Doing math in your head

Doing math in your head isn’t always easy. Sometimes when you do math in your head you stump yourself because you can’t mentally figure out what you’re doing. When we are told to find out the answer to a problem in class mentally all of us always have blank stares in the beginning because we aren’t used to doing math in our head. When I have to do math mentally I always want to take out my calculator to do it because it is so much faster. Some people really have a lot of trouble doing math in their heads because it isn’t always that easy. A lot of teenagers hate doing any type of math in their head because every teenager grew up knowing they had the technology of a calculator to do any math they needed to do.  When I’m in math class and I have a question that requires a lot of math I always have the tendency to pull out my phone to go on my calculator and do all the math I don’t want to do in my head. I feel like if teenagers now a day didn’t have the technology we have today we would not be the same. I feel like a lot of teenagers would be a lot smarter because they would be forced to things in their head or on paper. I think having the chance to show your work you should do everything you can to show all the work you need to get the full credit of whatever the question may be. When it comes to hard math that requires a calculator than I understand why you need to use one. Some teenagers use calculators to do the simplest math. I’m one of those teenagers and I can admit it. When it comes to math that uses negatives I always want to use my calculator because I never remember how to figure out negatives in my head besides when you have to negatives next to each other it turns into a positive but that’s just common sense. Calculators have definitely been a big advantage to everybody in the world today because it saves us from doing any kind of math in our head. I personally hate doing any kind of math in my head. For the simplest math I even use my fingers. Like when I have to add or subtract simple numbers I always use my hands. If I have a calculator next to me I will even do simple math on my calculator. I feel like a lot of people have become lazy to doing any kind of math in our heads and that’s all due to the advanced technology we have now a day. Still to this day when it comes to doing easy math I will always use my fingers and people always laugh at me but it doesn’t bother me because it helps me get the right answer without having to do it in my head.

Tips at the resturant

Giving tips at a restaurant is a lot harder than you think. It is said that you should tip at least 20% to whoever your waiter or waitress was. A lot of people now a days don’t tip because they don’t want to or the service is not good enough for them. Not every waiter or waitress is perfect and a lot of them forget to come back and ask how the food is or keep up with anything the family or couple might need. When I went to the restaurant with my family we were eating and the waitress wasn’t the best waitress. She was very nice which was a plus but, she wasn’t really good with giving us everything we wanted and didn’t really come back and ask for refills we had to ask her to get us another drink. When it came to the end and we had to pay for the dinner we had to figure out how much of a tip we were going to give her because her service wasn’t that good. We decided that we were only going to give her 15% of a tip to her because my dad didn’t really think that she deserved a 20% tip. My dad is really good at math and I think that’s where I get it from but when it came to figuring out how much of money is 15% of the amount for dinner he was having trouble. I’m not very good at finding percent’s of the amount but sooner or later I’ll be able to get it. I think when it comes to setting up a proportion it is always easier to find out what the tip may be. I told my dad to set up a proportion in his head and he thought that that was harder because it required more work and thinking. I always do what I feel is comfortable to me because I know that if I try something else I won’t get the answer correct. When we learn to do proportions or have to teach them to little kids or any kid it is always good to go through exactly what you need to do to get the answer. For all of these young kids it is harder for them to figure out how much of a tip they need to give because all of us are so used to technology that we will just pull out our phones to find out what we have to give. It is not likely to watch a couple go out and when it comes time to pay then know in their heads exactly how much of a tip they are going to give. When it comes to that we just pull out our phones and go to our calculators to find the answer. Everybody has their own way of finding out how much of a tip they should give. When it comes to restaurants that aren’t that good like pizza hut we only give like a 5 dollar tip depending on how good the service is and how much the order was.

Fast Math Tricks

I watched a video on YouTube called Fast Math Tricks. It was a very interesting video because I was never taught how to do this fast trick. It shows us how to multiply two digit numbers by each other. For example 43 * 21= _____. What you do is you multiply the two first numbers and then you multiply the last two numbers. It would look like 4*2=8 and then 3*1=3. You would set it up like 8_3. From there you would take the outside numbers which are 4*1=4 and then the inside numbers 3*2=6. After you do that you add 4+6=10. You take the 10 and put the 0 in the empty space of 8_3 making it 803. From there you add take the 1 and add it to the 9 making the final answer 903. I think that is a quick easy way to find out the answer to a two digit number. I know that you can’t always use calculators in class especially in the class that I’m currently in. You have to actually do long hand multiplication and it takes a lot of time and not many people want to take the time out to do the long hand math. Everybody is so used to using calculators. When it comes to this fast trick all you have to do is easy multiplication and adding to get the answer. When it comes to helping little kids learn multiplication I think that teaching this method would be easier for them. Sometimes long hand math can be hard to understand and there are always easy mistakes you can make. Not a lot of people even realize the little mistakes they can make until they get something back that was graded and find out the answer. I know that that has happened to me so many times and I always get so mad at myself because I know that if I just went through the question a little slower I would’ve got the answer correct. Easy multiplication was never a problem for me but when it came to a two digit number or more it became harder and harder. I always try to find easier ways to find the answer so that I don’t have to do so much work, but sometimes the more work you show the better the answer will come out and you’ll always get full credit. It is always easy to lose credit for not showing enough work but you can always get partial credit if you show work and just get the answer wrong. Partial credit is always an advantage because it gives the teacher a chance to give you at least some credit so you don’t lose full points. Teachers always look to see if you show work because it is very important in a lot of cases. This video was definitely interesting to me because I never was taught or showed that method of getting the answer to a question like that.

The love I have for math

The love I have for math is a good thing. I always have loved math all of my life. It has always come easy to me and fun to me. I wouldn’t say that every math class I’ve taken was always easy and I never needed help, but overall math is pretty easy to me. I took all the math’s required in middle school and high school. In middle school I always scored high in math no matter what math I took. Whenever I needed help I would always go to my 7^th grade middle school teacher when I attended middle school and in high school I went to the math lab to get help or asked previous teachers if they were available to help me. When I was in middle school, I think that’s when I started to love math. It became my favorite subject and still is. Math to me can be really fun. Some people have a hard time with math but, if you apply yourself to anything you can do well. The hardest math class I took was geometry. I didn’t have the best teacher for geometry so that made it a little bit harder than it was. Also a lot of people in my class talked because the teacher was very low key and never yelled so it wasn’t hard for everybody to talk because he didn’t care. I kept scoring so low on everything that was graded except for the homework because he just walked around and checked that. Nothing in that class made sense to me so I knew I needed to get help. I ended up getting a tutor for geometry and it helped me a lot. The only sad thing is that when it came to the regents we had to take at the end of year; I thought I was so ready for it but then when I got the test in front of me I was like oh crap! I didn’t know how to do so many things but I just told myself, you got this just try your hardest to figure out how to solve the problem and you’ll be able to do it. Luckily I got a 69 on the regents. I know it wasn’t the best grade but if I passed I was happy. Geometry was definitely not the type of math for me. I love math and all but that class was the worst class ever. I dreaded going to that class every morning. To make it all worst I had it 1^st period to so I was always so tired and it was so hard to pay attention. Other than geometry I didn’t have a hard time throughout my other years of math. I always was available for help and any time anybody in class needed help, I would always help them. If we both didn’t get it I would always be the one to ask the teacher how to do it so I would understand what I was doing. No matter how hard math was for me I always pulled through it and did well!

My 9th grade math teacher

In 9^th grade I was in such a good math class. I was taking Algebra 1A. Math has always been a good subject for me. I’ve always loved math all my life, from when I first started school. My math teachers name was Mr. Luft, he was such a funny and enthusiastic guy that it made class fun and I always looked forward to it. I always dreaded getting up for school but when I remembered math class it motivated me to get up and go to school. In this class I met my best friend Nicole. I and she are not best friends anymore but we were best friends for a long time. Mr. Luft was such a cool and outgoing teacher but he also was very mean when it came to doing your work and doing well in his class. He always used to say that we can have fun in class and I’ll let you guys be free to talk when there is group work or extra time at the end of class but I will not tolerate the talking and fooling around when we are doing lessons and taking tests. No matter what type of help you needed he was always willing to help you out with whatever the case was. Sometimes I had trouble with questions and he would always sit me down and talk me through it until I understood exactly what I was doing. A lot of math teachers I’ve had throughout the years didn’t always do that. That class was always so much fun to go to. Some days when we didn’t have a lot to do we would play math games or we were able to socialize with our friends. Nicole and I always wanted to do fun things and we always hyped everybody up in the class to make it fun and worth going to. One day we had this student teacher come in and he was so cute! Nicole and I fell in love with him and then that made us want to come to class even more. He was so nice and he was just like Mr. Luft it was kind of scary. He was just a student teacher learning to be a new teacher at any schools but he was doing such a good job. Nicole and I would always flirt with him and everybody in the class knew Nicole and I loved him. He always helped out the students that were struggling and needed extra help. Both Mr. Luft and the student teacher were always open to extra help after class or after school and I always took advantage of that whenever I needed help. The class was so motivating to me that it made me get really good grades and I ended up getting a grade in the 90s because of how much I applied myself.  I think with the help of having really good math teachers it benefits you in the end to get really good grades in math class!

Math

Math to me is a very fun subject. I think that the different levels to math are good to have so you're able to learn the different materials in all different courses. Mathophobia definitely happens to a lot of people. Everybody has many different views on math. Some people might find it very difficult and others might find it easy. I sometimes think math can be very easy but other times I barely can understand what is being taught to me. Getting extra help is definitely a must, especially if you do not understand anything that was going on in that class or even previous classes. I personally think that I can have mathophobia, but only sometimes. Math is my favorite subject and always has been. When I really don't get what is being taught to me I might tend to get mathophobia. Having this throughout my academics has taught me that you can't be scared of something if you feel that you can't figure out whatever the question might be. If you are struggling on a certain problem there is always help available and sometimes the question might be so simple but you’re working yourself so much that you can’t focus on how to figure it out. For me to overcome it I think I will have to be able to get help if needed and just take deep breathes when I see a question I might now understand. I think that teaching math can be a little more difficult than learning it at some points because throughout my life of being in school learning math some of my teachers would always say “I don’t really know how to explain how to really solve it in a way that everybody will understand.” Everybody has different methods on how to solve math problems and also teach math. I feel like taking this course is really going to show me the true meaning of not only teaching math but being able to explain how you got the answer you did in much more detail than usual. Math all together is one of the most important courses to take personally. You use math every day in your life, even its just simple adding. I am a cashier at a grocery store so I use math all the time. Most people think that math is very important in everyday life. From just the first couple days of being in this math course has showed me that math isn’t always easy. We were all given a different level of math tests up to 6^th grade I believe and most of us couldn’t even figure out what to do and it was just a simple word problem. We all struggled to figure out how the person got the answer they did and how we could follow along to get the same answer. I really think that this course is going to be very interesting and a new experience for me personally. I hope to have as much fun and make this course fun!