For #5, you need to make sure you answer the question. I like to pose it this way: if you were an employee and the boss “said” to you the problem (that is, instead of reading the problem you are given, envision your boss saying it to you), then you need to ask yourself “what is my boss asking for?” He doesn’t care about math or variables. He wants to know something, and you need to figure out what that is. If he asks “How many products should I produce?” then your answer should be “you should produce this many units”. This also tells you what your variables should be in the problem: if he wants to know how many products to produce, start off the problem by saying “Let X be the number of products to produce”. Then when you get “x = something” at the end of the problem, you can answer his question.

Number 6 is a VERY important thing that many students don’t think of. When writing any test or exam, you should ALWAYS do the problems that you know EXACTLY how to do first. This way you are GUARANTEED to get those marks. The opposite is to do the ones you are not sure of first, and then what happens is you spend all this time on those questions and then if you get them or not, you have less time to do the ones you “know” how to do. Because then you are rushed, you make mistakes that you wouldn’t have made otherwise. It is VERY important that you always do the questions you know how to do first, slowly, and making sure you get 100% on them.

Great article!

Rob