improve my maths

I’ve had this goal on my list since forever and this month I decided to prioritise it. So I started trying to work through a textbook I have, before realising (after a couple of weeks) that it was just taking up too much of my time.

I’m pretty busy at the moment and just about everything seems more important than studying maths. I’ve taken this as a sign that my priorities have changed.

Maybe they’ll change again sometime and for this reason I’m keeping the goal on my someday/maybe list. It’s not like I didn’t manage to improve my maths at all—I just didn’t get to the point where I can say I’m good at it.

Ultimately, though, I think it’s been a positive experience, realising that my priorities have changed. Now there’s room on my goals list for something more relevant to my life right now!

It’s been a long time since I wrote an entry on this! And the same amount of time since I’ve done anything towards this goal! But now I really do have 43 things on my list and a bunch of other goals standing in line waiting to get on it. That means I need to start achieving some of these goals and give up on any that don’t seem relevant anymore.

As far as improving my maths goes, I still want to do it. I made some improvement back when I was more focused on it but I don’t want to mark it as done until I’ve worked through this textbook I have. At the moment I’m really super busy with stuff for university but when all my assigments are in and the exam is over I’ll do one of those Steve Pavlina 30-day trials, doing a certain number of exercises in the book every day and see how I go with that.

I’m now working through my old maths GCSE textbook. So far I’ve done a chapter on number, including patterns, negatives, arithmetic, fractions, percentage, special number names (like integers, prime factors, common factors, HCF, common multiples, LCM, standard form, rational and irrational numbers) and using the calculator efficiently.

Ok, for most people it would be pretty basic stuff, but it’s thirteen years since I’ve done anything like this and I didn’t pay very much attention to it back then!

Yep, I’ve pretty much cracked the multiplication tables but I’m going to keep reciting them to myself regularly for another couple of months to make sure I’ve really got it and they ain’t going nowhere. That’ll mean I’ve been working on them for about a year.

I got my boyfriend to teach me how to do multiplication and division on paper and I can do it fine but I think I need some more practice just to remember the procedure. I’m going to assign myself an hour here and there to work on it.

I’m still doing most of my arithmetic mentally and in the summer when I go to London I’m going to get my old GCSE maths textbooks from my folks and start working through them.

I’ve been practising my multiplication tables pretty much every day (reciting them while I do the washing-up!) and I think I’ve pretty much cracked it. I can remember and recite them all (up to 12) without much difficulty and, following some advice somebody here posted, I’ve memorised the prime numbers and all the multiples of five so that even if I don’t remember off the top of my head, it’ll be pretty easy to work it out. Six times seven is forty-two! See? That wasn’t difficult at all! I’m going to keep reciting them to myself, though, for a good while, just to make completely sure they’re in my long-term memory. Now I just need to get somebody to teach me how to do multiplication and division sums on paper…

According to my maths genius boyfriend, my mental arithmetic (adding and subtracting) is okay. Yay! One part of the goal, more or less, achieved! I’ve been singin’ along to my multiplication tables tape and am doing alright. The ones I’m working on are 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 12. I’ve got to the point where it gets into my short-term memory while I’m doing it but if someone randomly asked me “What’s six times seven?” I wouldn’t know. Perhaps I’d have to sing it to know—and they’d think I was a total weirdo! I’ll just have to keep working at it and eventually I should get it all crammed into my brain!

I feel like I’m lacking basic knowledge in maths and this has become more apparent to me recently since most of the people around me are maths geniuses (by my standards, anyway).

I feel let down by the level of maths instruction I had at school (it was crap) and maths just doesn’t come intuitively to me. I don’t find it incredibly interesting but I do think that it’s important that I master basic skills.

I got a C in my maths GCSE and I don’t even know how I managed to get that. I don’t feel like I have GCSE level maths and I would like to. It would make my life easier.

So I’m starting small. Practising mental arithmetic, adding and subtracting, getting my boyfriend to test me. I’m going to learn my multiplication tables by rote, using an extremely corny ‘sing-along times tables tape’ (sheesh!), learn how to do multiplication and division on paper and work through GCSE maths textbooks.

That’s the plan.