Originally Posted by delbows
The freshman class at my daughter's school is piloting this tutoring service. I believe the reviews are positive though I have not followed it too closely.
Quote
We're making our entire library of Algebra 1 tutorials available for free for a limited time only.


http://www.virtualnerd.com/
Quick review: DS6 and I had a look and, while the presentation is OK, we were not impressed by the maths - in the few we looked at, the suggested methods were strong on "remember this is how you do it" and weak on any hint about why the suggested procedure was correct. They also sometimes complicated things bizarrely. E.g., they solved "what is 40% of 220?" by writing 40/100 = x/220 and then using something they grandly called the "means extreme property" to cross-multiply and solve! I asked DS how he'd solve that problem, and he said "well, I'd say, what's one-tenth of 220, because that's the same as ten hundredths, 10%, and it's 22, so 40% of 220 is four times that, that's 88". I like his method better!

[ETA: OK, googling, I see they didn't invent the term "means extremes property" - but really, what is the term good for? Isn't it best just to know what a fraction is and what "equals" means and understand that, and why, you can multiply both sides of an equation by the same number and still have an equation? Seems like an example of making simple stuff hard to us...]

Last edited by ColinsMum; 02/15/10 09:29 AM.

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