Mental Math Guide / Mental Math Tricks
The best way to get better at mental math is to practice. In order to make the most out of your practice, you should know the best methods to solving your problem. In this guide, you will find shortcuts and tricks for mental arithmetic as well as the general guide to getting better.
Getting started: What you should learn first if you are an absolute beginner.
Memorize basic arithmetic.
The fundamentals of mental math are your basic tables. The most common example of this is your times-tables. When we see multiplication problems like 57 * 93, instead of trying to work out 57 + 57 + 57 + . . . 93 times, we instead break it down into four smaller problems then add each result. We break down 57 into two numbers: 50 and 7. We do the same for 93: 90 and 3. With a trick you will learn later, we look at numbers like 50 and 90 as simply 5 and 9.
The importance of this is that you now have four single-digit numbers to deal with (5, 7, 9, 3). So, if you’re able to multiply these smaller numbers to each other, then you are able to multiply big numbers. This is why your first step to becoming a mathematical wizard is to memorize your arithmetic tables 0 through 9.
Using our app makes this easy. You’re going to want to do single digit addition until you get every single problem right in under 1.5 seconds. Once you are able to do that, do the same thing for multiplication, then subtraction, then division. Once you have every single-digit problem memorized, you will be more than ready to start tackling bigger problems.
