How to See the Big Picture in Math

by Sanjana Kulkarni and Justin Skycak on

Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.

You ask a kid to factor something… nothing crazy, just like $x^2 + 11x + 28$… and before they even get to the algebra, they’re stuck on the multiplication!

What’s 7 x 4? Let me recompute it.

You do 4 + 4 + 4 + … oh, wait, I should just add 7.

7 + 7 + 7 + 7. Geez! You already got one job, which is to do the algebra and now you’re spinning out on computing basic facts?

And even if you’re using some kind of strategy like 7 x 5, then minus 7, or take 7 and double it again and double it once more… your whole brain is thinking about this.

It’s pulling away your attention from the algebra that you really need to be focused on if you’re gonna see the forest for the trees and really understand and get intuition about what you’re doing.

You need to be able to look up like a basketball player who’s dribbling the ball and is able to look around them, see what’s happening.

You can’t get good at basketball if you’re constantly having to like look at the ground when you’re dribbling the ball. Doesn’t work that way.

Anybody who plays sports knows the importance of getting automatic on your basic skills so that you can build on top of them and they don’t continually hijack your mental bandwidth.

And it’s the same way with math.

∗     ∗     ∗

Further reading:


Want to get notified about new posts? Join the mailing list and follow on X/Twitter.