Homework tips for Mathematics

FLUMMOXED by figures? Check out these handy homework tips for Mathematics.

Understand your calculator

These tools can be so complex that you may hit the wrong button and instead of looking up a square root, you may be looking up a cosine or inverse tangent. You might also enter information in the wrong order. Test yourself with questions you know the correct answers to so that you get the technique down pat.

Draw a diagram

Whenever you can, draw a picture and label it with the information in the question. This will help you visualise the problem and understand what you need to do.

Ignore irrelevancies

Some maths questions are straightforward but others contain additional information. Sometimes, this is designed to confuse you. Sometimes it’s there to see if you can distinguish between two similar operations.

Use your head

Don’t do the work and leave the answer at the bottom without questioning it. If you get an answer that’s totally illogical, like a right-angled triangle with a hypotenuse that’s smaller than the other two sides, you’ve made a mistake. Go back and see where you messed up.

Start over

If you know you’re going wrong, it may be simple to take out one step, correct it and end up with the right answer. But if you find you totally messed up from the beginning, it may be easier to just start from scratch. Just draw a line through it and start again.