Your Tutor Online

This is a real teacher in a real math class. Was your last day of school before Halloween this much fun?

The school year is back in full swing, and many students have received their first progress reports. Whether you are doing well, or not so well with your studies it is important that you well, study! But that is sometimes the tricky part. Those text books are big! Especially math books. Today I hope to offer you some tips on how to best use your time and math text. Here are the 6 most important parts of a math text book:

1. The Contents - its in the beginning and tells you what the book is about. This section is great for finding old information, especially if your class doesn’t approach the book from front to back. This is also good for taking a sneak peak of what is yet to come. Finally, you can learn where the tests, quizzes, extra practice problems, and additional resources are hiding.




2. The Boxes (formulas, rules, theorems, properties, etc) - When it comes to math books, if it is in a box then it is important. If it is in a shaded box, then it is really important. Here you will find your formulas, rules, theorems, postulates, properties, equations, etc. This boxed info should automatically be copied on your “cheat-sheet” if you are allowed one. Perhaps more importantly than the boxed information itself, however is understanding what it means. Consider copying it down word for word, but then do so in your own words as well. If you own your text book, mark these pages for easy reference.




3. Examples/Solutions - Most math texts I have seen always begin each section with examples. Later, the practice problems are often the same examples just with different numbers. Try working through each example along with your text and then try a practice problem that relates. If (when) you get stuck on your homework or studying flip back to the beginning of the section to find the example which applies. Remember that math builds upon what you learned before, so you may have to go back a few sections (or chapters) to find the info you are looking for.




4. Tests/Quizzes - I am absolutely amazed at how many teachers copy their own tests and quizzes directly from the text book which their students are using! Sometimes they will assign the even numbered problems for a review and then the odd numbered problems will show up on a test. Other than a sneak peak at tests, this is the best way for you to determine if you really know the material or if you need extra work. Text books will often refer you to the section a particular problem came from if you need to go back for a refresher.




5. Index - This is like the contents, except it is in the back of the book. Indices (plural for index) are great if you are looking up a specific topic which may be in several different sections. They are also good if your book does not have a glossary and you just need a simple definition or formula. Instead of endlessly flipping through your book for the Quadratic Formula (which I can never remember), just look it up in your index and you will know exactly where to go.




6. The Answers - Every lazy student’s favorite part. But don’t abuse it; there is a right way and a wrong way to use this important part of the book. Answers to extra, unassigned homework problems because you really want to understand = good. Answers so that you can get back to the Playstation sooner = bad.

Did I miss any important parts of the math text book? Use the comments feature to weigh in. It’s nice to be back for the 2009-2010 school year.

You may notice the blog looks abit different today. I just updated WordPress here, and ran into some difficulties.

Bear with me and I hope to have things back to normal by weeks end.

This video covers the process of FOILing two binomials. Multiply: First, Outer, Inner, Last. A trick is given to help you remember the order.

Welcome to Your Tutor Online video lessons. Today we are going to look at how to FOIL. FOILing is what you do when you multiply two binominals together. FOIL is an acronym which stands for First, Outer, Inner, and Last.

When we talk about the first terms, we are going to look at each respective parenthesis. The first term in each parenthesis is the first term. The outer terms are for the outside of the entire thing, our 2x and our negative 5 are both our outside terms. The inside is just the opposite, so the two closest to each other. And then last, the two terms that are last in each of the parenthesis. So, 3 and negative 5.

And now we just follow our acronym in order: First, Outer, Inner, Last. First, we will multipy together our two first terms, our 2x and our x which gives us 2x squared. Next is outer, 2x and negative 5. 2x times negative 5 is negative 10x. Our inside terms are 3 and x which gives us positive 3x. And our last terms 3 and negative 5 gives us negative 15.

Now, almost always you will end up with your two middle terms being like terms so you just want to combine those two as your final answer. 2x squared, combine our two like terms (-10x and positve 3x) gives us negative 7x and minus 15.

Here’s a tip for you to remember to do the FOILing in the correct way. If you look back up here, how I drew the lines, I have almost a little smile face. Here is the smile, the nose, and two eye-ball looking things. If you get the smile face at the end that means you drew your FOIL correctly and you multiplied the terms together correctly.

Alright, I am going to show you how to draw this face one more time so you have a good check for when you have to do FOIL on your own. We are going to follow in order: First, Outer, Inside, Last. For the first term, we will start above the problem. Connect the first two terms with an arc. So in this example, 3x and 2x and that will give us our first eye brow. Now the outside, we will connect our two outside terms 3x and 1, which gives us our smile. The inside terms, the 2 and the 2x, gives us our nose. And our last terms, negative 2 and positive 1, give us our last eyebrow. And now if you did it correctly you will see a face in here. And now you know you did your problem correctly.

I hope you found this lesson useful. And, as always I’m glad to accept your donations. I am asking $1 per lesson. That is the cheapest tutoring that is out there. You can head over to my website at YourTutorOnline.com and click the donate button at the top of the page. I want to thank everybody for all of their comments they leave over at YouTube, keep them coming. I appreciate the comments and questions. And if you need more help, I am available for private tutoring. Just head on over to my webpage at YourTutorOnline.com and click on the tutoring link at the top of the page for more information. You could all help me out by writing a review of my podcast at PodcastAlley.com or write a review in iTunes. I will see you all next time, class dismissed.

This video looks at the exponent rules involving parentheses.

This videos looks at problems involving solutions. Example: You have a 15mL solution which is 10% salt, how much water do you have to add to make it 8%?

This video shows how to simplify fractions within fractions (known as “complex rational expressions). Just find the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) and multiply all the fractions by it.

This lesson teaches a method for adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. (Other than the number-line method)

There seems to be a problem with the video hosting service I use for the tutoring videos. I am switch everything over to YouTube and hope to have all of the videos back up and running on the site by the end of the day.

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update: I finished moving all the videos over to YouTube. All the videos should be working now.