Dear Learners,

If I just followed recipes, step-by-step, I could probably feed my family pretty well. But I don’t think I’d learn that much about cooking. So I try to think about what the recipe means. I look for connections between recipes, I think about categories of ingredients, and I try out new things.

And I mess up a lot.

Math is the same way. If you faithfully and automatically follow the algorithm, you’ll probably get the right answer. But I don’t know if you’ll learn much about math. But if you think about why things work and how things work (and make a lot of mistakes), you’ll get the ultimate reward of math: not getting the right answer, but knowing how to solve problems.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck