Holy crap! I have an algebra test tonight and this review work is kicking my ass. I just don’t fuzzing understand it. And I have to pass this class. I do get to drop the lowest test grade, but I would rather save that drop for a test later on.
If anyone can help, I sure would appreciate it.
Here is one of the problems. (I’ll bold it so its easier to read.)
The height of the Washington Monument is 50.5 inches more than 10 times the length of a side of its square base. If the sum of these two dimensions is 7327 inches, find the height of the Washington Monument.
The rest of the problems are similar to that one. I had a review test on Tuesday, and I was only able to do 9 out of the 33 problems. The review is exactly like the test, only the problems have been changed. Same number of problems and everything.
And before you ask if I did the homework, I did everything that was assigned.
I’d say the height is 6872.5 … but that’s from putting seemingly random formulas into a calculator. I’ve never been good at math… at least not Algebra.
I can lead you through that problem you gave as an example, if that helps:
First, you need to define the height and length. For ease, let’s call them H and L (I’d use lower case, but in this font l looks too much like 1).
So, H= 50.5 + 10L (H is 50.5 inches more than 10 times L)
And we also know that H+L= 7327
What you need to do now is get rid of one of your variables. The best way to do this is to make one of them the subject of your equation (that is, have it so it’s the only thing on one side of the equals sign). That’s easy enough to do:
L= 7327-H
Now, you substitute for L into the first equation, so you have
H= 50.5 +10*(7327-H)
All you have to do now is solve for H. Expand out the brackets, get all the H on one side and then divide both sides by whatever’s in front of the H. I’m not going to give you the answer, it’ll help you more to work it out yourself (PM me if you want to know, but this part really is the easiest bit).
If you have specific questions, then I can try to help more (but I’m not going to be able to do more today). You could try searching for tutorials on simultaneous equations, which is what that example problem is.
That’s the way it is with me too, except when putting together tabletop or MUD RPG characters. Then me and math are all buddy-buddy and I go into a frenzy of numbers and formulas for determining how not to die.
If there were spoiler tags here, I’d hide all the maths under them. I hope no one came out in an algebra-induced rash… I guess it is probably the academic subject most people love to hate.
I gotta side with Vickie on this one. Hated math as a kid, hate math as an adult. I wasn’t all that big on school period, to be honest, and did just what was required of me to keep playing hockey. If there were some way I could have played hockey without keeping my grades above a C, I would have done it. Not saying education isn’t important, but that’s the way I was.
All I can say is good luck, Kip. Hope it works out for you in the end.
Well, I was able to answer almost all of the problem, even if I did have to guess. I only left six blank, I think. One was change 60 degrees Celsius into Fahrenheit. Four were proportions, and I forget the other one I skipped.
I don’t think I did too bad. I’ll find out on Tuesday what I got. I think it helps that this is my second time taking this course, so I haven’t forgotten everything.
If you need help with some maths stuff PM me. I didn’t get to this in time, but have a pretty decent level of maths and am surrounded by maths students/academics who would help without questioning were I to ask.
if you have problems with this kind of ‘example’ problems, you should try drawing it out. It makes things a lot clearer. Drawing helps with most trigo/algebra/vector/situational type questions.
Thanks for the offer, Nemo. I might take you up on that. Even though I’ve taken this same class before and I’m doing the same homework, I still don’t get some of it.