Appetizers and Lessons for Mathematics and Reason (www.whyslopes.com)
||Définition d'une variable || Algèbre || Arithmetique || Logique ||La raison basée sur les règles et modelés||

Online Volumes
1,  Elements of Reason.
1A. Pattern Based Reason 
1B. Math Curriculum Notes
2. Three Skills for Algebra
3. Why Slopes & More Math

 (Optional Book Orders)
More Site Areas 
1. Help Your Child or Teen Learn 
2. Solving Linear Equations
3. Fractions Ratios Rates Proportions & Units
4. Euclidean Geometry
5. Analytic Geometry/Functions 
6. Number Theory
7. More Calculus
More Site Areas 
8. Complex Numbers 
9. Qc Maths  Education  
10. Secondary IV(?) maths
11. Real  Analysis 
12. LaTeX2HotEqn:
13. Electric Circuits Etc  
14.  Français
15. Algebra, Odds & Ends, Etc
More Site Areas 
16. Math Education Essays
17. Telling & Working with Time
18. Maps, Plans & Drawings
19. Quantitative Skills for  home, shopping and work 
20. Statistics Useful, or Not.
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YOU are better than YOU think. Show yourself  how:  

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Read  logic chapters 1 to 5  in online volume Three Skills for Algebra  for greater skills & confidence in  work 
and study

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 Logic chapters 1 to 5  re- appear not in sequence, as is or longer,  in  Volume 1A,  Pattern Based Reason, Bon Appetite.

Logic Mastery
 Amazing, Amusing, Amorous,  Delicious, Delightful, Edifying, Strengthening Elixir. 
It eases work & learning difficulties Makes the hard easier. Opens eyes. Leads to greater precision.
in reading and
writing

Logic mastery makes the hard, easier. Logic mastery  leads to better, stronger and richer comprehension.  Logic mastery  improves reading and writing.  Logic mastery ease learning difficulties.  Logic mastery gives a headstart.  In sum, logic mastery  will develops critical thinking, improve reading and writing, and give a firmer base for work and studies at many levels. Good luck.


After logic  (a) continue reading Three Skills for Algebra, chapters 8 to 14  and do so alongside site area on solving liinear Equations ; or (b) see this calculus starter lesson and Volume 3, Why Slopes  & More Math, chapters 2 to 6;

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Caution: Site advice is approximately correct, for some circumstances, not all. That leaves room for thought

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What may be learnt and when depends on how skills and concepts are developed. Making the hard easier and clearer will allow earlier & richer development of skills and concepts.


Try the Twiddla Whiteboard. In principle, it  allows to people to draw and chat together online on a copy of this webpage or a clean sheet. The chat may be via text or audio.  Visit www.twiddla.com to set up whiteboards to work with the webpage of your choice.

For online automated help in senior high school maths & calculus, visit  quickmath.com  For Automatic Calculus and Algebra Help with derivatives, integrals, graphs, linear equations, matrix algebra, visit calc101.com  With  overlap, each site quickmath & calc101offers a different range of services, some free, some not, all based on webmathematica. Good luck.


Foreword (Area Introduction)

Three Skills
For 
Algebra

understanding and explaining
Reason and Math
Volume 2

by
Alan M. Selby
Ph. D.

Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-9697564-2-9

Logic, that is a mastery of rule- and pattern-based reason is needed in all disciplines. In particular, it may lead to precision reading and writing. If you cannot read precisely, how will you understand and how will you see errors in your own work or that of others.

The first chapter on logic or rule-based reason shows the difference between one- and two-ways implication rules. Not seeing this difference is a source of confusion. Seeing the difference is a first step towards the better understanding of the implications, suggestions, rules or information met in daily life, at work and in school or college. The initial chapters on reason  talk about chains of reason, about islands and divisions of knowledge and about longer chains of reason.   The last chapters on logic connect the ideas of a rule being true or not with the common ideas of a rule being obeyed, disobeyed and/or not disobeyed. (In retrospect, there should also be a discussion of when a rule applies or not. In the latter case, the rule is vacuously true -holds vacuously.)

Altogether, the  logic chapters provide a  unique mathematics-free introduction to the direct and indirect definition and rule-based thinking that appeared in Euclid's work a long time ago (2300 years ago)

Three Skills for algebra are as follows.

  1. We can talk about numbers and quantities. The words or adjectives used here may be used in mathematics after arithmetic.  There is more to mathematics than just doing arithmetic.
  2. We can describe calculations that might be done (or postponed) with words alone or with an (algebraic) shorthand notation. The description of calculations that might be done is also part of mathematics after arithmetic. There is more to mathematics than just doing arithmetic.
  3. We can change the way a number or quantity is computed. Some rule-based reason is required here. There is more to mathematics than just doing arithmetic.

The first skill, talking about numbers and quantities, use words to describe them, gives a unique comprehension of numbers and quantities apart from but parallel to the the shorthand role of letters and symbols in mathematics.  The separation here  is needed for a clearer, more precise understanding of  the shorthand, symbolic, way of writing and reasoning that we call algebra.  



Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Selby, Alan M,
Understanding and Explaining reason and math
Contents: v. 1. Elements of Reason - v. 2. Three Skills
for algebra - v.3. Why Slopes and more math.
ISBN 0-9697564-4-5 (set) -
ISBN 0-9697564-1-0 (v. 1) -
ISBN 0-9697564-2-9 (v. 2) -
ISBN 0-9697564-3-7 (v. 3) -
1. Mathematics–Philosophy. 2. Reason.
3. Algebra. 4. Calculus. I. Title. II. Title: Elements of reason. III.Three Skills for algebra. IV. Title: Why Slopes and more math.
QA8.4.S44 1995 510’.1 C95-900945-0

Reprinting may lead to new ISBN numbers 

A Postscript:

While we may understand on sight, the meaning of  word as a unit, most words can be read aloud. In contrast,  while mathematical expression can also be interpreted on sight by people at ease with such expressions, most expressions are hard to read aloud or hard to digest when read aloud (spelled) letter by letter and symbol by symbol.  So formulas and expressions are better seen and mastered silently.   The first skill for algebra in explicitly recognizing  our ability to talk about numbers and quantities apart from arithmetic and algebraic expressions adds a new verbal view of mathematics which compensates and facilitates the silent visually comprehension of most formulas and expression in mathematics.  The first skill puts words before symbols. 

www.whyslopes.com
Volume 2, Three Skills for Algebra -

Preview, starter & further lessons for logic and algebra to (i) improve work & study skills;  (ii) to  to ease or avoid algebra (math) fears & difficulties; and (iii) to fill gaps in the exposition of mathematics.

Foreword, Chapters and Appendices follow.

Foreword
1. Introduction
2. Implication Rules
3. Chains of Reason
4. Romeo and Juliet
4. Induction Mathematical
5 Knowledge Islands
6  Old Language
7  Arith Skill Check
7. The Next Chapters
8 The Three Skills
8 VNR-Concise-Encyclopedia
PS. What is a Variable
9. Algebra Talk
10 Two More Skills
11 Why Shorthand
12 Shorthand Usage
13 What's Next
14 Compound Interest
15 Linear Equations
PS I.  Distributive Law
PS II. Polynomials
16 Painless Proofs
17 Pythagoras
18 Rules of Algebra
19  Functions & Sets
20 Degrees & Radians
21 What's Next
22. Arith & Geometric Sums
23 Summation Notation
24 Your Money
25 Induction & Recursion
26 What's Next
27 Pronouns in Logic
28 Occurrence Tables
29 Contrapositive
30 Truth Tables
31 Indirect Reason
A. Advice For Learning

Real Player Videos

Perfect arithmetic skills with whole numbers & fractions
after or besides chapters 1 to 14.

Arithmetic Videos Summary
Addition with Decimals
Subtraction with Decimals
Multiplication with Decimals
Fraction Arithmetic
Recognizing Primes
Long Division for Decimals
Square Root Simplification
Greatest Common Divisors
Least Common Multiples

Words Before Symbols: 
What is a Variable?
Introduction
Variation between Examples

Variation of Letters

A letter denotes a variable

Cases of Double Variation

Three Notions of a Variable

Constants, Parameters
& Variables

Talking about numbers
Dependent or Independent
Variable, a Matter of Choice
Complex number: starter lesson  

Solving Linear Equations:

A. Letters and Lengths

B. & C. Solving Linear Eq'ns
with stick diagrams.

(i) x + 20 = 29
(ii) 2x + 5 = 20
(iii) 3x + 10 = 32
(iv) 5a + 16 = 3a+ 24

(v)  (½)x + 8 = 24½
(vI)  (¾)a + 16 = (¼)a+ 24
(vii) (¾)q + 17 = 32
(viii) 13 =[2/3]x +7 twice
(x) Animated Examples
(i) Integral Coefficients (A)
(ii) Integral Coefficients (B)
(iii) Fractional Coefficients

(iv) With Parameters

Problem Solving with Linear
Equations in one or many
unknowns, and in essentially 
one unknown - Symbols before
words. 


C. Solving Linear Eq'ns 
without
Stick Diagrams

D. Problems in 
essentially one unknown

E: 2D Systems - Sub Methods.
F. Larger Systems




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The Rest © 1995 onward by site author,   Alan Selby,
a 1983 McGill. Ph. D. in mathematics
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