How to Get Better at Math, Even If You’ve Always Struggled

Math is one of the most challenging subjects out there, especially if you’re more of a humanities student. If you’ve ever struggled with problem sets or worksheets, you probably know how confusing it can get.

Yet, just like any other subject, math requires you to show perseverance to become better at it. In this article, we’ll show you exactly how to do it. Besides, if you ever need help with math, AssignmentHelp has a wide pool of experts who are ready to assist you, even right now. We hope that with our support and tips, math will no longer be a source of stress for you.

Rewrite Problems in Your Own Words Before Solving Them

One of the most helpful math tips is to check your own understanding of the problem by rephrasing it. When you restate the instructions, your brain has no other choice but to slow down and analyze the problem thoughtfully. You may notice something you’ve missed when you first read it.

Sometimes, rewriting a problem can help you get rid of unnecessary details that are only there to intentionally confuse you and check your ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. In such cases, rewording the instructions allows you to isolate the mathematical operation and focus on it. Yet, if nothing works and your task instructions still seem confusing, you can easily get assignment help. With a sample from experience writers, you’ll know how to solve similar problems in the future.

Keep a “Mistake Log” and Review It Weekly

How to get good at math? A good starting point is to approach your mistakes systematically. Learning from mistakes works for most subjects, including math. However, most students either ignore this method or think that it’s enough to merely review their mistakes and understand what went wrong.

The thing is, most of us tend to make the same or similar mistakes over and over again. To break the cycle, you need to understand the system first, and that’s why a “mistake log” can be helpful. To start one, organize all your mistakes by type: conceptual, calculation, or misreading. For each of them, include what you thought the answer would be, the correct answer, and a brief note on why you think the mistake occurred.

Revisit your log regularly (for example, once a week) to identify your recurring problem areas and reflect on them. Think of those whenever you solve problems to avoid the same pitfalls.

Ask Why Formulas Work, Not Just How to Use Them

If you think that the answer to how to be better at math is to just learn all the formulas by heart, you’re wrong. Teachers often encourage this approach, but applying formulas mechanically backfires once you face problems that are at least slightly different from what you’ve seen before.

Instead, you need to understand every formula conceptually. For example, instead of just memorizing the area of a triangle as ½ * base * height, think of why it’s half of a rectangle with the same base and height. Once you understand the reasoning, it’ll be easier for you to both memorize and apply the formula.

Try to Predict the Answer Before Calculating It

Another strategy for getting better at math is making an educated guess about the outcome before doing the calculations. It’s a great way to train your brain to think critically and notice relevant patterns. Plus, your predictions can help you catch errors. If you notice that the result of your calculations is wildly different from what you expected, it often suggests that you’ve made a mistake.

How to understand math by making predictions?

First, check units to see if your predicted answer makes sense dimensionally. For example, if the problem instructions require you to calculate the speed of a vehicle, and your predicted answer is somewhere in the thousands, you know that something’s off.

Next, estimate the order of magnitude by rounding the numbers and roughly calculating the result to see if it’s reasonable. This works especially well for word problems, where you have enough additional information to signal to you what the realistic estimate is.

Predicting every answer beforehand might look like an unnecessary nuisance, but it’s really not. Many mistakes happen as a result of simple inattentiveness. By making a guess before solving a problem, you create a safety net that will help you catch errors in time.

Create Your Own Practice Questions

An unpopular answer to the question of how to improve math skills is doing more math – the one tip most students choose to ignore. While the reluctance is perfectly understandable, practicing standard problems by creating alternative versions based on the same principles works. It forces you to consider the logic behind the problem instead of calculating the solution mechanically.

The easiest way to start is to simply modify the problem you have. Suppose you have a problem that says:

“A train travels 75 miles. For the first 25 miles, it moves at 31 mph. For the remaining distance, it moves at 44 mph. What is the train’s average speed for the entire trip?”

If you notice that the solution takes you longer than you expected, try to write and solve a similar problem, for example:

“A train travels 75 miles. It stops for 9 minutes halfway. What is its average speed, including the stop?”

The more you practice, the less time you’ll spend per problem.

Also, it’s a good idea to adapt problem instructions to make them more relevant to your life. For example, turn abstract numbers into ingredients for a recipe or figures for a budgeting exercise to see if it helps your understanding.

Teach Someone Else or Explain Solutions Out Loud

You’ve probably heard that sounding smart isn’t the same as being smart. This isn’t always true, though. Sometimes, the strategy for how to be smart in math is actually sounding smart, or, more accurately, being able to articulate your thoughts clearly. By explaining the formula or solution out loud (ideally, to someone else), you improve your own understanding.

When forced to articulate your thinking clearly, you can catch gaps in your knowledge that you’d miss otherwise. Plus, someone else’s questions are a great way to challenge yourself and see if you actually understand what you’re doing or simply apply a formula.

However, if you don’t have anyone to explain the material to, there are a few alternatives:

- Explain each step out loud as if you’re explaining it to someone else.

- Record your explanation and then listen to it. Try to analyze it critically: would someone who doesn’t fully know the concept or problem understand it thanks to you?

- Come up with a couple of questions someone else could have and then answer them in detail. Would your answers help?

You might feel a little weird the first time you explain a math problem to an empty chair. But we encourage you to give it a few tries.

You’ll almost definitely notice that your reasoning and math skills are growing.

Use Spaced Repetition for Formulas and Rules

One more useful strategy that can become an answer to the question of how to get smarter in math is spaced repetition. It’s a learning technique that implies reviewing information gradually and revisiting it regularly instead of cramming.

Many students believe that it doesn’t matter whether they practice math once a week for five hours or five times a week for an hour, but the difference in results can be massive. When we force our brains to focus on something challenging for hours on end, we become less likely to retain the information.

Also, it helps to use a variety of techniques to memorize things (over the course of the week, not all in one Sunday night), such as:

- Flashcards. Write a formula on one side, a problem on the other, and check if you can solve the problem without looking up the formula.

- Mixed review. From time to time, come back to the formulas that you’ve already learned and feel confident in. Incorporate them into your study sessions, together with the new information. We tend to forget things we don’t use regularly, and a mixed review is a great long-term solution.

- Asking someone to quiz you can be even more effective than using flashcards, especially if the person understands math and can give you helpful clues.

Take Breaks When You’re Confused

Ask your classmates, and you’ll see that almost all students typically take breaks once they’ve successfully learned something new or solved a complex problem. It makes perfect sense: when we’ve accomplished something, we feel like a break is “well-deserved.”

Believe it or not, but it’s actually better to take breaks when you’re confused. Don’t mistake persistence for progress – you won’t improve math skills by continuing when your brain is stuck. It will only make you feel frustrated, and you’ll be more likely to quit studying for a while. Also, you’ll likely make a lot of mistakes that could’ve easily been avoided.

We recommend taking a break the moment you feel confused or stuck. Confusion is a signal that your working memory is overloaded. When this happens, the most productive thing you can do is to switch to something else. Go for a short walk or talk to a friend about something unrelated to math.

Try this approach the next time you’re stuck on a problem. Most likely, you’ll be able to identify the blocker and find the right solution once you get back to math after a short break. Of course, this doesn’t work every time, but it often does.

Use Visual Aids: Diagrams, Number Lines, etc.

Visual aids aren’t just for geometry. They can be useful if you’re trying to find ways how to be really good at math, regardless of the problem type. Diagrams, number lines, charts, and sketches can all help you understand abstract concepts and see relationships that are hard to grasp through numbers alone.

For example, if you need to solve a word problem about distance, speed, and time, try drawing a simple timeline or labeled line that shows distances. Not only will it make your calculations easier, but it will also help you notice a mistake in time (similarly to how predicting the solution can help you).

Different types of visual aids work best for different problem types:

- Diagrams for word problems, including distances, flows, and relationships

- Number lines for comparing fractions and calculating differences

- Color-coding information for different elements in the problem instructions

- Flowcharts for problems that require multi-step solutions

Also, visual aids are a great way to memorize something. If you create colorful flashcards for different formulas and other important information, your brain might find it easier to retrieve the right “image” when you need it and can’t just look it up.

Try Different Learning Resources

How to learn math fast without getting bored immediately? Consider diversifying your sources of information. Textbooks and workbooks are necessary, but this doesn’t mean that you have to rely on them alone. These days, there are tons of additional resources online, some of them extraordinarily clear and student-oriented.

Here are just a few ideas for where to start:

1. Video tutorials on YouTube and platforms like Khan Academy. When you don’t understand a certain math concept, video tutorials are the best starting place. They were created specifically to help struggling students, so they are typically clearer and more digestible than textbook explanations.

2. Online forums and study groups (yes, Reddit definitely counts). Of course, you can’t trust random Reddit users blindly, but online communities often unite math enthusiasts. You can find a study buddy there or get help from someone who has struggled with the same things you currently are and has found a solution.

3. Math apps like MathMaster, Mathway, and the like. There’s no shortage of apps for all levels and problem types. Not all of them are free, but most do have at least a free trial. You can check a few options and find the one that works best for your needs.

If Possible, Switch Problem Types Every 15 Minutes

This one can be especially useful for math learners with ADHD, who don’t necessarily lack basic math skills but often find it hard to focus on similar problems or tasks for a long time. If needed, you can also check other tips for writing assignments. Switching problem types every 15 minutes isn’t just for students with ADHD. This approach is known as interleaved practice. The idea is to mix different skills and concepts in a single study session to improve focus and better understand relationships between concepts. Also, it’s the best way to avoid getting bored, which is often the biggest issue for students who dislike math.

By the way, even just alternating difficulty levels counts as interleaved practice. Don’t try to solve all complex problems at the beginning (and don’t do the opposite, easing your way into the most challenging tasks). Instead, switch between simple and complicated tasks. This will help you maintain focus without losing momentum.

Integrate Math Into Your Daily Life

Finally, the ultimate tip for getting better at math is using every opportunity to practice it, beyond just reading the textbook and completing the assigned practice problems. This probably won’t work for advanced math, but integrating math into your daily life is a perfect way to improve your basics (which is where many students should start).

Some of the practical contexts where you can use math include these:

- Cooking, especially baking

- Budgeting

- Travel planning

- Calculations for DIY projects

- Gaming, including strategy games, sports statistics, etc.

There are also app blockers that give you access to apps on your phone only after solving a math problem. MathLock is a good starting point, but there are many similar apps.

Conclusion

You now have over a dozen tips on how to get better at math. Some of them are easier to implement than others, but absolutely all of them are realistic and don’t require massive changes to your study routines. However, if you feel a bit overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin, we recommend starting with these three:

1. Keeping a mistake log and regularly reviewing it

2. Using spaced repetition instead of cramming everything into a long study session once a week

3. Trying different learning resources, including apps, video tutorials, and others

Most importantly, please remember that it’s always okay to reach out for help. Feel free to ask your teacher for additional explanations as often as you need. You can also turn to us for maths assignment help; there’s nothing wrong with that. Even random Reddit users will be happy to explain math to you if you choose the right subreddit.