A Mind for Numbers

How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra)

By: Barbara Oakley PhD

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

The companion book to COURSERA®'s wildly popular massive open online course "Learning How to Learn"

Whether you are a student struggling to fulfill a math or science requirement, or you are embarking on a career change that requires a new skill set, A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need to get a better grasp of that intimidating material. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options—both to rise in the military and to explore other careers—she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.

In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to learning effectively—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over.

The learning strategies in this book apply not only to math and science, but to any subject in which we struggle. We all have what it takes to excel in areas that don't seem to come naturally to us at first, and learning them does not have to be as painful as we might think.

old favorites and new techniques

I learned why some techniques I'd picked up on my own work and which ones to try next. Creating stories to memorize formulas once you understand the formulas and can use the formulas helped me memorize things I've struggled to cement in my mind for years!!!!

A basic skills that are often overlooked training manual.

I disliked that I didn't have this book as an undergrad. Would recommend this and another memory training book as Bibles to this kind of study

Learn How to Learn!

Oakley teaches many techniques to improve your learning, as well as what pitfalls to avoid that may stifle your learning.
I recommend this book to everyone!

awesome!

love it all. it is very good. very precise very important need to know. I highly recommend!

I absolutely loved the tips and tricks and the down to earth way these are explained

The narrator spoke a little slow, so I used the 1.25 play back to mitigate this