9/17/2023 0 Comments Calculus for dummies scribd![]() ![]() Part of the problem may be that you don’t realise how much of what you do every day involves doing maths in your head. If you can shift your thoughts on maths from ‘I’m no good at this’ to ‘I’m still getting to grips with this’, you’ll create a self-fulfilling prophecy and begin to understand maths. This doesn’t mean you’re bad at maths, just that you trip up once in a while. Maybe you freeze up when you see a fraction or just nod and smile politely when someone shows you a pie chart. I bet the same thing applies with your maths. Now imagine saying ‘I’m no good at talking’ or ‘I’m no good at walking.’ Those things may be true at times – I get tongue-tied once in a while, and I’ve been known to trip over invisible objects – but most of the time my mumbling and stumbling are perfectly adequate to get by. Put your hand up if you’ve ever said something like ‘I’m no good at maths.’ I promise I won’t yell at you. I spend some time in this chapter showing you what you already know and then introduce the topics I cover in the rest of the book. Perhaps you find the maths you do in day-to-day life so easy you don’t even notice you’re doing sums. I show you how, with a bit of work, you can master the bits and pieces of maths you don’t have down to a tee. I want to help you get past the fear and the mind blanks and show you not just that you can do maths well, but that you already do maths well and can use that base to build upon. I’m not the kind of maths teacher who wears tweed jackets with leather patches and yells at you when you don’t pick up on his mumbles straight away. I start this chapter by saying thanks – thanks for giving maths a try and thanks for listening to me. I know what taking on something difficult or frightening feels like – I feel just the same about dance classes, and I still have to steel myself a bit when I go into a supermarket. Chapter 1 Getting Started In This ChapterĪrrow Fathoming fractions, percentages and the like (with added pizza)īefore you read any more of this book, take a big, deep breath. ![]() You need to be able to see if your answer looks right: to do that, you need to be able to round off and to estimate so that you don’t say something daft like ‘The Eiffel Tower is four centimetres tall’. I show you how to stay calm and focused (and shut up the little voices telling you you can’t do maths) and then help you figure out how to add, take away, multiply and divide whole numbers – the sums all of the others are based on. It’s helpful to build up shortcuts to make maths easier, though – and that’s what this part is all about: making maths easier. Part I Whole Numbers: The Building Blocks of Maths 9781119974529 pp0101.eps In this part. ![]()
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