If you take a look at any given class, you find that there are a variety of strategies employed by the students. In a way, it’s the perfect Darwinian battlefield: those with the best homework strategies end up doing well and move on to the next course. Some strategies are better than others, and this really shows up in any class. Even if your class is small (say, about ten people), you will find that…

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When you’re in school, it seems like everything you’re learning is super important. You might even get the impression that you will definitely use what you learn forever. Here’s the deal: that’s almost certainly not true. No matter how sophisticated the material you’re learning is, there’s a decent chance that the only time you will “apply” it in your life is during your studies. After that, you might get a career in a totally different…

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The title of this post may not be words you are used to seeing together. Sure, you might think that mathematics is powerful, but does anyone actually do mathematics just because they enjoy it? If you ask someone other than a mathematician, you might expect the answer to be “no”. If you ask someone if they enjoy mathematics, there tend to be two possible answers that are given. The least common answer is, “Yes, I’m…

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It’s tempting to imagine that if you see something, everyone else does too. After all, in our interconnected world, we tend to be reminded every day just how good other people are. This makes it easy to imagine that any supposed “insight” you may have has already been thought of before. Without the right mindset, this can create a situation in which you do almost no creative work, since you’re worried about wasting time on…

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