The tutor points out a common error in evaluating expressions. Most students, from grade 7 on, are familiar with the order of operations BEDMAS (first brackets, then exponents, then division, next multiplication, then addition, finally subtraction). However, sometimes the order …
Math: order of operations (BEDMAS): a common pitfall Read more »
The tutor explains the idea behind non-permissible values. In high school math, non-permissible values become important. Yet, they root back to elementary school: “You can’t divide by zero,” uttered in metallic timbre, is recalled by many from then. A rational …
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The tutor demonstrates the technique of multiplying matrices. To go further with Markov chains (introduced in my previous post), the reader needs to understand matrix multiplication. To many, the method is surprising at first. Example: Consider the matrices A and …
The tutor is happy to introduce the elegant topic of Markov chains. A Markov chain is a sequence of states through which a probability system can pass. It’s not so complex as it sounds. Consider the following example: Ms A …
The tutor offers an online quadratic equation solver. The solver below assumes the equation to be in the form ax2 + bx + c = 0 The user enters the a, b, and c parameters, then clicks the button. The …
The tutor shows a convenient way to estimate the standard deviation. Let’s imagine the following list of 20 test scores: 43, 44, 49, 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 61, 64, 68, 73, 74, 76, 77, 82, 84, 85, 87, 91 …
Statistics: standard deviation shortcut using frequencies Read more »
The tutor continues about command-line math. Back on April 6 I showed how to use awk to do calculations on the command line. From my understanding, awk is native to Linux, but not Windows. If you’ve got Perl installed on …
Among personal sharing, the tutor introduces the shell scripting language “awk”. Am I a geek? In my home town, I probably qualify. However, in a large centre, I’d be “geek-lite” at best. I do program computers, but it’s not …
The tutor gives another example of converting a quadratic function from standard to vertex form. Some people find the case a<0 to be tricky. My previous couple of posts (here and here) cover other examples of standard form to …
Quadratic functions: standard form to vertex form, the ax² case: a<0 Read more »
The tutor continues about converting from standard to vertex form. Yesterday’s post opened the discussion about changing a quadratic function from standard form y=ax2 + bx + c to vertex form y=a(x-p)2 + q That post focused on the case …
Quadratic functions: standard form to vertex form, the ax² case Read more »