It is a lot easier to learn maths as an adult, than as a child.
For a start, you are not as likely to be distracted by just about anything.
One thing that happens ( happened to me), is that if, when first being introduced to Algebra, you miss one
class due to illness, by the time the next one comes around, everybody has moved on, & you are still bobbing in their wake.
Teachers love to refer to "transferring" part of an equation from one side of the equation to the other, assuming the kids understand the basic rule of equations --"whatever you do to one side, you have to do to the other".
You can't do maths?
Well, just by functioning in society, you are using it all the time.
Here's one:-
How many cents in $10?
in. $100?
You will say - that's easy, just multiply the dollar amount by 100--------- (1)
OK, how many cents in $
n?
Obviously the same rules apply, so Number of cents in $n = 100
n----------(2)
We can now select any numerical value for
n & always be able to determine this information for any value of
nBut wait, isn't that what you already did in (1) above?
By the way, (2) is a bit long winded, so if we can represent "Number of cents in" as a letter, we can write it as , maybe "c" for cents, so we can say. c=100
n ------(3)
(for the specific case of converting dollars into cents.)
But wait, there's more!
Maybe you have a lot of cents & want to convert them to dollars.
Can we use (3). In a different way?
As c=100
n is an
equation, we can do the same thing to each side.
If we divide both sides by 100, we get c/100= 100
n/100 ----(4)
Obviously, 100 goes into 100
n,
"n" times so:- c/100 =
n, which, as we want to
find out
n, we would normally write it as---------------------------------
n=c/100-----(5)
From the original discussion,we know that
n represents the number of dollars, so for, say, 455cents you would end up with $4.55.
All stuff you do in your head whenever you sort out your change!