This is the second in the Subject Guides series, which gives detailed advice on how to study and score well for specific subjects. It contains edited excerpts from Chapter 4 of the book “How I Study”.
I love Math. 0% sarcasm. Math isn’t content-heavy and you don’t have to memorise large chunks of information. Once you understand the concept, put it to practice enough times, and you’ll get the hang of it.
No kidding. It’s that simple. To sum it up in a simple equation:
studying for Math = understand + practice∞
Of course, I’m not going to just stop here. Read on to find out some tips and tricks that I personally used to study for Math.
The Single Formula for Success – Practise
For Math, my philosophy is simple: just practise. Of course, before you can do any questions, you’ll need a firm mastery of the concepts. It’s important, therefore, to make sure that you understand everything thoroughly when learning each topic. Then, just drill yourself with countless questions.
Use Summary Notes (Only)
My advice is: don’t bother doing any notes for Math—except maybe summary notes. My school had a summary page in the lecture notes at the end each chapter, and they were very good already. So I just used those, occasionally adding in a few lines of my own. I scanned the summary for every topic using a mobile scanner app and always referred to that.
If your school notes do not have such amazing summary pages, you may choose to create your own. Write down only the absolutely essential key concepts and any formulae you may need. In short, it should contain only what you need to solve Math questions.
Having summary notes is especially useful when you’re doing practices and can’t figure out the solution or can’t remember a certain method or formulae. For me, this happens most often when I have just learnt a new topic, or I am returning to an earlier one after a long period of neglect. I simply take a quick glance at my summary notes to re-orient myself.
Compile Challenging Questions
My final and best piece of advice is to save any challenging questions that you come across. This takes about five seconds, and will help you tremendously in the long run. This is my super simple method to do it:
- Take a photo or screenshot of the challenging question
- Take a photo or screenshot of the solution
- Move these images to a photo album titled with the subject and topic
(e.g. “MA 7 Vectors” for H2 Mathematics Chapter 7 on Vectors)
I do this for every question I found challenging or had gotten wrong, be it in tutorials or test papers. This way, I build up a personalised ‘question bank’ comprising only the most difficult questions. I strongly suggest you do this as well.
A bonus is that rather than just looking through your mistakes, you can attempt the questions again. Try the question, then scroll to the next image to check your answer. If you are still getting it wrong or found it difficult, flag the question. You can then revisit these flagged questions in subsequent reviews.
Have a question? Leave a comment below or drop me a message anytime. Don’t forget to check out the other articles in the Subject Guides series too.