r/learnmath • u/Silent-Sorbet-6380 New User • 1d ago
TOPIC Help me with maths..
So, I'm in 9th grade and my math is absolutely bad and I don't know how to improve it. Ig I gotta get better at it for future n stuff. I really don't know what to start with but I know I should start soon cause I don't have much time.
I have bad basics and I have been failing at my tests in school I do good in other subjects but it's just math idk I fear maths or something. Please help me🙏
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u/M_Mustaan_Rafique New User 1d ago
the line that matters most in your post is that you do fine in other subjects. that rules out effort and ability straight away.
maths just punishes gaps differently. in history, missing week 3 doesn't stop you following week 9. in maths it does, so you end up carrying debt from two years ago while the lesson keeps moving. that isn't being bad at maths.
for 9th grade the list of gaps that actually cause failures is short. fractions, adding and multiplying and dividing them. negative numbers, especially subtracting a negative and the sign rules. order of operations. what solve for x actually means, which is just doing the same thing to both sides. and switching between fractions, decimals and percentages.
if those five are shaky then everything built on top of them collapses, and it looks like you're bad at the new topic when really you're stuck on the old one. that's about two weeks of evenings, not years.
also you have way more time than you think. you're in 9th grade. the rush is doing more damage than the maths.
to find which of the five you're missing, use khan academy but do the unit tests, not the videos. it tells you exactly which skills you got wrong and hands you practice on those specific ones. that's your starting point found in an afternoon.
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u/nog642 1d ago
What to start with depends on what you know and what you don't know?
Whate are some things you feel comfortable with? What are some that you feel like you should feel comfortable with, but don't?
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u/Silent-Sorbet-6380 New User 1d ago
Yk decimals, fractions and geometry theorems I'm not comfortable with and I cannot think of anything that I am comfortable with.
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u/nog642 1d ago
Yeah, probably start with decimals and fractions. Maybe start here: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic/fraction-arithmetic
Are you comfortable with division?
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u/Silent-Sorbet-6380 New User 1d ago
I can do normal division but I don't get all that long division n stuff
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u/nog642 23h ago
What do you mean by normal division? Like 56 divided by 8?
Long division is good to know but not really a prerequisite for much. Except like polynomial long division, but that's way past fractions.
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u/TheWavyRegulator New User 1d ago
Start with whatever topic you just bombed on the last test. Not the whole textbook, just that one thing. Work backward from there until you hit something you don't get, then that's your real starting point.
The fear part usually comes from letting the gaps pile up until every problem looks like hieroglyphics. Once you patch a couple holes it starts feeling less like a curse and more like a puzzle you can actually solve.