Welcome to my math help pages. The index below lists all the topics I've covered in an article. Most of them are modified excerpts of full-length chapters I have written or intend to write that explain a variety of high school math topics. When I get them written, they will be available for purchase through a print-on-demand publishing site. My main goal is to provide help on some commonly misunderstood topics using ideas I've developed in 15 years of classroom teaching. If you like my explanations, please consider buying the full chapters (see the sidebar for the links, once they're available). But if all the help you need is on the free pages, then I'm glad I could help.
My philosophy of teaching and writing these pages is different from the philosophy of other textbooks I've seen. Most math-help sites and books try to boil the problem types down to the simplest version, and then tell you step-by-step how to solve exactly that type. If this is what you're looking for, then these pages might not be for you. I think that this kind of one-size-fits-all, just-give-me-the-bullet explanation is what will eventually confuse students. I believe that a deeper and more helpful understanding comes from two sources: a careful comparison of new material with things you already know, and a step-by-step analysis of why the mathematics works the way it does. This process may take longer at first, but it will eventually enable you to go much further in math before running into serious trouble. This approach also has the advantage that it teaches you to think in a manner that's probably closer to how your teacher (if you have one) thinks about the math. Teaching the bigger picture, if it's done in a careful and non-intimidating way, is often the key to understanding the details much better.
INDEX:
Algebra
(a + b)2 ≠ a2 + b2: Why Aren't They Equal?
The Logic of Slope, Part 1 and Part 2 (to come)
Statistics
What is the "Margin of Error" of polls, exactly?
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