Benny’s Math Reflection

For me, solving problems is one of my weak sides. But I did find something easy when
we were taking your lessons; The well known “Quadratic Formula”. This Formula has been
hammered to our brains by our previous teachers. Especially the infamous quadratic formula
song. Our teacher made sure that that song stuck to us in our brains. I don’t know about the
others, but that song is still playing in the background of my brain. That’s why I was a bit
overjoyed when it was brought up and used again.
Then, the hardest part of our lesson. As I’ve stated I’m not very well fond of problem
solving, the hardest part for me is the word problems. I can remember the procedures or formulas
easily as I listen attentively and try to participate in recitations as much as possible, but I get
mental block when trying to comprehend how I’m going to use those procedures to this sentence.
Especially when word problems are tricking you into solving with the normal formulas, when in
reality, you have to reconstruct, make your own formula, or remember that formula from years
ago kind of ordeal.
My most favorite part our lessons are the ‘Remainder and Factor Theorem’ since it was
simple, I understood it fast. I did not review it much before taking our periodical tests since it’s
just literally using synthetic division or substitution. I like lessons where the title of the topics is
self-explanatory, I hate it when the title are big math words that you can’t understand unless you
learn its every bit and corner, that’s why I can get scared of looking into the lesson in math.
My least favorite topic is the long division. Midway through the grading I forgot how it
was supposed to work since I’ve gotten too used to synthetic division. The reason I don’t like it
is because of how it works. It’s kind of like how you divided when you were in elementary but
twisted with these variables and a binomial divisor. And its rules too, sometimes I forget the rule
of power and how you are supposed to consider the arrangement of powers and substitute the
missing ones with zero.
The thing I learned that I’m confident I can teach someone is synthetic division. By far I
feel like its one of the cheatiest and simple way of dividing an equation. You literally just take
the coefficients and multiply and add, multiply and add, multiply and add! And it’s the easy
formula to determine if a divisor is a factor of the dividend. It’s the most efficient way of
dividing equations too, unlike long division whose name is very self-explanatory.
I enjoyed listening to the discussions of math. Though realistically deep down I hate
math, but I am partly fond of it. I get how it’s very useful and how it has developed humanity
thus far. But sometimes I do question why some parts of math need to be taught. But to
conclude, I am happy with math
I still fell the same about math. Subconsciously I hate it, but I still enjoyed it since it was
one of our easiest subjects right now compared to the other subjects, especially the periodical
tests. Some subjects that you would not expect to be hard were harder than the major subjects.