How To Be Good At Maths

how to be good at maths

Maths is one subject that most students do not like. It involves too many numbers, formulas and calculations and they usually do not understand it at the end of the lesson.

Some students even say they are afraid of maths. Just seeing a maths problem in front of them scares them. Yet, it is the dream of most students to be good at maths.

This is because even if you don’t want to be an accountant or engineer, maths is one subject that you will still use in your everyday life. So most students want to understand and be good at maths.

Some students want to pursue maths in their higher education because they want to work in the field of maths. Others want to be good at maths because they need to pass their basic exams or high school exams.

Whatever your reason is, we are here to tell you that it is possible to be good at maths. Here is a guide on how to be good at maths.

Get a distraction free study area

The first step is to get a distraction free zone where you study. This can be your bedroom, study or even the library. It will be very difficult to concentrate if you are studying in the living room where your parents are watching TV and your siblings are playing.

Once you are in your study area, do away with anything that can distract you. That is your phone or IPad. You can’t concentrate when you keep checking Instagram and twitter or your friends keep texting.

Get a lot of practice

One thing you need to know is that maths is a skill. And just like any other skill, practice makes perfect. So you need to practice and practice a lot. Just because you got one answer right doesn’t mean you are done with that topic. You need to practice more. Solve more problems. Improve on your skills.

Create notes/flash cards

Maths involves a lot of formulas, so to make it easier for you, create notes or flash cards. This will help you to remember the formula for the various maths problems. The key to getting the correct answer is to use the right formula.

If you are to find the area of a circle and you use length x breadth, you already got it wrong before you began. So knowing the correct formula is important. Write it down area of a circle = πr2

If you have a notes or flashcards with this and other formulas on it, you can go through them in your spare time and learn it.

Understand the process

When it comes to maths, understanding the process is very important. You don’t have to memorize it and say I memorized the process so I’m done. It will be very difficult for you to solve maths problems without understanding the process. Once you understand the process involved, learning mathematics won’t be difficult.

Don’t look at the answers before

A lot of students are guilty of this. When learning maths, they tend to look at the answers before they try to solve it. This can be looking at the answer in your textbook or a friend’s answer. Once you do that, you will only try to work on arriving at that answer. And sometimes, you might end up getting the answer with the wrong formula or process.

And like we stated earlier, using the wrong formula means you got it wrong and not understanding the process also means, not getting the right answer.

Don’t rely on your calculator

You can’t be good at maths when all you do is type your problem in the calculator for the calculator to solve it for you. The calculator is a tool to help you study maths. Not a tool to solve all your maths problems. So do not rely on your calculator. Work on solving the maths problems by yourself.

Review your mistakes

Don’t give up just because you got the answer wrong or because you keep getting the answer wrong. Go over it. Review it. And usually, you will find that just getting one step wrong caused the wrong answer. Once you find the problem area and work on it, you will get the right answer.

Apply maths in the real world

Maths is all around us. We use maths in our everyday life. It doesn’t matter what you do. So apply maths in the real world. You can do this when managing money, figuring out the time needed to do something. Or the distance to get somewhere.

You can also apply maths when cooking, baking, gardening or sports. Yes sports. Hitting a ball at the right angle is how you score. So apply maths in your daily life.

Ask for help

It’s okay to ask for help. It’s very okay. Just because you ask for help doesn’t mean you are dumb. We all fall short somewhere. So every now and then, you can feel free to ask for help. You can get a tutor to help you. This could be a friend, a teacher or online math tutoring.

Maths shouldn’t be a scary thing. It is just a problem and problems are meant to be solved.

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how to excel at maths
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