Members Phait Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 I've got some studying for Accuplacer test to do I'll be in college next year January. I've been Googling around, but haven't quite found what I'm looking for. The ones I've found were quite sparse or not helpful at all. Another one wanted $ (Mathway.com) I can't believe how much simple math I've forgotten I mean like subtracting/dividing decimals where the upper number's last digits are lower than the lower number's last digits for ex. 2.831 -1.498 ------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted December 8, 2011 Members Share Posted December 8, 2011 I was thinking that you were a lifehacker fan:http://lifehacker.com/5417302/wolfram-alpha-teaches-you-math-one-step-at-a-time Anyway, WolframAlpha might be just what you are looking for. It also lives on iOS and Android. small change, well spent. It is a wonderful app example link from the lifehacker tip:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve%202x3%20-%206.543x%20%3D%20x2 your example:http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Solve+2.831+-1.498 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 another great one (especially for calculus integrals & derivatives!) is wolframalpha.com Of course, it has TONS of other stuff, but this is the only site I've ever found that walks you through how to integrate an equation, any equation you enter, step by step. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phait Posted December 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 I don't see a "show steps" link anywhere on the site, as the article mentioned. I did in fact try WA last morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members A. Einstein Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 you mean you have the result only, and the thingy shows you the formula or the whole calculation which lead to the result? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phait Posted December 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 Yeah, I mean even with subtraction, carrying numbers, etc. So I can see how to arrive to the answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goobers Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 I just googled it and came up with 2 things: http://www.mathway.com/ or the "show steps" feature of Wolfram Alpha: http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/12/01/step-by-step-math/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phait Posted December 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 Right, well Mathway charges $ and Wolfram Alpha didn't show steps for fraction subtraction etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MrGretsch Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 Seriously? This is all just arithmetic for cryin' out loud. Maybe you need to take a remedial math course to refresh your abilities. I mean, you can figure out the correct change at the store, can't you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phait Posted December 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 Let's be nice here. We all have our funny little weak/blind spots. I've been a 'tech-savvy' since I was 12, been dealing with computers every day since 1984, I've had a mobile phone since 1994 or so -- and yet I consider it a surpassing moral victory when I'm actually able to put someone on hold so I can take a quick incoming call. If it makes you feel any better, Phait, I tested in the top 4 percent for math in the SAT (before they 'eased' the scoring to make up for today's less-educated students) and yet, one day, when the adding machine broke at the self-serve gas station I worked in and I had to get the hourly averages for the 12 pumps, I realized I had forgotten how to do long division. Seriously. I was staring at the 11 digit sums I'd just added up and thinking, uh... it has something to do with guessing how many times this will go into that and then... uh... It took me, like, 5 minutes to reconstruct the long division process. And this was about 6 years after my last math class. I was truly, truly facepalmed by my own inexplicable memory lapse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 If it makes you feel any better, Phait, I tested in the top 4 percent for math in the SAT (before they 'eased' the scoring to make up for today's less-educated students) and yet, one day, when the adding machine broke at the self-serve gas station I worked in and I had to get the hourly averages for the 12 pumps, I realized I had forgotten how to do long division. Seriously. I was staring at the 11 digit sums I'd just added up and thinking, uh... it has something to do with guessing how many times this will go into that and then... uh... It took me, like, 5 minutes to reconstruct the long division process. And this was about 6 years after my last math class. I was truly, truly facepalmed by my own inexplicable memory lapse. Clearly some brains are wired for math right out of the gate. Then there's the rest of us. I suffered with a terrible math block all through grade school. Working problems felt like tightrope walking over the pit of eternal suffering and shame. One...little...false move...one tiny mistake...and WRONG!!!! off the rope, down I'd go, helpless and hopeless. But then this happened - in college, and being a typical liberal arts undergrad, I shopped for the easiest course I could find to fulfill the math requirement. I signs meself up for the remedial course - the one that most of the football team signed up for, too. And dang if that course didn't pretty much cure my math block. It was just a great textbook that taught an intuitive, estimating approach to problem solving. The purpose of the course was to help you grasp overall, general ideas first, rather than simply getting the problem right to the nth decimal point via a set of sequential steps. What a revelation - that you could intuit your way through a lot of math! All of a sudden some big part of my brain was engaged to play with math the way I was already used to playing with music or other structured but flexible configurations/progressions. If I didn't understand something, then I knew it was a matter of playing with it, trying different ways of looking at it till the light came on. I think a lot of people who feel despondently that they are "just not math people" probably could be math-adept if they could find some teacher or text that teaches math as a mode of perception and imagination rather than a hopelessly complicated tangle of opaque rules and impenetrable, unforgiving abstractions. Natural math types see the boiled-down formula and intuit all the implications so immediately, that it just looks all too obvious. Resulting in a lot of incredulous and condescending "Can't you see it? Geez, are you dense! - it's obvious" My type of brain needs to be fed lots of examples and implications, left alone a bit to digest them, and to then find my own way at it's own pace to intuiting the abstract math principles at the heart of the thing. Once done, the whole thing becomes just as obvious to me as it is to the whizkid. But so many math teachers (usually natural math types) want to run the classes to suit their own whizzy pace, or the pace of their whizkid students. But now lets see that math whizkid try to do what I find instantly easy, such as composing a melody or writing a paper analyzing a poem or somesuch. nat whilk ii nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members xtrumpeter Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 Not an answer for the OP, but this thread reminds me of Asimov's short story The Feeling of Power. An advanced civilization has forgotten how to do basic arithmetic without computers. When a man discovers how to do arithmetic by hand, the military becomes very interested in whether his gift is real or an illusion. A classic well worth reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Phait Posted December 9, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 ^ That sounds really interesting, might have to actually read a book now Math throughout my academic years was always a struggle. Years after high school, out of curiosity I looked online how to do fractions, and a few other problems I'd of gotten so hung up on. It was simpler than I remembered it being! Why? I'm not sure if I just caved into my fear of failing in high school (which, I still have), or if I'm really not wired for it too. By all means, I'm sure I can learn the math that challenged me then, even some higher stuff -- if I needed to. So there's a bit of solace knowing that well, math is either right or wrong. Far, far more of a creative type, I'm surprised I did get into some programming which did require math and algebraic equations (website backend stuff). It was light, but here was math I actually didn't think I'd ever use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted December 9, 2011 Members Share Posted December 9, 2011 No, don't diss Phait. I am a MENSA/Merit scholar who has forgotten how to do some (plenty!) high school level math procedures. {censored} goes if you don't use it, and like asimov points out in that short story, most of us in modern civilization have no need to do sums in our heads anymore. I have been promising myself that I would, at some unnamed future point, sit down and remember how to do Calculus and Standard deviations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goobers Posted December 10, 2011 Members Share Posted December 10, 2011 Quit trying to make Phait pheel good, MENStrAl bitches! Phait, why not get a high school / grade school / whatever level you're on-school math textbook and review it. If you can't do basic arithmetic, why not get the books that teach it - at a school (maybe you could sneak into your school and borrow one, they should let you have it since they failed you), a library, or a bookstore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deanmass Posted December 10, 2011 Members Share Posted December 10, 2011 Here Been there, done that.. There are actually some really good games to get your mind back in gear on this....it won't take you long...It IS like riding a bike...you just gotta get back in the groove...Come back baby, Rock and Roll Never Forgets Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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