How To Arrange Your Study Time For Mathematics

So, you say you don’t want to suck at math anymore. Well, in order to not suck at math, you’ll need to follow some simple strategies that will help you to get more out of your study time.

Many students spend a lot of time doing homework problems, but most students fail to see that math class is much more than just doing the problem sets. When all you do is focus on the problems, you don’t give yourself the opportunity to learn the deeper mathematics needed to tackle problems that end up on exams. As a teacher myself, it is a very common experience that I write an exam that exercises what I’ve been teaching, that exercises or queries the student in the concepts that they’ve been doing homework in, but that do not reflect exactly the homework problems they have been doing.  In other words, I’m not interested in the students’ ability to do the problems, I’m interested in the students ability to use the ideas that I’ve been teaching to solve new kinds of problems. This means that when you are studying math, you need to go beyond just getting the answer to the homework problem that’s in front of you right now. You need to go the next step and try to get a sense of what it is you’re supposed to learn when you do that homework problem.  So the challenge is not just to get the homework problem – that’s just the first part. The challenge really becomes, ‘How can I learn what it is that I need to learn, of which this homework problem is just an example?’

So, we see that we have to do much more than just homework problems. We need to schedule our time in a way that helps us to learn as much as possible so we are prepared for exams and learn the material in the course with the minimum amount of time invested. You can put your time into several different areas when you are studying math:

• You can do homework problems as we’ve discussed.
• You can read the textbook.
• You can go to the instructors’ office hours.
• You can go to lecture.
• You can copy your lecture notes over again.
• You can look up resources on the internet.
• You can go see a tutor.
• You can make up examples of tests and test questions that you might see.
• You might schedule a study group with your friends that are in the math class. But make sure that you actually study and not waste your time talking about the hottie in the second row.

How you divide your time among these many activities can be the difference between a C and an A in the course. So, what I want to do in this post is to talk about how you can spend your time doing these various things and how doing various kinds of studying can engage different parts of your brain and neurology. This way you can learn the math better, get the concepts more cleanly and more solidly – and spend less time doing it!

The order in which you approach new concepts in your math class is very important. The truth is that you are going to see the same material in at least 4 different ways. You’re going to see the material in your textbook, you’re going to see the material in your lecture, you’ll see it in your homework and finally, you’ll see the same material in exams.

The most ideal way (and the most efficient way) for you to learn the material in class, whatever math class you’re in, is to first, before the lecture, read the material that’s going to be covered in that lecture, in the textbook. You should know what section is going to be in the lecture because the teacher has probably already given you the assignment for that section but if not, you can certainly ask the teacher what they’ll be talking about next time. That will have the additional benefit that it tells the teacher that you are excited and working ahead. In my own experience this happens very, very seldom. The students who do this always do much better than the average in my classes. So, the first thing you want to do is to read the textbook. Get your initial exposure to the material you’re learning on your own time, on your own turf, with your own eyes, quietly – just you and your book. I’ll do another post on how to read math books overall another time. The second time you want to see the material is either when you go to lecture, or by trying the homework problems. The very best thing to do is to try the homework problems first. Why is this? If you try the homework problems before you hear the material in class, you’ll get 2 benefits. The first is that you’ll already be that much more familiar with what the teacher is talking about in the lecture. And the second, maybe more important, is that you’ll be prepared to ask questions about the problems that you might have encountered that may not get addressed by the lecturer and that could save you a trip to office hours later on. The whole objective of iSukAtMath.com is to help you use your time in the most efficient way possible. What this means is that you have to front-end-load your study time. Spending 14 hours the night before the exam, or spending an hour a day for 2 weeks before the exam will have dramatically different effects. So, put your work up front and learn more!

OK, so now you have read the text and then you started the problems and now you go to lecture. I will do another post on how to take good lecture notes and how to recopy them – but that’s the next thing you need to do – go to lecture and take really good notes. A strong recommendation that I have for you is a new piece of technology, called the Livescribe Pulse Pen. I actually use one myself to do the pencasts for iSukAtMath.com. The Livescribe Pen will let you, in your lecture, not only write down lecture notes, but it will also take a recording of your teacher as they speak. This recording is good enough to be heard, even if you sit in the back of the lecture hall, but of course it would be better if you sit in the front of the hall for the best sound. The beauty of this pen is that after you have gone to the lecture and taken your notes, you can playback the lecture from the pen as you study. This is unbelievably cool technology and relative to the amount of money that you’re spending in college in the first place, it’s quite affordable. It’s only $150. Most of my students spend at least $100 per lecture hour to sit in the course in the first place. Or their parents do. So a Pulse Livescribe Pen is a very, very worthwhile investment and I cannot recommend it more highly.

OK, so we’ve now gone through a number of steps, we’re at a point were you’ve learned most of the material you need and now it’s a matter of honing it and making it tighter. You’ve read the book, you’ve started the problems, you’ve gone to lecture and taken lecture notes, now its time to go home and recopy those lecture notes.

The final step is to finish your homework, get it turned in and begin studying for the exam. Good luck!