I just finished my regular piece of coursework in my class and I have a 97.5% The problem is that the final I have to take on Wednesday is 50% of my grade, and I've never taken a math final before. We didn't have finals at my high school, and this is my first math class since junior year.
I'M FREAKING OUT. I'm terrified that I'm going to fail after all the work I put into the assignments, reviews, and exams throughout the term because I don't know how to study right. Help? What is a good method for retaining an entire term worth of information?
With math I just found that repetition with example questions was the best way. Doing it over and over so that when you encounter a similar question on the exam you'll know what to do. If there are practice q's with solutions at the end of chapters in your text, use those.
Math person (and lurker) here. I have found that going over past homeworks / exams until I'm completely comfortable with all of the types of problems that can be asked. Depending on the class and your familiarity with the terminology, it wouldn't hurt to review the vocab / definitions.
ETA: For practice, do homework problems that weren't assigned (e.g. if you turned in the evens, do the odds). If you don't already have one, you might be able to find a solutions manual online to check your work. Also, if you have any questions feel free to PM me. I taught College Algebra for three semesters during my MS program.
Post by pinkplasticdoll on Aug 13, 2012 1:54:30 GMT -5
I work problems repeatedly until I'm comfortable with them. I will choose problems that are the same concept but maybe a negative I thrown in instead of a positive.
I think I went through 3 notebooks when I tool calculus last from just repeatdly doing problems and it helped me make an A .
Post by lightbulbsun on Aug 13, 2012 7:03:27 GMT -5
Like everyone else said, I just kept solving problems until I was comfortable with it. There are usually extra problems in the book, so I would go over them.
Post by mccallister84 on Aug 13, 2012 7:08:17 GMT -5
Redo old home works, test and quizzes. If it is something like statistics that is more concept based make flash cards. But try not to panic too much! You definitely need to prepare but if you have a 97.5% average you're in really good shape.
Post by saraandmichael on Aug 13, 2012 8:16:40 GMT -5
practice, practice, practice.
i used to teach math and when my students asked how to prepare for a test i told them to do practice problems over and over. show each step so that if you get something wrong you can go back and see where you messed up.
i used to teach math and when my students asked how to prepare for a test i told them to do practice problems over and over. show each step so that if you get something wrong you can go back and see where you messed up.
what kind of math are you taking?
It's just Math095, Intermediate Algebra.
Thank you all, though. It sounds like I'm just going to go through each chapter and pick problems until I feel as comfortable as possible. I do get one page of notes during my final, so hopefully that will help, too. It all just starts to blend together after a while, and I'm terrified that the final is going to end up looking like gibberish and I'll fail the class or something. Ugh.
You have a 97.5% in 8th grade math- and you get a full page of notes. You are going to ace the final. You don't even need to study, you're going to do great!
You have a 97.5% in 8th grade math- and you get a full page of notes. You are going to ace the final. You don't even need to study, you're going to do great!
Hey, fuck you.
amber was being sincere, i swear to god.
anyway, drill drill drill. the last time i took a major math test was in college, but i remember drilling the hell out of it.