How to Type Math Notation in Emails

Math Typesetting for the Internet Writing mathematics on a piece of paper is easy - writing mathematics with ASCII is somewhat harder. If you're aware of a few important rules, though, you can help other people accurately interpret your math notation. This site gives some of the basics.

Math Notation Examples You will find more examples here with views of what the math would look like if you wrote it or saw it in a book, along with the typed text version.

Formatting Math as Text Math looks so pretty, all nicely formatted in the textbook. But when you go to e-mail your instructor with a question, or post your question to a math tutoring forum, you can end up with a mess or with something that totally doesn't mean what you meant it to mean. To deal with this issue, the math community is developing norms for text-only formatting. What follows is not "the" one right way to format math, but is a distillation of what a lot of math tutors use. A Purplemath web site.

Math Notation via Email This site tends to focus on Calculus notation, but still has some good tips for how to type math in regular text.

Study Tips

Study Skills & Learning Styles Surveys

Diablo Valley College Learning Style Survey This is one of the best learning style surveys I have found. It gives you tips on how to study based on your preferences. I tend to prefer the Visual Verbal style and use Auditory to supplement that. In other words, I need to see the words for information to sink in, but if I see it and hear it, I remember the information better.

Math Study Skills Self-Survey This study skills survey is designed to help you review your current study habits and perhaps learn new ones. As you take this survey I hope you will find some new techniques to try out.

General Tips

Totally Stressed Out The stress management site for students and other humans. Great tips for dealing with stress in your life, as a student and just as a human being. Includes stress-free photo galleries.

Why is Math so Hard? Math is no harder than other subjects, but it is different. You will succeed by taking those differences into account.

How to Be a Successful Student This is on the Coolmath web site. You might want to explore more of the site; there are games as well as tutorials available.

The 6 things you'll need to be really successful in Algebra and in everything else in life The title of this one says it all! Check it out (on the Coolmath web site again).

Math Students' FAQ A lot of math students tend to ask the same questions or express the same frustrations, and instructors may not always have good answers on the tip of their tongue. And sometimes the question the student asks is just the tip of the iceberg and there is a “hidden script”, a deeper question that is what’s really bothering the student. Check out these 15 questions and answers.

Homework Guidelines from Purplemath Messy homework annoys math teachers because it is difficult to follow. Working neater can improve your understanding and comprehension. In general, write your homework as though you're trying to convince someone that you know what you're talking about.

How to Study A general study tips site at State University of New York at Buffalo. Lots of information and links to other sites.

Learning Strategies: Maximizing Your Academic Experience The links on this Darthmouth College page provide a variety of suggestions and resources for maximizing your academic experience. View an on-line video, read about helpful strategies, or download a handout.

Study Guides and Strategies The Guides are intended to be straight-forward recipes on selected topics. There are many links on this page and they are available in many languages.

Successful Math and Science Study Skills Welcome to the exciting and satisfying world of conquering math anxiety and success in math and science. If you are math anxious or you panic on tests, this is the perfect site for you.  In addition,  this site provides effective study skills for mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.  These tips are based on research as well as years of counseling math and science students. 

Exam Tips

How to Study for a Math Exam More from the Coolmath web site. One of the biggest tips when studying for a math exam is to start early. Cramming does not work (at least not if you need to retain the information for a long period of time, for instance, until the final exam).

How to Study for a Math Final Exam Again on the Coolmath Web site, you will find a study check list. Check off each part as you complete it. Ideally, this list should be started at least 10 days before your final!!

How to Take a Math Test or Quiz Tests are different from homework because there's a time limit, because you can't take breaks or refer to your textbook, and because you have many types of problems to solve. Here are some strategies to help you do your best.

Taking a Math Test Just as it is important to think about how you spend your study time (in addition to actually doing the studying), it is important to think about what strategies you will use when you take a test (in addition to actually doing the problems on the test).

How to Take a Math Test (The ChrabbyMathTM Way) Good math exam taking tips here, and with a name like ChrabbyMath, you have to be curious.

Tutorials & Online Tutoring

Coolmath An amusement park of math designed for fun! Bored with math?  Confused by math?  Hate math?  Yeah, Coolmath can fix that. Lots of tips and tutorials for algebra and other areas.

Practical Algebra Lessons This Purplemath web site contains lots of links to many algebra topics and will be useful as you progress through the different levels of algebra.

Math Nerds Free Math Help and Tutoring MathNerds provides Free, discovery-based, mathematical guidance via an international, volunteer network of mathematicians. MathNerds does not supply answers to homework, take home tests and the like; rather, we provide hints, suggestions, and references to help our clients understand and solve their mathematical problems. You do have to register to use this service.

Webmath (Help Solving Problems) This site is composed of many math "fill-in-forms" into which you can type the math problem you're working on. Linked to these forms is a powerful set of math-solvers, that can instantly analyze your problem, and when possible, provide you with a step-by-step solution, instantly! It might be a little confusing at first, but try it out. There is even help for setting up word problems.

Ms. Lindquist: The Free Algebra Tutor for Word Problems One of the hardest things for students to do is to write algebra expressions for word problems. This program asks you questions to help you figure out word problems. Very interactive and you can download a version to your computer.

Beginning Algebra Online Tutorial If you need help in beginning algebra, you have come to the right place.  Note that you do not have to be a student at Western Texas A&M University to use any of these online tutorials.  They were created as a service to anyone who needs help in these areas of math.

Other Stuff of Interest

Purplemath Site Reviews Reviewed sites are arranged by category. Click on an entry in this listing to go to the review on that category's page.

Careers in Math Do you like math, but don't know what you can do with it when you get out of school? Do you have a job in mind, but don't know how much math education (BS, MS or Ph.D.) you'll need? Coolmath provides some links to sites that you might find helpful!

Fun and Artsy

Warp a Famous Person's Face Select a famous person, click on any part of their photo, hold the left mouse button down, then drag it to "warp" the photo into a topologically equivalent distortion.

Warp Any Picture of Your Own Load any of your own photos, click on any part of their photo, hold the left mouse button down, then drag it to "warp" the photo into a topologically equivalent distortion. You can even save your new work of art.

Number Patterns, Fun with Curves, and Topology Part One A whole collection of recreational math sites. Have some fun here.
Number Patterns, Fun with Curves, and Topology Part Two

Changing Illusions Online versions of Seeing Exhibits in San Francisco's Exploratorium Museum. Especially recommended are the five interactive illusions in Changing Illusions

The Flash Mind Reader Think of any two digit number, add together its digits, then subtract the total from your original number. Look up your result in the table provided and concentrate on the symbol next to it. When you click on the crystal ball, this symbol will "mysteriously" appear! It's great and of course bogus. After you've racked your brain over how it works, take a peek at Flash Mind Reader Demystified

SpiroGraph Remember those little plastic wheels that spun around and made those fascinating patterns? This applet allows you to generate all the spirographs your heart desires interactively.

Created by Anu Garg.

Fractal Art Make your own fractal art! Use your images in art and science projects, or print them out and decorate your stuff. Click on the Make a Poster button to generate your fractal creation as a 720x480 GIF image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Math Rock, Tool, and Fibonacci Ever heard of math rock? According to Ian James, the drummer on the first video clip: "Math rock is the chaining together of odd time signatures to create an unconventional song structure." There is also an example of a math rock song by heavy rock group Tool. The video points out how the title track from the album Lateralus has woven the Fibonacci sequence throughout the song. (The Fibonacci sequence isof numbers named after Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci, introduced the sequence to Western European mathematics, although the sequence had been previously described in Indian mathematics. Typically the sequence starts out with 1 and 2, then the next numbers in the sequence are found by adding the previous two. So the sequence looks like this: 1, 2, 3 (1+2), 5 (2+3), 8 (3+5), 13 (5+8), ...