the last course to graduate and I'm just not getting it.
Thank you!
Answers (1)
We have no reference to look up whatever you are talking about. If you would post some problems, one per question, then we can help you learn how to do them.
Get a ruler in your hands. Measure things until you start to understand how a ruler works. Measure some stuff and figure out where the center is. Say you measure a book and it's 7/8" thick. You look at your ruler and see that every eighth is divided into two sixteenths, so obviously half of 7/8" is going to be 7/16". If you write that out you have 1/2 x 7/8 = 7/16. And you notice that 1/2 is divided into 2/4 and then into 4/8 and so on, so you can convert anything to anything by multiplying all the numbers on top and then all the numbers on bottom.
Other rulers are divided into 10 and 100 parts. But an inch is still an inch, so anything on one ruler can be translated to the other ruler. A half inch on one ruler is 5/10 or 50/100 on the other. An eighth inch is just 12.5 marks when you have 100 marks per inch. A metric ruler divides an inch into 25.4 parts, so a half inch would be 12.7 of those parts. Pretty simple, isn't it? Practice this a bit and people will think you went to wizard school.
So what does that have to do with algebra? It gives you familiarity with numbers and fractions. When you get into physics (which used to be considered the same subject as algebra) they make fractions using units. They say things like 12in/ft=1 and that allows you to convert feet to inches by multiplying by 12, or inches to feet by dividing by 12. Some formulas might have dozens of such conversions, and you zip right through them because you have seen them before. So get that ruler and learn the business.