swiss-algebra-help.com

Algebra Homework Help

Our State school system (canton Ticino, Switzerland) is structured as follow:

Primary school: 5 years (from 7 to 11 years old).
Middle school: 4 years (from 11 to 14 years old)

With the end of the middle school years,the compulsory school curriculum ends.

Then, teenagers have two choices: a trade school where they learn a profession (2-4 years), or an academic curriculum with "liceo" (college, 4 years) and then University where they quite recently introduced the two level system (2 years - bachelor - virtually useless in Europe- or 4-5 years, Master level).

You can still jump from the trade school diploma to a University if you want but this is not the main stream of studying in Switzerland.

My algebra homework help gravitates around one core-topic: fractions.

In my opinion, understanding fractions is of capital importance to develop one person capability in algebra.

And it will also help in making relations, and apply logical thinking outside mathematics.

I had a confirmation when I incidentally read Susan J. Lamon's book [1].

Fractions are very poorly understood at all levels!

Moreover, within the concept of fraction there is an another key idea which will follow us trough our lives: proportional reasoning.

As you know, proportional reasoning can be of two types:

direct proportions (if I increase a value, then another value increases)

indirect proportions (if I increase a value, then the other value decreases)

When we study algebra, inevitably we meet these two kind of proportions which are widespread in nature, too..

So we will first consider fractions in all their aspects: as proportions, as whole-part, as division, as operator, as measures,