A few helpful tips for dealing with remainders

It almost never fails when I’m working with a new student that the first time a question involving remainders rears its ugly head, we need to spend some time talking about what remainders are and how to find them. This happens fairly early in the process with me, intentionally. I always start with new students (more…)

“Is there a math way?”

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…)

Plugging In FTW

OK, so you know how I’m always saying that the SAT is not a math test? This is one of the primary reasons why. On the SAT, it’s often completely unnecessary to do the math that’s been so carefully laid out before you. A lot of the time (and on a lot of the most (more…)