Yes, You Need to be Automatic on Math Facts (and Rapid-Fire Training Is Coming)

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Yes, you need to be automatic on math facts. Not just arithmetic, but also exponent/logarithm rules, trig values/identities, derivative/integral rules, etc., all the way up the ladder of math.

Why? Because solving problems feels smooth when you’re automatic on the components – it’s like moving puzzle pieces around, and you just need to identify how they fit together.

But without automaticity on the components, each puzzle piece is a heavy weight. You struggle to move them at all, much less figure out where they’re supposed to go. And this deficit compounds like a high-interest debt.

To develop automaticity, it’s critical to engage in proper retrieval practice, doing your best to retrieve information from memory. Always try your best to recall formulas and approaches without looking back at reference material. Use the reference material when you absolutely need to, but no more than you absolutely need to.

If you can’t retrieve a piece of info from memory despite trying your hardest, then okay, peek back at the reference – just a little bit, just the tiniest bit of priming, just that specific piece of info that you were trying to remember, nothing else – and then close the reference, re-pull the info from memory, and try to recall the rest and proceed forward as far as possible without peeking back at the reference again.

Your brain is lifting a weight and the reference material is your spotter – it’s there as a last resort to help you get the weight up, only when you absolutely can’t get it up yourself, and the amount of help should be kept to the bare minimum. The goal is to wean yourself off of reference material, using it as sparsely as possible, until you don’t need it at all.

That said, in addition to working problems with minimal reliance on reference material and frequently taking closed-book timed quizzes, there are plenty of instances where it’s possible to efficiently speed up the development of automaticity even further by engaging in rapid-fire flashcard-style retrieval practice.

Rapid-fire flashcard-style automaticity training is absolutely critical for multiplication tables and it also works great for trig values/identities, derivative/integral rules, etc. It’s pretty high on my and Jason’s to-do list.

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