Month: November 2017

Week 11- Math 10

Can divers pee easily underwater? Answer: no, but the acronym in that silly question, CDPEU, can be easily used with trinomials. Instead of ‘can divers pee easily underwater’ we’ll replace them with mathematical terms that can be used with trinomials.

When you are unsure about a question, ask yourself “is it common? Is it a difference of squares,” and so on. If you answer ‘no’ to all of them, the given question is not factorable. This is one thing that I learned this week that I found extremely helpful when I’m not sure what to do or when I am stuck on a question.

 

Week 10- Math 10

This week was the beginning of polynomials. They’re quite simple to understand and get the hang of, but the “ugly” ones are more difficult to figure out. A trick that I learned, and that I found helpful, was using the area models.

If you are given a question like this 2x^2+7x+6, there is an easier way to factorize it without doing everything in your head. First, we start by multiplying your first and last term, as well as starting your area model with what you know.

Then we list the multiples of 12 and see which ones add up to 7, which is our middle term. If the question has a negative term in it, you will need at least one negative term. From the list here, we see that 3 and 4 add up to 7.

Now we know what to put into the two blank squares. You can put whichever in each blank, the order of those 2 numbers doesn’t matter.

On the side, put what is common from each row horizontally on one side and the common numbers or variables, vertically, on another side. Don’t forget your signs like I did.

Now, put what you have on each side into brackets and you have your answer! For me, when I have a brain fart, this will be very useful.

 

Week 9- Math 10

This week was about polynomials. I was like a review of what we did in grade 9 plus an extension on it. We started with distributing binomials like (x-1)(x+3) and then to trinomials such as (x+1)(x-4+y). There was this one trick we learned that I find very helpful and useful. Here’s how it works:

Say you have a question like this (3m+7)(m^2 -3m +6). Drawing out the algebra tiles for this would be a hassle so I will do the area diagram trick! First, I would draw this

It looks like a weird hashtag. Next, I will place each term in along the sides like so and it should look like the picture below:

Then, I will multiply the numbers and simplify to get my final answer.

Just like that and you’re done!