i am going to nursing school and need advice on math problems?

Favorite Answer

Math for the most part is not memorization. It is a system. It has subsystems, many of them, like numbers, connect the numbers, separate them, divide, and multiply them in groups, etc. graph them, Use them in the real world to measure, to hypothesize, to analyze, evaluate. Try learning the systems.

In learning, there are three levels that most people must go through to thoroughly understand a concept. They are the concrete (the touching stage), the pictorial stage (the picture stage) and the abstract stage (symbol stage). An example is; You teach a child the number one. You show the child a rock and say one, a block and say one, this is number one (concrete stage). Then you show the child a picture of the rock, then a picture of a rock, this is the pictorial stage. Then you show the child the numeral 1. This is the abstract stage. You combine these 3 and understanding occurs.

This goes on in elementary grades, but as you advance in math, teachers tend to eliminate the concrete and the pictorial and go to the abstract. The student loses the sense of the concept and system and subsystems and the connections. Very little memorization is needed in math if the student will move through the 2 stages mentioned. Make charts to connect the system you are studying and connect it to the other systems. Let us say metric system and the customary system, actually use it - concretely. Now injecting it, or preparing medications, do it, make pictures, graphs. Algebraic formulas, find where they fit. If you do not understand some math, you have a gap and need to go back and play with that math using the 3 levels of learning and make connections to what you are learning. Good luck!...Show more