A Mind for Numbers
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A Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
The companion book to COURSERA 's wildly popular massive open online course "Learning How to Learn"Whether you are a student struggling to fulfill a math or science requirement, or you are embarking on a career change that requires a new skill set, A Mind for Numbers offers the tools you need to get a better grasp of that intimidating material. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley knows firsthand how it feels to struggle with math. She flunked her way through high school math and science courses, before enlisting in the army immediately after graduation. When she saw how her lack of mathematical and technical savvy severely limited her options-both to rise in the military and to explore other careers-she returned to school with a newfound determination to re-tool her brain to master the very subjects that had given her so much trouble throughout her entire life.
In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to learning effectively-secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they'd known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there's only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions-you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over.
The learning strategies in this book apply not only to math and science, but to any subject in which we struggle. We all have what it takes to excel in areas that don't seem to come naturally to us at first, and learning them does not have to be as painful as we might think.
Bad Genes: Why Rome Fall, Hitler Rise, Enron Failed, and My Sister Took My Mother's Lover is the celebrated author of Oakley, PhD (Rochester, MI). Her work has been compared to that of Indiana Jones, as it blends global adventure with solid academic expertise. She's worked as a Russian translator aboard Soviet trawlers in the Bering Sea, worked as a radio operator at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and risen through the ranks of the US Army from Private to Regular Army Captain. Oakley is a recent vice president of the world's largest bioengineering association and possesses a doctorate in the integrative discipline of systems engineering. He is currently an associate professor of engineering at Oakland University in Michigan.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780399165245 |
| ISBN 10 | 039916524X |
| Title | A Mind for Numbers |
| Author | Barbara Oakley |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Tarcher/Putnam,US |
| Year published | 2014-07-31 |
| Number of pages | 336 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |