Studying for Math Class: What Do They Mean?

[Jurrasic]

For a math class the school says that you study 2-3hours per hour of lecture,well, by study what do they mean?
Does the 2-3 hours include doing homework, or is that just additional time on top of the 2-3 hours that they want spent studying for every hour of the lecture of the course?

 

[micromass]

For a math class the school says that you study 2-3hours per hour of lecture,well, by study what do they mean?
Does the 2-3 hours include doing homework, or is that just additional time on top of the 2-3 hours that they want spent studying for every hour of the lecture of the course?

I believe homework is included. It just means the time the AVERAGE student needs to work at home for the course.

But don't time yourself or anything. You need to study exactly the time you need to understand everything. If you can do all the problems and some harder additional ones, then you have studied enough, even if you only studied for 30 minutes...
However, if you still have no clue in how to approach something, then you should study more.

I have never based myself on the hours which the school presents me I should study. I simply ignore them and I go by with my own instincts...

 

[DrummingAtom]

I was actually wondering about this today myself. I've found that the 2-3 hour of study per lecture hour to be fairly accurate. Some weeks more and some less. For instance, this semester my math class is going so fast that when we take a test we've been lecturing and doing homework from a chapter ahead of the test. And the homework doesn't stop so I have to keep up on that while studying (relearning) the previous material for the test.

I personally try to make a habit of studying that many hours a week no matter what even if that means studying ahead. Then when projects or bigger things come up I won't be swamped the week before it's due. I can't stand that feeling. I remember reading somewhere (I think http://calnewport.com/blog/) when you get assigned homework or a project write it down immediately on your to-do list. Start it the day it's assigned to get a feel for how long it will take to complete. Then you can gauge your upcoming weeks and distribute that time much better.

That link for studyhacks by Cal Newport was very informative to me and taught me different ways to manage my time. I used to live off adrenaline and procrastinate but now I've spaced things out more with a system. The semester is coming to an end and while others are saying how burned out they are I feel comfortable and fairly relaxed. Time management was the key for me. Good luck.

 

[johng23]

Just ignore any rule of thumb you hear.

My advice would be to start your homework as soon as possible (well OK, I've never been able to follow that part ), and just go to the library or somewhere where you can truly concentrate. If you have time pressure you are just going to look for the answers or relevant equations without really understanding what you are doing. Instead, just go and expect to be there the entire day and don't set any specific goals about finishing the assignment. Find the relevant parts of the course for a given problem, but don't even try to solve the problem, just try to understand everything that is confusing about those sections of the course. Even if you think you have the general concepts, make sure you know exactly where every equation came from, etc. After a while you will look at the question and you will KNOW you are ready to solve it.

For some classes, this entire process may take 2 hours. For others you may be there the whole entire night and you still haven't solved a single question. That will probably feel discouraging but it may also be the time when you learn the most.

When you give yourself a lot of time like that, that's when you can actually enjoy what you are learning. When you are just trying to finish the assignment, not only will you understand it less, but you also won't enjoy it because you'll be worrying about getting points and grades too much.

Also, if you approach every single homework this way, you shouldn't have to study much at all when it comes to time to take exams. You'll just need to brush up on everything.

 

[johng23]

Just to elaborate what I'm getting at about understanding every little point of a class: sometimes there is something as seemingly insignificant as a minus sign in an equation, and many students will say "I can't spend all day worrying where that came from, I need to finish this assignment", and then spend all day puzzling over the problems. And then they look at their "rule of thumb" and they say, "I spent 8 hours today, I'm working a lot, there's nothing more I can do". But sometimes that minor detail is the key to a subtle and important point, and if they had focused on that instead from the beginning, they would have ultimately got much farther in the 8 hours.

Of course, sometimes that minus sign is just a typo. :)Or, once a classmate was doing a problem with in integral, and doing it out in a very long way, and I tried to say that that wasn't necessary if you just thought about the symmetry, or whatever it was. They said "I don't want to do that, that will just confuse me". Well when something confuses you, the answer is to think about it MORE, obsess over it. Not ignore it.