Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Developing mental arithmetic skills

My mental arithmetic, while not completely abysmal, is pretty poor. What's the best way of learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide in my head. I would like to avoid using the "parrot-fashion" learning that you get in school if possible.

Has anybody tried Scott Flansberg's MegaMath course? It's advertised on Shop America here in the UK. I hear that Kevin Trudeau's courses are not much good from people on this forum. Anybody know what this one's like?

Hi Bujin,

Mega Math is Okay, but seems to be aimed at children. Try the book Rapid Math Tricks and Tips bu Edward H Julius ISBN 0-471-57563-1.It`s cheaper and has more challenging working examples.

Thanks - I've just read the Amazon reviews of that book and it looks promising.

I'm getting better slowly. I've been using the old day-of-the-week trick to try and build up a few tricks. (You know, the one where you give me any date from 1900 onwards and I can tell you what day of the week it's on). For that you have to perform the following sum in your head (written in computer-programming-language style):

(D + CInt(Mid("144025036146", M, 1)) + ((Y-1900) + ((Y-1900) div 4)) mod 7) mod 7

D = day of month, M = month, Y = any year from 1900 onwards. This sum gives you a number between 0 and 6, 0 = Saturday, 6 = Friday.

It's really not that hard when you get used to dividing by 4 and 7. I can usually get the day of the week in around 10-15 seconds now.

Yes. I'm sad!

We wrote a private label book a few years back called: Everyday Math Made E-Z.

You can order it through Amazon.com. We did not publish it and we do not sell it, but it is pretty good.

The author is Pete Reinert, an associate.