Everybody has a talent, something they are innately good at without trying. My cousin, for example, could fit 35 marshmallows in his mouth and still say "fuzzy bunny." And yet, as outstanding as he was at that, he could not for his life solve an algebra problem—though he did have a funny joke about what mermaids wear.
 

Math is definitely one of those subjects that people either get completely or completely don't get, and sometimes it seems like the people who "get it" were just born that way.
 

But there are ways to improve your skills at math if you weren't born a wiz. Here are some pointers that should help you improve your math skills (and I'll bet that if you ask those people you think were born good at math, you'll probably find they do these things, too):

At the start of every review session, it is part of my routine to motivate students to perform in the best of their ability. I am not a motivational speaker, I simply share to my review students the principles lived by successful individuals who managed to act at their very best. I also throw to them the principles I personally believed that became instrumental in achieving my goals. What I'm sharing are things I picked up from reading, most of it are from entrepreneurs, investors, and sales persons. These things are less heard in engineering because most of the time, engineering students are bombarded with technical information in their stay at the university. My goal is to grow the seed of desire to top the board examination at the heart of my students, but most of all, I want them to live a successful life after their stay in the review center by holding positive mental attitude, a proper mind set, and the right character. Which only means that I want to make an impact to the life of my students in their short stay at the review center.
 

I found an old .xls file from my backup drive which dates back to year 2004, 4 years before MATHalino.com was being online and 6 years before I start to blog. The file is about the length of arc of the function y = f(x) from x = a to x = b, and the area bounded by y = f(x) and the x-axis from x = a to x = b. The method used to find the length of arc and the area was integration. You may download the file and experiment with it, mess it up, download it again, revise it, claim it as your own, do anything to it, it's up to you. The link is provided below.
 

Any one who took an engineering board examination will agree with me that scientific calculator is our best friend during the examination. It will speed up our work and will allow us to go through the analysis of the problem. In most cases, solving the equation is not the real issue, it is to write the correct equation that matters. If we are able to determine the correct equation of a particular situation, the burden of that problem is over. Our next step is obviously to solve for the desired value. It is important to note that the correct answer can only be derived from the correct equation. To determine the correct equation is where should our brain go, not in finding the solution of that equation. You guess it right, we use our best friend, the scientific calculator, to do the task. Don't do manual calculation please, the examiner will not give you bonus points in finding the roots of
 

manually. Calculator can easily solve for the value of θ fast and accurate.
 

This post is intended for webmasters who wish to install Latex to their server without spending large amount of money for VPS or dedicated server. Experienced webmasters are aware that installing a root level script is not allowed in almost all shared hosting. That is why this post is not about how to install LaTex, I will simply introduce here the hosting provider that powered MATHalino.com. You may noticed that this site is doing lot of math equations. These equations are written in Latex code, and the Latex engine will output the code into an equation.
 

My present host is WebFaction (WF). WF is a shared host that will allow you to install your own script. Any script won't matter to them as long as it is not illegal (phishing, virus, trojans, malware, etc). And as long that you will not exceed the limits imposed in all shared host; the run time memory. Latex can be easily installed, their online documentation is so vast and in full details, making me very confident of doing Linux from the command line.
 

Can you mentally calculate 34,123 × 11 in just 6 seconds? Now grab your pen and paper and try it. Time yourself and comeback here once you're done.
 

Are you finished doing the multiplication assigned above? How many seconds did you finish it? Have you done it in six seconds or faster? If you do then congratulations. Maybe you have some extra ordinary ability in doing math, or simply you know the non-conventional way of doing it. Yes, there is non-conventional way of doing it. And the good news is, even kids can do it after a little pracrice. One don't need extra ordinary math ability to do calculations at a lightning speed.
 

In 1931, the Catholic priest Georges Lemaître proposed that the universe began with the explosion of the primeval atom. In early 1950, Fred Hoyle coined the Lemaître's theory as Big Bang in multiple radio broadcasts. In scientific community, Big Bang Theory is not the only plausible theory, but it is so far the most popular one. The reason it is popular because there is no other cosmological theory that could better explain modern scientific discoveries.
 

The Chapter 4 of Strength of Materials Reviewer is now available for download free of charge. Please read the whole post before going to the download page.

Download page:
eBook download: Strength of Materials Chapter 4
 

This blog section of MATHalino.com has been totally revamped to be more engaging and be more centric to mathematics and engineering. If you happen to visit this section before, old posts has been deleted and cannot be recovered. We have no interest to restore those old posts, if you looked for it, we apologize we cannot deliver those old contents to you.