When a student asks me how to solve a math problem, my default response is to show, if possible, how to solve it by plugging in, backsolving, or guesstimating. I do this because I figure if the “math way” was obvious, the student wouldn’t be asking me for help in the first place. Besides, problem (more…)
I’m going to be out of town for a few days, so I won’t be able to post a solution for this until probably Monday, but hopefully I’ll be able to check in and at least congratulate the winner, who will receive a free copy of my Math Guide. A student is drawing concentric circles, (more…)
I’ve been going to the gym lately which is torture and I hate it. I am sore everywhere. I don’t understand why anyone finds it pleasurable to go there, but I do understand not wanting the body of a 70 year old when I’m 35, so I force myself. Anyway, while I was wheezing and (more…)
Source I’ve got a bunch of friends at San Diego Comic-Con right now, so I figured I’d use that for the theme for this weekend’s challenge. Of course, I made most of these numbers up, but I didn’t completely pull them out of thin air. 58% of the attendees at Comic-Con this year are male. (more…)
I’m heading out this morning to go camping for the weekend (Woohoo! Bug bites!) and I won’t have any way to access the Internet reliably, so if you enter this contest please be patient. I probably won’t be able to declare a winner or post a solution until Monday evening. I’m told the place we’ll (more…)
Robin Hill Park (Jon Forster) / CC BY-SA 2.0 What an annoying weekend I had. It’s all my own poor planning, but the Math Guide went temporarily out of stock this weekend. Hopefully, everything will be back to normal by tomorrow, which means I can get right back to giving books away! This weekend challenge (more…)
In honor of Father’s Day, this weekend challenge is inspired by my dad’s hobby business. He sells wooden flags, like the one above, on Etsy. Basically, he finds discarded pallets (this is a pallet), chops ’em up into pieces of the size he needs, and mounts them. As usual, these challenge questions are not really (more…)
I went back to my old high school last night to attend the final concert of the choir director that presided over so many of my formative moments. I got to hang out with some of the same people with whom I used to have the kind of deep, meaning-of-life conversations that only happen in (more…)
Have you seen this movie? I liked it. Nobody’s answered the last challenge question yet, but whatever, here’s another one. And I’ll tell you what: First person who gets this one right gets a free Math Guide. Norville has four different colored hula hoops around his waist, each with a diameter of 3 feet. He (more…)
You guys. Crazy story. I was in a coffee shop messing around with Geometer’s Sketchpad, just slapping together some perpendicular line segments because that’s how I roll, and this guy who could see my screen thought I was an artist or something. It was kinda weird, but he wanted to buy my “art.” Naturally, I (more…)
I have never seen a school bus like this. Source. I’m going to try to ease myself back into posting math questions fairly regularly on here. No prizes for now, just the satisfaction of knowing you were the first person in the world besides me to figure this particular question out. This probably wouldn’t appear (more…)
Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland. It’s pretty. Source. The whole reason I started this site is that I believe good test prep should be available to everyone who wants it, regardless of geography or income. Yeah, I sell a book. And yeah, it’s not the cheapest test prep book out there. Because I think it’s (more…)
Quick note: the Math Guide is now available through Google Play as an eBook. You can read it on your computer, your iPad, any Android device, etc. It’s cheaper than the physical book, of course, and you don’t have to wait for it to ship to you once you buy it. So that’s cool. Still, if (more…)
Special nerd note: #20 in Section 4 is pretty much my favorite Guesstimate question of all time. The College Board’s latest The Official SAT Study Guide with DVD is exactly the same as the 2nd edition, except that it comes with a DVD containing a bit of extra content. I can see the utility in the SAT timer it includes, (more…)
This breakdown is meant to help you analyze and categorize your mistakes after you’ve taken Practice Test 3 in the Blue Book. The whole idea is that the best thing you can do to improve your score is to understand your weaknesses, and then drill the hell out of them to make them strengths. Click (more…)
