Q&A for How to Improve Your Mathematical Calculation Skills

Pay attention in class, talk to your teacher if you are confused, identify your weaknesses and create a study plan to improve them. When taking exams, read each question carefully and double-check your work.

It will just take you a little longer to learn it. The more you practice, the better you will know the material. Use flashcards, ask someone to quiz you or make up problems for you, and ask a friend or the teacher for extra help if you need it. Remembering things is all about repetition, so just keep at it.

The square root of 10 is 3.16.

Practice makes perfect, and you should try to practice your math skills every day.

Cancellation is the elimination of any number that appears as a factor in both the numerator and denominator of a fraction. An example is the fraction 18/45. The numerator can be factored into 2 x 9. The denominator can be factored into 5 x 9. You can eliminate (cancel) the 9 in both the numerator and denominator, leaving the fraction 2/5.

Start with memorization. Second, put yourself mentally in situations where those sums would come up.

Cancellation is simply dividing a number by itself, resulting in 1. Thus, if a fraction's numerator and denominator both contain the same number as a factor, you may "cancel" that number in both the numerator and denominator. What you're really doing is dividing that number in the denominator into the same number in the numerator, resulting in a 1. (1 has no effect when it's multiplied by or divided into other numbers.)

Take them step by step; break down the problem into as many simple steps as possible. If there's a certain type of problem you struggle to do, you may want to come up with a list of problems like that to practice daily. Practice makes perfect! If you're still having trouble completing difficult problems, you may want to seek help from a tutor.

See Solve Simultaneous Equations by Substitution Method , Solve Simultaneous Equations by Elimination Method and related articles.

The square root of 5/7 can be simplified to the square root of 5 divided by the square root of 7. But because neither are perfect squares, for an approximation, you'll need to use a calculator or work it out longhand . Either way, you'll get the approximation of 0.845154255.

Memorize all the perfect squares, and if you're trying to take the square root of a non-perfect square, if none of those perfect squares are a factor of that non-perfect square, it can't be simplified. You will have to use a calculator to find the exact value (and it will be irrational).

Look for your answer at How to Learn Math for your answer.

See Solve Square Root Problems .

No tricks, just logic. Memorize as many perfect squares as you can. Then use them to find square roots. For example, to find the square root of 55, we know that 49 is the square of 7, and 64 is the square of 8. Since 55 is a little closer to 49 than it is to 64, the square root of 55 is going to be a little closer to 7 than it is to 8. Then it becomes a process of trial-and-error. You could choose 7.4 (because that's a little closer to 7 than it is to 8. 7.4 squared is 54.76, so we know that the square root of 55 is slightly more than 7.4. We could choose 7.41. Its square is 54.91, so we're getting close. The square of 7.42 is 55.06, so now we know that the square root of 55 is slightly closer to 7.42 than it is to 7.41. You can keep doing trial-and-error until you get an answer that satisfies you, or you can stop here and estimate that the square root of 55 is roughly 7.416 (which is a good estimate).

The cube root of 3 is equal to 1.4422. The only easy way to solve this is to use a calculator.

Coprime numbers are any two prime numbers or any two consecutive numbers. For example, 11 and 13 are coprime numbers (because each is a prime number), but also 11 and 12 are coprime numbers (simply because they are consecutive numbers).

First, make sure that you completely understand the method. Next, brush up on addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. Lastly, practice, practice, practice.