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Mathematics LibreTexts

Chapter 1: Computation, Estimation, and Common Sense

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This chapter will take you through a recap on numbers, basically: what a real number is, how numbers compare to each other, how to do computations and calculations with numbers, working with fractions and decimals, representing numbers with letters (don't panic, we gotta do it to do algebra later), dealing with powers and radicals, and simplification. Then we will do a very important dive into other aspects of numeracy such as: being able to estimate expressions involving fractions and irrational numbers at a glance, telling whether expressions are bigger or smaller than others at a glance, using common sense checks to see if an answer is even reasonable, and the usefulness of intuition versus when it might lie to you(!! this is why we actually need rigorous mathematics).


This page titled Chapter 1: Computation, Estimation, and Common Sense is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Lydia de Wolf.

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