Maths, having another go! (midlife crisis)

buck65

Hi whizzes. As my 8 year old son is starting to get maths homework that I am having to look twice at before I give him the answer I have decided to go back to school as it were and I have bought Text and Tests 1 (first year maths book). I am really enjoying the first few chapters.

I aim to buy all the Text and Tests and be fairly proficient at a level where I can help my kids with maths through school. I was never really any good at maths due to being lazy at school and had some woeful teachers also. Had a good teacher for a year and really got into it. All gone now though!

My rambling question is ... am I going about things the right way would you think? Any recommendations or links to websites, would be fantastic.

I would love to understand maths as I find it fascinating and do occasionally read books on maths but I have a massive hole in my understanding.

KeithTS

Hey,

Great to see that you're getting back into maths, it can be fun and very rewarding.

I followed a similar path a few years ago. I couldn't add fractions properly but decided to do an engineering degree later in life so I got the texts and tests books and taught myself from 1st year right through to leaving cert level maths in 9 months or so in preparation for the course.

It's definitely doable if you just stick to the syllabus and work hard at the things you don't get.

The below book is also quite good, more condensed than the text and tests books but doesn't assume any deep knowledge and gets you up to speed pretty quick. The problems and examples are more real world and may also help in understanding the importance of maths in practice which could be a good way thing to get across to the young lad as he learns.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Basic-Engineering-Mathematics-John-Bird/1856176975

An aside, that book has some typos in the answers so if you do decide to get it be aware of this when checking answers as it can be quite annoying. Other than that, good book!

judeboy101

buck65 wrote: »

Hi whizzes. As my 8 year old son is starting to get maths homework that I am having to look twice at before I give him the answer I have decided to go back to school as it were and I have bought Text and Tests 1 (first year maths book). I am really enjoying the first few chapters.

I aim to buy all the Text and Tests and be fairly proficient at a level where I can help my kids with maths through school. I was never really any good at maths due to being lazy at school and had some woeful teachers also. Had a good teacher for a year and really got into it. All gone now though!

My rambling question is ... am I going about things the right way would you think? Any recommendations or links to websites, would be fantastic.

I would love to understand maths as I find it fascinating and do occasionally read books on maths but I have a massive hole in my understanding.

Sign up for ixl.ie does maths from baby infants up to LC

ray giraffe

I recommend the free videos at www.khanacademy.org as a supplement to your textbooks

Yakuza

Well done to you, I know from personal experience it's a bit hard to take the books up when you've kids on the scene.

I'd also recommend some recreational maths books (anything from Martin Gardner (esp. the Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions series), also Carol Vorderman (formerly of Countdown) brought out a series of books designed to help parents help their kids with school stuff. Here's the maths one.

Best of luck.

Good for you

I'll second the khan academy recommendation, maybe not as a primary source but some very good demonstrations there if theres a concept on paper that just isn't going in to your head.

quietsailor

Every so often I get fantastic .gif explanations on my Facebook feed of various mathematical explanations.

You should try a quick search on Google for explanations, I typed in "sine tan gif" and got this
http://www.businessinsider.com/7-gifs-trigonometry-sine-cosine-2013-5?IR=T

evolving_doors

quietsailor wrote: »

Every so often I get fantastic .gif explanations on my Facebook feed of various mathematical explanations.

You should try a quick search on Google for explanations, I typed in "sine tan gif" and got this
http://www.businessinsider.com/7-gifs-trigonometry-sine-cosine-2013-5?IR=T

I think the third gif scribes an ellipse though not a circle! Is that right?

Next, think about the relationship between sine, cosine and the circle.

Here's an illustration of the fundamental relationship between the three.

Notice how the crank moves in a circle, and the bars — which correspond to sine and cosine — move up and down and side to side in a wave-like formation:

Michael Collins

Gebgbegb wrote: »

I think the third gif scribes an ellipse though not a circle! Is that right?

<snipped gif>

Yeah, well spotted. It clearly extends further in the north-west and south-east sides than it does in the other two, i.e. the major and minor axis of an ellipse (or kind of like a circle with the centre constantly shifting).

The vector sum of the position of the two slugs would be a circle, but that's not what is described by the end of the crank.

It's confusing, not a good demonstration of sine and cosine in my book.

silverharp

khan is great, I do it with my kids, eldest is 12 and we are just finishing up Algebra 1 . I let them the do their own school maths but it is so easy to move them 2 or 3 years ahead. Schools go at a snail's pace.

silverharp

Gebgbegb wrote: »

I think the third gif scribes an ellipse though not a circle! Is that right?

damn I wish the internet was around when I was a kid , love the idea of seeing these visualisations we never had