Appetizers and Lessons for Mathematics and Reason (www.whyslopes.com)
||Définition d'une variable || Algèbre || Arithmetique || Logique ||La raison basée sur les règles et modelés||

Online Volumes
1,  Elements of Reason.
1A. Pattern Based Reason 
1B. Math Curriculum Notes
2. Three Skills for Algebra
3. Why Slopes & More Math

 (Optional Book Orders)
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1. Help Your Child or Teen Learn 
2. Solving Linear Equations
3. Fractions Ratios Rates Proportions & Units
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5. Analytic Geometry/Functions 
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YOU are better than YOU think. Show yourself  how:  

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Read  logic chapters 1 to 5  in online volume Three Skills for Algebra  for greater skills & confidence in  work 
and study

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 Logic chapters 1 to 5  re- appear not in sequence, as is or longer,  in  Volume 1A,  Pattern Based Reason, Bon Appetite.

Logic Mastery
 Amazing, Amusing, Amorous,  Delicious, Delightful, Edifying, Strengthening Elixir. 
It eases work & learning difficulties Makes the hard easier. Opens eyes. Leads to greater precision.
in reading and
writing

Logic mastery makes the hard, easier. Logic mastery  leads to better, stronger and richer comprehension.  Logic mastery  improves reading and writing.  Logic mastery ease learning difficulties.  Logic mastery gives a headstart.  In sum, logic mastery  will develops critical thinking, improve reading and writing, and give a firmer base for work and studies at many levels. Good luck.


After logic  (a) continue reading Three Skills for Algebra, chapters 8 to 14  and do so alongside site area on solving liinear Equations ; or (b) see this calculus starter lesson and Volume 3, Why Slopes  & More Math, chapters 2 to 6;

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Caution: Site advice is approximately correct, for some circumstances, not all. That leaves room for thought

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What may be learnt and when depends on how skills and concepts are developed. Making the hard easier and clearer will allow earlier & richer development of skills and concepts.


Try the Twiddla Whiteboard. In principle, it  allows to people to draw and chat together online on a copy of this webpage or a clean sheet. The chat may be via text or audio.  Visit www.twiddla.com to set up whiteboards to work with the webpage of your choice.

For online automated help in senior high school maths & calculus, visit  quickmath.com  For Automatic Calculus and Algebra Help with derivatives, integrals, graphs, linear equations, matrix algebra, visit calc101.com  With  overlap, each site quickmath & calc101offers a different range of services, some free, some not, all based on webmathematica. Good luck.



Chapter 1

Elements of Reason

Previous: Foreword

To reason with someone often means to persuade them of the need for an idea or action. Persuasion and reason can take many forms. Methods for arriving at conclusions and judgments in all skills disciplines are, or should be where possible, based on the use and recognition of reliable rules and patterns, and also data to use with them.

Each of us needs to understand fully or as much as is possible, whatever we might be doing or learning. In reasoning, some rules and patterns are reliable. Others are guidelines. Each of us needs to know which is which.

Mathematics, in and besides arithmetic, depends on rules and patterns, which are used one at time or one after another, to obtain conclusions. The aim of the next chapters is to introduce and provide an image of rule and pattern thought in mathematics and other disciplines.

When ideas in mathematics or another discipline are described instead of being drawn from implication rules, the role of rule-based reason or logic may be forgotten. But in every discipline including mathematics, signs of rule- and pattern-based reason are given by the word and phrases such as from this, then,  if,  therefore, thus, because, since, as, gives, yields etc.

About the Next Chapters

The next chapters describes some basic elements of rule- and pattern-based thought. In particular, four chapters, Implication Rules, Chains of Reason, Longer Chains of Reason and Islands and Divisions of Knowledge describe basic ideas, keys for reason and logic.

  1. The chapter Implication Rules presents two logic puzzles. Each consisting of a rule and five questions. Answers are also provided. The puzzles show the difference between one- and two-way implication rules.
  2. The chapter Chains of Reason describes how to directly use rules one at-a-time or chained together, one-after another, for arriving at conclusions and judgments.
  3. The chapter Longer Chains of Reason starts to indicate the special role of reason in mathematics. It describes, in a very non-mathematical fashion, the concept of  induction, a method used in mathematics to arrive at conclusions. This concept of induction is an example of a method of reason employed mainly or only in mathematical subjects. 
  4. The chapter Islands and Divisions of Knowledge describes how rule and pattern-based bodies of thought may be organized. Here different starting points, first principles or assumptions, may lead to the same body of rule-based knowledge.
    In philosophy, the discipline that is literally the love of knowledge, perhaps an infatuation, Euclid's logical or rule based arrangement of geometry provided a model for reason. This chapter with words and images apart from geometry describes the model and the variations possibly within it.


These chapters develop thinking and reasoning skills needed in daily life. They provide a standard or model for arriving at conclusions and making decisions: how to argue politely if you must. They also strengthen basic skills needed in mathematics, science, technology, writing, persuasion and communication. Reason and persuasion touch all skills and all disciplines.

The chapter A Change of Language introduces the conventional if-then and iff forms for writing one- and two-way implication rules. The one- and two-way implication rules in this work have been identified with condition and bi-conditional statements. But the terminology one and two-way employed here draws on the present-day common experience of one and two-way roads.


Next: Chapter 2,  Implication Rules

To Learn More About Logic,  see chapters 26 to 31 in this Volume, or the identical (or supposedly identical) Chapters 19 to 24 in Volume 1A,. Pattern Based Reason .  Volume 1A describes the benefits, origins of rule and pattern based thought, deeds and hopes in greater detail, and still leaves room for thought.  Online postscripts in the Volume 1A site area discuss further the methods and context for indirect reason in and outside of mathematics. Finally, section C in the webpage Mathematics Education in General includes a theory of knowledge based on our ability to collect, invent and tell stories with words and symbols, written, spoken or drawn. That theory may move to its own page at some future point in time. 

 

www.whyslopes.com
Volume 2, Three Skills for Algebra -

Preview, starter & further lessons for logic and algebra to (i) improve work & study skills;  (ii) to  to ease or avoid algebra (math) fears & difficulties; and (iii) to fill gaps in the exposition of mathematics.

Foreword, Chapters and Appendices follow.

Foreword
1. Introduction
2. Implication Rules
3. Chains of Reason
4. Romeo and Juliet
4. Induction Mathematical
5 Knowledge Islands
6  Old Language
7  Arith Skill Check
7. The Next Chapters
8 The Three Skills
8 VNR-Concise-Encyclopedia
PS. What is a Variable
9. Algebra Talk
10 Two More Skills
11 Why Shorthand
12 Shorthand Usage
13 What's Next
14 Compound Interest
15 Linear Equations
PS I.  Distributive Law
PS II. Polynomials
16 Painless Proofs
17 Pythagoras
18 Rules of Algebra
19  Functions & Sets
20 Degrees & Radians
21 What's Next
22. Arith & Geometric Sums
23 Summation Notation
24 Your Money
25 Induction & Recursion
26 What's Next
27 Pronouns in Logic
28 Occurrence Tables
29 Contrapositive
30 Truth Tables
31 Indirect Reason
A. Advice For Learning

Real Player Videos

Perfect arithmetic skills with whole numbers & fractions
after or besides chapters 1 to 14.

Arithmetic Videos Summary
Addition with Decimals
Subtraction with Decimals
Multiplication with Decimals
Fraction Arithmetic
Recognizing Primes
Long Division for Decimals
Square Root Simplification
Greatest Common Divisors
Least Common Multiples

Words Before Symbols: 
What is a Variable?
Introduction
Variation between Examples

Variation of Letters

A letter denotes a variable

Cases of Double Variation

Three Notions of a Variable

Constants, Parameters
& Variables

Talking about numbers
Dependent or Independent
Variable, a Matter of Choice
Complex number: starter lesson  

Solving Linear Equations:

A. Letters and Lengths

B. & C. Solving Linear Eq'ns
with stick diagrams.

(i) x + 20 = 29
(ii) 2x + 5 = 20
(iii) 3x + 10 = 32
(iv) 5a + 16 = 3a+ 24

(v)  (½)x + 8 = 24½
(vI)  (¾)a + 16 = (¼)a+ 24
(vii) (¾)q + 17 = 32
(viii) 13 =[2/3]x +7 twice
(x) Animated Examples
(i) Integral Coefficients (A)
(ii) Integral Coefficients (B)
(iii) Fractional Coefficients

(iv) With Parameters

Problem Solving with Linear
Equations in one or many
unknowns, and in essentially 
one unknown - Symbols before
words. 


C. Solving Linear Eq'ns 
without
Stick Diagrams

D. Problems in 
essentially one unknown

E: 2D Systems - Sub Methods.
F. Larger Systems




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a 1983 McGill. Ph. D. in mathematics
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