How to Get Help with Higher Level Math

There are plenty of people who can tutor math up through about Calc II. After this, it will take more effort to get help. The further in math you go, the fewer people are going to be familiar enough with the material to help you. Here are some pointers for getting help and getting unstuck.

  1. Find the people who are really excited about what you’re studying. These might be faculty, staff, graduate students and even your fellow undergraduate students.
  • Talk to your professors in office hours. Talk to other professors you aren’t taking classes from yet. Ask them if they know anyone else on campus who is interested in or knowledgeable about what you’re studying.
  • If you are taking a class at a four year institution and have a TA, talk to them as well. They might be able to direct you to other knowledgeable people. This gives you an opportunity to get to know graduate students and more advanced undergraduates.
  • Get to know your classmates, working in study groups can be very helpful. Even though you are all learning, some of you will have different perspectives on the material and you can help each other piece together concepts.
  • Practice communicating math. If you can ask interesting, insightful and specific questions, people will be willing to go out of their way to help you. For free.
    • The best way to do this is to talk to other people about math!
    • Ask specific questions and fill people in on what you’ve already tried to do. There are a couple of reasons for this
      • They will have an easier time spotting areas where you made mistakes or have a misunderstanding of the material.
      • If you can show that you’ve already done some work, they’ll be more interested in helping you and less likely to waste time trying an approach that doesn’t work.
      • Just getting into this habit will allow you to answer most of your own questions yourself!
    • You will usually need some combination of speaking, writing and drawing to communicate your understanding. You will need to slow down and write carefully when talking to another person.
    • Work on being precise in your language and notation use. Mathematical terminology refers to very specific things, and it is very difficult for other people to decipher sloppy language and notation.
  • Remember that more advanced math is going to take time to do. You will not be able to get quick explanations of higher level material.
    • Even experts are not wizards or mind readers, they will not always be able to answer your question right away. Hours of work are necessary on some problems, so give yourself time.
    • You can often save time by outlining things that you (and others) have tried that didn’t work and why.
    • Keep your textbooks and notes handy when asking questions. Many people who can help you will not remember all of the details from your class, but they can often piece together a solution if they have some references.
  • Get familiar with searching and communicating on the web! There is a ton of free help available if you figure out how to find and use it.
    • Mathematical terminology is your friend! If you know what something is called, it will make it much easier to find more information about it. Usually all you need to do is search for the name.
    • Many professors post their class notes and other materials on webpages, you can often get another perspective by searching for course webpages at other universities. Some of them even make videos for their classes.
    • MIT Open Courseware is an especially good source for higher level mathematics resources
    • TeX is a typesetting language for math notation, and is the key to communicating about math online. Message boards for math often support these commands or similar ones.
    • Stack Exchange is an incredible resource, and most of your questions are probably already answered on it somewhere. However, you need to become skilled in searching and communicating with technical people to take advantage of it.

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