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    Painless Mental Math: Quick, Easy, and Useful Ways to Become a Human Calculator (Even If You Suck At Math)
    Painless Mental Math: Quick, Easy, and Useful Ways to Become a Human Calculator (Even If You Suck At Math)
    Painless Mental Math: Quick, Easy, and Useful Ways to Become a Human Calculator (Even If You Suck At Math)
    Ebook156 pages2 hours

    Painless Mental Math: Quick, Easy, and Useful Ways to Become a Human Calculator (Even If You Suck At Math)

    By Peter Hollins

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    About this ebook

    Stop fearing math - tips and tricks to ditch the calculator and never make embarrassing errors again.



    Mental math is not as hard as you think it is. Well, the way you’ve been doing it is probably pretty difficult, but there’s a better, simpler way.


    Easily calculate: tax, tips, discounts, weights, conversions, and meaurements.



    Painless Mental Math is a shortcut to understanding how math really works - far differently from your childhood textbooks. It will give you techniques to use math in the real world, even for those of us traumatized from algebra/geometry/calculus class. There’s no fluff in this book, you simply learn the most common ways to quickly calculate. You will also learn about the two most famous mental math frameworks: Vedic math and the Trachtenberg Method. Once you get in the habit, it will be second nature.


    Never lose money to miscalculating again!



    Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.


    Complex calculations and equations made simple - your friends will be amazed and confused.



    •The cause of math anxiety and hatred.
    •The mindset you need to excel in mental math.
    •The most common everyday math scenarios and how to handle them effortlessly.
    •Vedic math, the Trachtenberg Method, and other frameworks to solve complex equations easily.


    You’ll wish you knew these tips when you were still in school!



    For many of us, math is a subject of extreme lack of confidence. Maybe you didn’t go into a career because it is math-heavy. No more.
    Transform your thinking by learning a few simple tricks. Face math anywhere and anytime. Feel a sense of freedom and empowerment. Stop being intimidated and start taking charge!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateMay 19, 2020
    ISBN9798646706196
    Painless Mental Math: Quick, Easy, and Useful Ways to Become a Human Calculator (Even If You Suck At Math)
    Author

    Peter Hollins

    Pete Hollins is a bestselling author and human psychology and behavior researcher. He is a dedicated student of the human condition. He possesses a BS and MA in psychology, and has worked with dozens of people from all walks of life. After working in private practice for years, he has turned his sights to writing and applying his years of education to help people improve their lives from the inside out. He enjoys hiking with his family, drinking craft beers, and attempting to paint. He is based in Seattle, Washington. To learn more about Hollins and his work, visit PeteHollins.com.

    Read more from Peter Hollins

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      Book preview

      Painless Mental Math - Peter Hollins

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      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1. I hate math!

      Math Anxiety

      The Social Stigma on Math

      Developing a Growth Mindset

      Takeaways

      Chapter 2. Mental Math in Daily Life

      Math in Shopping

      Math at Home

      Math at School

      Math and Food

      Miscellaneous Math Concepts and Their Applications

      Takeaways

      Chapter 3. Calculations

      Mentally multiplying large numbers

      Adding and subtracting fractions using the Butterfly Method

      Reverse-Zorro Method

      Memorize simple arithmetic

      Find a square number slightly bigger than the biggest one you know

      Obtaining the square of a two-digit number

      Divisibility tests

      Divisibility by 4

      Divisibility by 6

      Divisibility by 7

      Divisibility by 8

      Decimal representations

      11ths

      9ths

      Mentally adding numbers

      Mentally subtracting numbers

      Subtracting from 1,000

      Squares are your friends

      Squaring numbers that end in 5

      Approximating a square root

      Binomial Theorem for squaring

      Scientific notation for huge numbers

      Handy multiplication tricks

      Complex multiplication

      Multiplying 5 times any number

      Multiplying by 9

      Multiply by 11

      Multiplying numbers that end in zero

      FOIL method for multiplication

      Multiply by rounding

      Mental Math: the skills of calculating fast.

      1) Offensive.

      2) Defensive.

      3) Entertaining.

      Percentages

      Switching percentages

      Miscellaneous calculation methods

      Takeaways

      Chapter 4. Vedic Math

      Sutra 1: Ekadhikena Purvena (By one more than the previous one)

      Sutra 2: Nikhilam Navatashcaramam Dashatah (All from 9 and the last from 10)

      Sutra 3: Urdhva-Tiryagbhyam (Vertically and crosswise)

      Multiplying numbers close to 10

      Multiplying numbers close to 100

      Multiplying numbers just over 100.

      Using the sutra to add and subtract fractions

      Sutra 4: Shunyam Saamyasamuccaye (When the sum is the same that sum is zero)

      Sutra 5: Gyarasguna Sutra (One number can be easily multiplied by 11)

      Sutra 6: Paravartya Yojayet (Transpose and adjust)

      Sutra 7: Anurupyena-Sunyamanyat (If one is in a ratio, the other is zero)

      Sutra 8: Sankalana-Vyavakalanabhyam (By addition and subtraction)

      Sutra 9: Puranapuranabyham (By the completion or non-completion)

      Sutra 10: Yaavadunam (Whatever the extent of its deficiency)

      Sutra 11: Vyashtisamanstih (Part and whole)

      Sutra 12: Shesanyankena Charamena (The remainders by the last digit)

      Sutra 13: Sopaantyadvayamantyam (The ultimate and twice the penultimate)

      Sutra 14: Ekanyunena Purvena (By one less than the previous one)

      Sutra 15: Gunitasamuchyah (The product of the sum is equal to the sum of the product)

      Sutra 16: Gunakasamuchyah (The factors of the sum are equal to the sum of the factors)

      Takeaways

      Chapter 5. The Trachtenberg System

      Multiplication using the Trachtenberg System

      Multiplying two digits with two digits

      Multiplying any number with a two-digit number

      Multiplying a number with a 3-digit number

      Using Multipliers of Any Length

      Addition in Trachtenberg's System

      Verifying your answer

      Division in the Trachtenberg System

      Takeaways

      Summary Guide

      Chapter 1. I hate math!

      The prospect of even basic mathematics can provoke debilitating fear unlike anything else. Math is easily the most hated subject in school and college curricula, and it is common to hear students complaining about how difficult and uninteresting math is, or how much they despise attending math lectures. Count me as one of those people! For those still in school, there are four main reasons for this.

      First, there are a limited number of ways to earn good grades in math. Scoring 100 percent on a math-based question relies on you getting the right answer, which isn’t subjective like in the case of subjects such as English. Often, you will get points for following the right procedure or steps on a given problem, but there are several ways to solve a question and you might not get credit for some methods.

      Second, students also perceive math to be dull. The way teachers present math concepts is crucial to the way students perceive the subject. Too often, they’re left with the impression that math is an abstract subject with no practical applications. It’s filled with a random assortment of numbers that can be difficult to grasp unless you’re intimately familiar with the subject, which most math-averse students are not.

      Third, students think math requires too much memorization: The memorization in math mainly pertains to the various formulas one needs to apply to solve questions. However, when learning topics like calculus, there can be hundreds of formulas that are all considered important. The part often missed here is that most of these formulas can be derived intuitively if one understands the logic underlying them. Leaving out this intuitive process is one weakness in conventional math teaching methods.

      Lastly, learning math generally requires making mistakes: Jules Verne once said, Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make because little by little they lead us to the truth. Math too is a science, and it is only by making mistakes that one learns the correct methods of doing math. However, most students are discouraged by the mistakes they make, and it is important to balance that with positive affirmations and encouragement toward learning the subject.

      The scorn for math is far from restricted to school or college students. The affliction is common in humans of all ages, long after they’ve graduated from their respective institutions. This points toward the fact that it is not just the way math is taught in schools that instills this fear of the subject, but also certain features of math itself.

      Learning math is like learning a new language.

      It has its own symbols that interact with numbers or letters in unique ways which we don’t use in our ordinary lives. For the uninitiated, math can be a tangle of rules and methods that don’t solve the problems of our everyday lives. Some of these connections are highly abstract and beneficial only for those intending to specialize in the natural sciences. Much of what we would utilize in our daily lives is not nearly as complicated, but once someone grasps the internal logic governing the basic calculations, transitioning toward more complex math becomes easier.

      However, what stops most from making that transition, or even attempting to understand mathematical concepts at all, is the fact that it is socially acceptable, even beneficial, to hate math. If you were to joke about disliking math at a gathering, you need not worry about appearing stupid in the same way as you would if you had said you dislike history or English.

      Instead, you often generate laughs or empathy because everyone around you, even those fond of mathematical logic, has experienced the frustrations the subject causes. These frustrations are key in the perception of math as a subject reserved for nerds, and since nobody wants to be associated with nerds, they either avoid math like a plague or joke about how cumbersome it is.

      Much of this unwieldiness has to do with finding that elusive value of x which every question seeks to discover. People who like math enjoy the satisfaction they derive from having braved the logical labyrinth that any math question creates. But others often struggle to find any good reason to care about what x is. They seek a reward for doing math, and deducing the value of x is simply not enough since they don’t see how calculating for x in theory can help them find x in real-life situations.

      Having said that, there is also a deficiency in communicating math in an accessible manner. This is, in no minor part, because of its aforementioned abstract nature. Questions, explanations, and theories can be phrased in notoriously ambiguous ways that make them appear obscure and unnecessarily difficult. The mathematicians who frame them aren't usually the most adept at linguistics, or even at just being able to make things simpler for everyone. The students trying to decipher the experts’ convoluted language are the first to suffer.

      Another reason why most people don’t bother with the complexities of math nowadays is that we all have calculators in our pocket since we all own smartphones. Why bother doing calculations when a device can do

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