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Essential Concepts

• The key strategies for reading and understanding math are to: Read Carefully, Identify the Question, Highlight Key Information, Visualize the Problem, Break It Down, Use Problem-Solving Strategies, Solve Step-by-Step, Check Your Answer, and Reflect on the Solution.
• The types of problems you may encounter are: Solve, Simplify, Calculate, Graph, and Multi-step.
• The problem-solving process involves identifying the question, working backward to determine the required information and relationships, creating a solution pathway, looking up or estimating missing information, ignoring unnecessary information, and finally solving the problem following the established pathway.
• There are different approaches to solving a problem. They are: Break It Down, Trial and Error, Pattern Recognition, and Logical Reasoning.
• Graphing calculators, spreadsheets, and mathematical software can greatly enhance our problem-solving abilities, allowing us to solve complex problems, visualize mathematical concepts, and analyze large data sets with relative ease.
• Critical thinking is a crucial skill for mathematicians as it enables them to assess the validity and reasonableness of claims by asking the right questions, scrutinizing the evidence, ensuring logical reasoning, challenging assumptions, and evaluating the evidence rather than accepting claims at face value.
• Recognizing and challenging assumptions is an important aspect of critical thinking, as assumptions form the foundation of claims and arguments. By identifying and questioning these assumptions, we deepen our understanding, gain a more comprehensive perspective, and engage in insightful discussions that contribute to well-informed decisions and robust arguments.
• Data can be presented by graphs, charts and tables.

Glossary

chart

a structured presentation of data

graph

a way of presenting numerical data into visual form, making trends and patterns easier to spot

table

organize data in a clear and concise manner