Aibu to say I'm just too stupid to do this darn maths test?

[Xmasfun]

I'm just too stupid and I can't do maths! I'm doing a diploma level 3 in care and I've passed the English easy Peasy then I went on a short maternity break to have my now 5 month daughter. Now I need to get through the maths I can't revise as my daughter doesn't sleep and what's worse is I have no clue on the questions! Volume, fractions , algebra ! I just am never gonna do it . Aibu thinking that it's impossible? Others from my group have done it but got hours and hours of one to one help but I have my 5mo who is exclusively breastfed and I have no one to leave her with and if I take her with me I still won't be able to concentrate on crap I don't no anything about anyway!

There are proper ways to work this out, but try just using common sense. Does that number look like roughly a quarter or a third or a half? Which is the answer closest to that?

If he'd eaten 5.25 too much, that would be half (50%). 3.5 is a third of the amount, or 33%. Then you are just using 'normal' numbers rather than worrying about equations etc

find some way of doing it in bite sized chunks. 15 mins here and there over the course of a day

That's not a great example to demonstrate how to work out percentages unfortunately! In this case I'd work out how many times 3.5 goes into 10.5. It goes in 3 times so that's a third (33%).

Does that help? As I said, not a great example to explain the basics of fractions, but I used to teach maths before career break so feel free to PM me and I can do some basics with you.

take your baby with you. explain to the tutor you have no childcare but really need help.

Ok, I'm assuming by the time I've typed this someone else will have written out the long version, but here's a shortcut that's useful if you have multiple-choice questions with easy numbers, like 25%.

That's a question where you can narrow it down a lot straightaway if you look at the numbers and think what they mean.

And 25% is a quarter of the total (right?)

That means, if it were 25% he'd eaten, it'd be a quarter of the total. Now, is 3.5 a quarter of 14.0?

So, you work out:

3.5 lots of 4

(You do 3x4=12, plus half a four (=2), so the total is 14). So you can immediately tell it is C.

This works because I could immediately see a pattern (which I could there - 25% is a nice clue, because generally multiplying by four to work out what 100% is, is quite easy).

If that had turned out to be wrong, btw, you would still have got rid of one option, and you would know whether you needed to go higher (D) or lower (A or B), so it's a helpful thing to do.

Ok, ignore me, my brain must be shite.

Sorry.

OK don't panic! Its just percentages.

The extra sodium is 3.5 grams - it tells you that.
The recommended amount is 10.5 grams

So you just need to find what percentage 3.5 grams is of 10.5 grams

Well, straight off you can see that 3.5 is about one third of 10.5 so that should lead you to answer D, 33%

But if you want to work it out a bit more accurately than that then you multiply 3.5 by 100 an divide by 10.5, so that would be 3.5 x 100 = 350
350 / 10.5 is approximately 33.

Wow great help here ladies thank you , you have made it sound less daunting and I do get it now am going to try and complete one test paper tonight and then I will do as above and just do a little bit each day ...

Bestlaidplans thank you I will pm you with anything else I'm stuck on but I feel my darn tutor should be helping ! Al she says is well we will book an hour out and I will show you then she never gets back to me then when I call her she doesn't answer

Xmasfun stop believing you are stupid. The maths you are showing is very very easy. Many people, especially women, in this country are conditioned to think it's hard. The effect is that if they see maths, they have a mental block. If you don't have this fear, then what you see is something you just need to work harder to achieve.

BestLaidPlans what you are saying is basically the same as MummyToKatie but harder. You mentally worked out that 3.5 x N = 10.5 where N = 3. What MummyToKatie wrote is that you can what out what N is by using a calculator to do 3.5/10.5 * 100 = the % you want.

Oh that was intended to be set out a bit nicer than that but somehow my spacing got buggered

I found this book helpful for the teacher numeracy test.

www.amazon.co.uk/Numeracy-Tests-Dummies-Lifestyles-Paperback/dp/1119953189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357318662&sr=8-1

Also, to the poster struggling with the mental maths - I found the solution was to train yourself to get the info down first time, then ignore the second repetition, making enough time to work it out.

Basically Believe in Yourself. Just keep saying you can do it!

www.amazon.co.uk/Numeracy-Tests-Dummies-Lifestyles-Paperback/dp/1119953189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357318662&sr=8-1

I think you may need to go back a step or two and make sure you really understand the terminology used etc.

Per cent looks scary but it is just a fraction the same a 1/2 or 1/4 is a fraction.

If I said I ate 50% of the pie that means I am greedy ate 50/100 (i.e. if you divided the pie into 100 pieces I took 50 of them) of the pie which means I ate half of the pie.

If I said give me 25% of the cake please it sounds odd but in fact it means 25/100 (i.e. you divided the cake into 100 slices and I took 25) which is the same as 1/4 so when I ask for 25% of the cake I am asking for 1/4.

Tbh I think that is a slightly confusing question because they give you more numbers than you need to do the calculation (i.e. the 14 is redundant given the 10.5 and the 3.5).

Is your problem that you don't understand what the question is asking you to do? Or that you don't know how to work out what proportion 3.5 is of 10.5? Or that you can't convert it to a percentage?

I'm not trying to be patronising at all, just wondering where exactly the problem is for you. Because often with maths it's just some small thing that's not been understood, and once that's explained, everything becomes clear :)

Btw - I think ephiny is saying the less-stupid version of what I demonstrated: you need to read the question and not, like me, read the wrong numbers that don't matter!

:)

Onelittletoddling the one snag with my method is that it does require the use of a calculator. But looking at the numbers used and the type of question asked a calculator seems likely.

Xmas as LRD showed the hardest part of the question is to decide which numbers to use. (I had to read it three times before I was confident.) But working out the question isn't maths. It's more like English. Which you are good at.

So Xmasfun have you decided you are stupid.

Well thickie, best you do not even consider completing a diploma in care as you obviously do not have the brain cells to squeeze a grape! Let alone care for anyone or thing.

Have I made you angry?

I hope so.

Go and do something about it rather than sink in a cesspit of self pity and worthlessness.

Do better!

Your tutor should be giving you a lot more support and guidance. If you cannot get hold of her you need to let your employer know as you are doing the course through work. Maybe they can chase her up.

Where are you based? I love maths (and have tutored 3 people to pass their GCSE in recent years).
I am south coast (central) and would happily help you on a 1-2-1 basis.

I agree with the others that often understanding what sum the question is actually asking you to do is half the battle. DS1 got 32% on one maths practice paper because it was word based questions, I sat down with him and got him to just work out what sum the question was asking for, he got over 70% in the actual test because he could do the sums once he knew what numbers he needed to use.

You need to look at bbc skillswise which is good for introducing some of the main areas up to around level two i think.
You ned to stop thinking maths is hard ans that you cant do it. I speak from experience having completes maths qualification in the last year.i knoq how challenging ans hard it is(I dont have children though) i tjink tou need to do a little studying,say twenty minutes every day or a minimum of ao many days per week.

I had a job in-service training primary school maths teachers in rural South Africa. Fantastic work.

When it came to %'s I remember asking some of them which would be better value; a six pack of beer at 5% booze, or a 250 ml bottle of rum at 40% booze.

Not a very 'correct' question, but it got a lot of them thinking and coming up with sensible answers.

Making arithmetic relevant can eliminate a lot of errors.