Making Sense of Algebra
Audience: high-school
Tags: algebraelementary-algebraintroductionbeginners
A 15 minute blog article explaining elementary algebra to a general audience. The focus is on a deeper insight into what the topic is all about, and it is intended to be a first pass introduction into the thought process of solving algebraic problems, and how we might come up with these kinds of solutions ourselves. The reading level makes it most suitable to highschool teens, and adults who are interested in math but have no background in it.
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I think to really drill down the appreciation that an expression is a different from a statement, maybe a less mathematical example of something concrete can help to illustrate the nuance here, but the whole analogy of trying to solve for a truth statement is a good introduction to algebra.
When we go back to the problem: ‘You can save up an extra €15 every week.’. We can remind the audience of the problem as they might have forgotten it if they’re focused on the abstract logic framework.
We also probably don’t need to introduce the notion of a polynomial or coefficients here as it isn’t used later on not the main concept we want to dwell on here.
One area to focus on is why we might need to balance operations on both side. It’s a more subtle detail, and I think it’s worth spending more time to draw an appropriate analogy here.
That’s such a refresh on the concept of algebra! I never knew the thought patterns lying under simple equations.
Some images would be nice for memorability.
This is a well written introduction to solving algebraic equations. You make a good effort to define every piece of jargon or notation and motivate the general approach well without being too abstract. However, the website itself is a little dull and gives the visual appearance of reading a textbook. Though it’s more engagingly written than most textbooks, I’m not sure its exciting enough for a student who is struggling with these concepts at school to come to. A few pictures or some more interactive components would help to set this apart from your average math textbook. Don’t let this put you off - you have a wonderful writing style but I would suggest putting more effort into the visual/aesthetic experience in the future (or ask a creative friend to help!)
I think the explanations are very clear and well-written, and the examples are all relevant. It would have been nice for the author to touch on some higher-level applications of algebra beyond elementary equations, in case a reader unfamiliar with algebra wished to learn more. The “who cares” section handles this partially, but it would have been nice for the scope of algebraic usage and functionality to be expressed.