doing?

In an attempt to be a BIT more helpful:

I managed to get my wife better at math by repetition. Tons and tons of repetition and correction. I had her calculating 15% tips on made up amounts of money in her head. I told her how to do it, guided her, then had her say her steps out loud. This way I was able to see where her mistakes were.

But if repetition doesn't work for you, I generally come up with easier examples of the problem and have people solve that. Then I show them how to transition to the harder problem while keeping the steps from the easier problem in mind.

To keep numbers in your head:

Get flash cards with numbers on them. Have a friend hold them up one at a time and you say the number out loud (or just hold one up and put it face down on the table after). Do this for three cards. Now with all three cards hidden, try and recall the three numbers. Once you can do this with 3 cards, do it with 4 or 5 cards. You can do this with poker cards too if you just use 2-9.


Ex:
1) flip a card. if you flip over a 2, say "Two" Put the card face down.
2) flip over a 5 "Five" -> face down
3) flip over a 3 "Three" -> face down

4) at this point, hopefully you remember that you flipped a 2 then a 5 then a 3. You'd check to see if you DID remember them.

If you didn't just try again. Eventually you'll be able to pull it off. If you did it easily, move on to more cards in a row.

I've tried that, I've also tried copying series of numbers from one piece of paper to another. But I inevitably switch the positions of numbers (if I remember the chain) or lose it from my short term memory entirely. It is extremely frustrating because I feel like I have some type of problem with numbers, but don't know what.

Corn: I do every problem in every section my class covers, on top of our online homework. It's extremely time consuming, but doesn't seem to help. Doing this has landed me a nice C+ in my calc class (integrals this quarter) so far.

Kalovale: Yes, you can trace math back to being the source "founding" subject of everything, and it is useful for modeling biological processes, but in reality I won't actually be doing any of that...most biology jobs are math free.

Oh. Calculus is a pain in an arse.

Best advice is to just memorize the formulas and understand the concept of the derivative and integral. And if you're good memorizing biology stuff you ought to be good at memorizing just plain old formulas.

Oh. Calculus is a pain in an arse.

Best advice is to just memorize the formulas and understand the concept of the derivative and integral. And if you're good memorizing biology stuff you ought to be good at memorizing just plain old formulas.

Equations are easy enough, but I haven't actually noticed any in Calc yet :f6: Currently doing volumes of some wildly strange objects and rotating graphs around y and x axis.

Oh, now THAT was a pain int he arse. Just know when to use 2 pi r and when to use the pi r^2. or the 2 pi r h.

Use a math tutorial centre to help you out. Homework and repetition DO work so keep at it. Worst case just memorize the procedure and the rest (calculator work) should be fine.

Math is not an easy thing and doesn't come naturally to many people. Good luck.

I'm procrastinating on my per-calculus homework as we speak. I just...can't retain most material without the aid of a tutor. pomegranate sucks, man.

As I said, solid volumes from revolution require a bit of imagination. Essentially, though, you only have 4 options: Disc method along the x-axis, Shell method along the x-axis, Disc method along the y-axis and Shell method along the y-axis.

If you can imagine what each thing does, every problem of that kind will be a breeze brawl, I guess. You have to juggle a lot of terms (most often fraction-polynomials which are a pain in the ass). I wouldn't associate the inability to copy numbers/terms from one line to another as incompatibility with Mathematics, though, you just need to pay more attention. If you STARE at that x^5 and write it down, it's not going to be 5x, likewise for -(-(-(-(x^-2/3)))).
At least that's what I do. I make careless stupid mistakes all the time, most of them being careless reading of the question (and thus answering a completely irrelevant question) or copying down the problem (like missing that tiny power of five above the sum). There are two things I do to make sure I don't do that on the exam: write EVERYTHING out (x^4 evaluated at (-2) is not 16, it is (-2)^4) and read EVERYTHING three times over (okay, here I substitute -2 in, I should get (-2)^4 here...-looks down- yep.)
Practice doing problems properly when you do homework/exercise. You get used to that (or the bad) style and you WILL use it on the exam, which is when you're under a lot more stress and prone to make a lot more errors.

EDIT: Ignore this post.