Welcome to Jazz's
Math Hints
General Comments
This page contains links suggestions and strategies for solving math problems.
This is not intended as a Cookbook that will let you solve any
problem. Rather it is intended as guidance on how to disect a math problem
and organize the information so that you can discover the solution.
Comments and feedback may be emailed to me at: muondude at aol dot com.
How To Attack Word Problems
- Always read the problem carefully and more than once.
- Ask what do we know from the problem statement? What are the
"given". Often this is in the form of certain entities or things.
For example, the perimeter and area of a farmers field.
- How are the things related? Does the problem statement provide
any information on how the things are related? Can you express this
mathematically? Example, the farmers field has a length that is
twice the width. Thus L = 2 x W.
- Read the problem carefully to determine what quantity or thing
you are being asked to find or compute? How is this related to the
given quantities or things?
- How can you organize your information or calculations to help
you visualize it? Graphically, using tables, draw pictures or other ways?
- Sometimes it helps to work on a problem for a short time, say 15
minutes then drop it for a while and return to it again. When you
come back read it over again.
- Team Work: talk with your classmates about approaches to
solving the problem. Don't just ask for the answer or give it
out. Help your classmates to reason it out.
Thanks for visiting.
http://www.thelovedog.com/science/math_hints.html
Last Up-dated: 2003.12.14