Math 1M03 How to Study if You're Not Good at Math Page
If you're not good at math but still hope to pass or even get a good mark then you must do ALL of the following:
1. Never miss a lecture or tutorial. If you miss a lecture, it is estimated that it will take you twice as long to learn the material that you missed. In addition, once you learn it on your own, you will only understand it half as well. So missing a lecture essentially quadruples the work need to understand the missed work (and I don't think that anyone has this much spare time to waste). Getting the class notes from someone will make up very little of the missed lecture. Only about 1/4 of what is said in a lecture is written down on the board. Therefore by just getting the notes, you are missing 3/4 of what is said in the lecture, i.e., you are missing all of the explanations needed to help you to learn the material.
2. After each lecture (the same day or night of the lecture), read over your notes, and also read the corresponding sections in the book and try 3 or 4 of the problems given at the end of the section. I am not talking about reading the notes like a novel. Instead you have to carefully study the notes (and the corresponding section in the textbook) to make sure that you understand what is being done. Never leave this to another day. It is important to do it the same day because then the lecture will be fresh in your mind, and your reading will reinforce what you have learned in the lecture which will make it more likely that you will remember it. If you don't do this the same day of the lecture, then likely you will forget much of what was done in the lecture, and you will essentially have to reteach the material to yourself at a later time, which is not a good idea for the reasons mentioned in 1. above.
3. Ask for Help (the same week) if after doing #2 above, you still don't understand certain things. Bring your questions to the problem session that week, or to any of the TA office hours that week, or to the Math Drop-in Centre hours that week (see the links on the main course page) or to the instructor office hours that week. If you need even more help than that, then you might benefit by getting a personal tutor (links given on the main course page) immediately (and not just the week before the test or exam when it is too late). Always get these questions answered the same week. If you leave them to the following week, then you will also have a whole new set of problems that week that you will need answered, and very quickly so many questions pile up that you won't have time to get them all answered.
4. Do all of the suggested problems given on the course web site as we cover the material in class. Don't let this wait until the day before the test (when it is too late to learn the material properly). The suggested problems are similar to the questions that will be asked on the tests, and they are meant to show you where you might need more work. Therefore, if you can't do some of the questions initially, then after getting help on those questions you should do a few more questions of that type to make sure that you fully understand them. Never look at a solution in the solutions manual, or a solution explained to you by a TA or tutor, and conclude that you can now do the question. Hopefully after looking at the solutions manual or hearing an explanation, you understand how someone else did the question. But for a test or exam, you have to know whether or not you can do a question of that type on your own. This is why it is especially important to try more questions from the book that are similar to a question that you could not do initially on your own.
5. Study for a test by using the method described here.
