To students starting first year college or university
Here is a sad truth from a veteran math professor. One of the biggest fears of many students entering university or college is that they will struggle because their math skills are rusty. Even many students whose high school math marks were high come to class a little nervous.
Some math professors, or in fact, professors teaching ANY course that uses or builds on math, will assume you have your high school math down pat and at your fingertips. But you may not. You closed your books in June (or January!) and haven’t solved a quadratic equation or found the hypotenuse of a right triangle or sin(30°) since forever! Your basic math skills and knowledge are surrounded by neural cobwebs.
Well, we have a tool for you: the Math Post-Secondary Preparedness Package = MP3!
This package was originally developed in 2009 by Professor Hosh Pesotan and me (Jack Weiner) and two University of Guelph senior math students, Sylvia Nguyen and George Hutchinson.
Well, with the school closures in March and the scramble to transition to online learning, MP3 is more relevant that ever. So, I asked Mathematics and Physics teacher (and my former student) Sarah Stubbs to come on board. She graciously agreed, and we have updated MP3.
What is in the MP3?
- A FREE resource to help you be fully prepared to succeed in your first year courses, whether math courses or a courses that rely heavily on math such as chemistry and physics.
- 11 problem sets (mostly 5 to 10 types of problems in each)
- Examples from grade 8 math to calculus
- Full solutions
- Notes and common errors to be wary of for each example
- Additional practice questions (with answers of course)
- Links for additional resources. Every question has a clickable link to a YouTube video and a relevant website.
More on Clickable Links: With rare exception, each problem solution is one page long. At the bottom are two links, one to a YouTube video on the topic of that problem and one to a website about that topic. Each video and website we chose had to be friendly, accurate, relevant of course, and even fun. To access these, place your cursor on the link. Then simultaneously hold down the “ctrl” key and click your mouse. A browser will open up and take you directly to the correct webpage. Sarah, Hosh, and I independently checked each link. All the links work. And the sites are safe.
Having said that, here is a message from Google: “Google's Safe Browsing technology examines billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites. ... When we detect unsafe sites, we show warnings on Google Search and in web browsers. You can search to see whether a website is currently dangerous to visit.”
How to Use MP3
Start working through the package four to eight weeks before you plan to return to school so that you hit the ground running, mathematically, right from the outset. When that first crucial week of classes arrives, you will NOT get stuck in class on new math or physics or chemistry or… because the prof assumed and went too fast through some fuzzy high school math.- Spend 1 to 2 hours a day (okay, maybe 3 for some problem sets) for 11 days, one per problem set.
- Really try to solve each problem before checking the solutions. (Okay, take a peak if you must but after getting a starting hint, continue on your own.)
- Perhaps connect with a friend via Skype or Facetime or Zoom and help one another as you work through the package.
- Keep this as a review package throughout your program.
Why did we create this?
- We don’t want you getting stuck on new concepts because you’re fuzzy with high school math on which the new concepts build.
- With a solid foundation, you will approach the post-secondary math with confidence. A large part of success in math comes from the justified belief that “I can do this!”
- We care about you and we’re passionate about math and your success in math! In life, for that matter.
We can’t emphasize this enough. Please don’t leave this till school starts. Once you begin first year, whether online or on campus, you will have between 18 and 30 hours of classes and labs, lots of challenging homework and assignments, tests almost immediately, plus new life skills to learn. You won’t have time for the Preparedness Package. Work through this package in four to eight weeks before classes start.
The three of us have looked over all of the solutions, so we are confident that errors are rare. However, if you find one, please let us know. Email either me or Sarah and we will fix it. And give you credit. If you find a link that doesn’t work, again, please let us know.
IMPORTANT: MP3 is a free resource. We are making it available as a free download from several sources. You are welcome to share it with anyone you think will find it useful as well as your math teachers. If they like it, we would love them to share it with all their senior students. We want MP3 helping far and wide.
Good luck and best wishes!
Professor Jack Weiner, Department Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Guelph jweiner@uoguelph.ca
Professor Hosh Pesotan, Department Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Guelph hpesotan@uoguelph.ca
Sarah Stubbs
Director and Founder
Life Gears Academy Inc. admin@lifegears.org
Mathematics Post-Secondary Preparation Package 2020
Brief Table of Contents
Problem Sets
Part 1: Brushing up on Numerical Skills
Part 2: Lines and Slopes
Part 3: Algebraic Skills
Part 4: Geometry
Part 5: Basic Graphs
Part 6: Solving Equations and Inequalities
Part 7: Graphing Second Order Relations
Part 8: Trigonometry
Part 9: Exponents and Logarithms
Part 10: Calculus
Part 11: Applications and Extras
