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How can I improve my mental maths?
LikeDo you struggle to calculate your share of a bill in a restaurant? Do you find it difficult to calculate someone’s age from their birthday? If you are travelling abroad, would you rather look on the Internet than count the time difference? If your answer is yes, you need to practice your mental maths with a maths tutor.
Maths, and in this case, mental arithmetic, is fundamental to our lives. No matter how old we are, we will always have to use this cognitive skill in our daily lives. Put away your mobile phone and put aside your paper and pencil, because today we are going to show you the best exercises for you to learn how to do mathematical calculations.
What is the importance of calculus in our daily lives?
Although today we can solve any calculation with the help of our phones, calculator or even the internet, we do not always have these technological tools at hand. In addition to all the benefits of mental arithmetic for cognitive development, this skill helps us in many everyday situations in our lives.
Mental arithmetic allows us to quickly find answers to different situations in our daily lives, such as calculating the approximate quantities to follow a recipe, deciding the convenience of buying a product or calculating the exchange rate from one country to another. Thanks to it, we can remember numerical data and solve mathematical operations to calculate estimates, calculate percentages, round numbers and much more.
Mental arithmetic for kids
Maths classes are necessary for children's intellectual development. In addition to helping them with their cognitive development, maths classes for children help them to reason, solve basic logic problems, prepare the mind for solving operations and abstract numerical data, among others.
This is why having maths tutoring at an early age, to reinforce or improve skills, will be of great benefit to them. Here are some of them:
- It will improve their memory: at the same time as mental arithmetic will help them to solve operations through logical reasoning, it will also work their memory, as many of these mathematical problems depend on basic operations such as the multiplication tables.
- It will improve their decision-making skills: with mental arithmetic, children acquire the ability to handle data to arrive at the correct answers. Just as they will be able to solve any mathematical operation, so will they be able to solve any everyday situation.
- It will improve their concentration: it is normal for children to be distracted more easily. As they are constantly on the move, it is common for them to get distracted by the things that catch their attention. Mental arithmetic will help them to concentrate on a single objective and eliminate distractions in order to solve it.
- Their mind will always be active: children's brains are like sponges and to absorb knowledge they need constant exposure to it. By solving basic operations, their minds will develop new neural connections. These will allow them to improve speed, efficiency and accuracy in solving numerical problems.
- It will increase their creativity: when children improve their analytical skills, they will take into account all the existing variables to solve a problem. As a result, they will have more than one creative scenario to put into practice in any school subject or life situation.
- It will develop their self-esteem: yes, you read it correctly. The ability to solve problems in their own mind, without the help of another person, will help them feel more self-confident. This confidence will allow them to face not only mathematical problems, but also everyday situations, which they will be able to solve with peace of mind and a good attitude.
Exercises to improve mental maths
Mental arithmetic can be learned, improved and practised at any age. For this, having the help of a maths teacher will always be the quickest and most effective way to achieve this. However, there are also exercises that we can put into practice if we want to develop this skill on our own. Here are some of them:
- Addition and subtraction from left to right
If we are going to do these mathematical operations in our mind, it will be easier to solve them from left to right, for example: if we want to add 38 + 16, try adding 30 + 10 = 40 and then 8 + 6 = 14, now add 40 + 14 and that will be the result, that is, 54.
- Find the difference by adding
For example, if a friend owed you £15,200 and gave you £20,200 to pay you back, you can quickly do the mental calculation by breaking it down. As they gave you £200, the decimals disappear, so we would have to calculate how much is missing to get to twenty, in this case £5,000, because £15,000 + £5,000 is £20,000. So now you know, you should pay back £5,000 to that friend who always borrows money from you.
- Simplifying operations by approximating or rounding values
If you have to calculate how much 893 +780 is, we can add 7 to 893 to get 900, which is an easier value to use, then add 900 + 780 = 1.680 and subtract the 7 we "borrowed" at the beginning, the result is: 1.6
- Tricks to multiply faster
If you want to know how much 50 x 10 is, all you have to do is multiply the tens and add to the right the remaining zeros of the initial values, i.e. 5 x 1 = 5 plus the two 0s, i.e. 500, let's do it again with 900 x 800, multiply the hundreds, 9 x 8 = 72, add the four 0s, and the result will be 720,000.
- Remember tips from your tutors
There are certain numerical tricks that you can use to your advantage, such as that all numbers multiplied by 5 end in 0 in 5 or that to get the percentage of a value, for example: 60% of 900, you only have to remove the last digit of the number and multiply it by the tenth part of the %, i.e. 6 x 90 = 540. There are a lot of these, but if you don't remember them very well, remember that there are many maths tutors who can help you to understand and remember them.
Ways to find maths tutors
Mental arithmetic goes beyond memorising tricks or exercises. It's also vitally important to understand the logic behind formulas and the processes behind them, in order to be able to solve any calculation. For this reason, in addition to following the exercises and tips we have given you above, we recommend that you take private classes with a maths tutor.
At FindTutors, you'll find tutors for over 300 subjects such as maths, calculus, geometry, economics, algebra, finance, physics and more, who in most cases give the first free trial lesson. As well as finding the best maths tutors, you can filter your search according to your needs, whether it's online maths tutoring, face-to-face maths tuition or private tuition at home.