Math Is Fun Forum

You we're right. I need to read more carefully before I start acting like two part questions are standalone ones.

Can you remember all those rules and apply them correctly? The problem is it doesn't make you any good at mathematics. You'll look at the rules and they'll be devoid of any meaning to you. You just follow them as a means to an end. When a rule doesn't work you'll have no idea what to do. Learning formulas wont help much when you need to figure out relationships and patterns to solve problems.

In simple terms.... Justin Beiber can learn the algorithm to solve a rubiks cube but he would never figure out howw to solve a 4 or 5 sided one just by being able to follow the procedure.

I personally have bad memory and remember concepts way better than rules. I forget meaningless information. Hey I can go to the kitchen and just get 6 apples. Hey I can split these into 3 and 3, 1 and 5,  2 and 4. Hey it doesn't matter which way I put them together you always get 6 back. "Commutative law,"  If I split them into equal parts I get 2  groups of 3 or 3 groups of 2 or 1 group of 6 originally. Hey those are factors and what I just did is what they call division. - much more intuitive no?...

No I agree with you. Lots of questions in the school curriculum over here try to pigeonhole you. They ask closed questions to open answers, and ask open questions but only want a selection of answers. Both implies there are only 2 possible.

This actually happened to me today. I used a verbose procedure to come to a solution. Then I saw there was a much simpler procedure that only involved a few steps. It was the same answer though. I don't really understand what you're saying yet though since I'm only doing the basics.

If Physics doesn't give me a good enough mathematical background then there's no way I'm doing it as a single subject. I want to actually be able to understand the millenium prize problems.

For the two number,

                the product is double the sum.

Work out the number I could be thinking of.
Give both possible pairs of answers.

I don't really fully understand it myselv but this is the solution I was given.

x(x+7.5) = 2(x+x+7.5)

x^2 + 7.5x = 2(2x +7.5)

x^2 + 7.5x = 4x + 15

x^2 + 3.5x - 15 = 0

2x^2 + 7x - 30 = 0

(2x - 5) (x + b) = 0

2x -5 = 0 or x + b = 0

x = 5/2,        x = -b

2.5+7.5 = 10,   -6 + 7.5= 1.5

answer 2.5   and 10

    or

-6   and 1.5

xD You guys make me feel stupid lol. I thought of 0 0 but thought they wouldn't accept it because it doesn't look like twice the amount but there is no amount  so twice nothing is nothing or whatever. I am just used to avoiding operations using 0.

c^2 = 16.   - 4, or  4

4c = -d

when c  = 4

4(4), -d = 16, d = -16

when c = -4, d =  16

1) = 300 because  45 * 4 - 180 = 60%, 180/60 = 3 = 1%

I don't even think intelligence is fixed if by intelligence you mean the ability to absorb and apply knowledge. That's how it's defined in the Oxford dictionary anyway. Technically I have been becoming more intelligent over the past few years then. But it has been used to mean a persons capacity to learn, rememember, reason, problem solve, plan, etc. They must mean natural ability.

I believe a certain amount of this is due to genes since their brains may function faster or be able to focus better or what ever advantage genetics is supposed to give you. For example I'm naturally good at spotting patterns but I don't know why. Sometimes most the details fade into the background and I just see one common pattern over and over. I then get flashbacks of various times I have seen it in my life and the element was common to all of them. It can be maddening. Babies seem to be able to pick up any language in what 3 years? The majority of grown adults can't do that. There are savants that can absorb information in seconds and remember, leading them to learn something in short periods.

The advantage thinkers and adults have imo is that they have a larger knowledge base to pull from. They can also assess and review. To illustrate this you could have a person conventionally considered to be intelligent. He would take Chinese classes and might be able to pick it up faster than me if we used those same methods. But having knowledge of a few other things and sense I can outdo the person considered to be more intelligent.

I could just look up the most common Chinese phrases. I could just learn 1 phrase a day and learn the words in it. Also watch some Chinese media. That is 365 words a year. Even if I only retained 1/3 of that I could probably get by in that country. I would already have some template sentences I could use and just modify a few words in them. Maybe without even trying you would have picked up the grammar because you're using prepackaged grammar structures anyway.

So I think there a lot of factors that contribute to a person getting results.