by The Open University
Available in 16 free installments
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The mathematical skills assumed by Open University courses in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing, Faculty of Science and Faculty of Technology, vary greatly from course to course. Students are strongly recommended to start by reading the Sciences Good Study Guide (ISBN 0 7492 341 1 3) as preparation for whichever course they are going to study. This guide is an excellent place to start but you may have found that the section on maths does not go far enough for you. Equally, you may have discovered that you don't feel completely confident about some of the maths skills assumed by your course materials. This unit aims to follow on from where the Sciences Good Study Guide stops and covers the following topics:
indices
solving equations
scientific notation, units and significant figures
basic trigonometry
logarithms.
This is a practical unit. It begins in Section 2 by asking you to reflect on why you decided to study this unit. It then goes on to explore which skills you need help with by focussing on your course materials and the assessment questions. Sections 3?7 then explain how these skills are used and, in some cases, why they are used. In Section 8, there are some suggestions for further reading and other sources of help. It is not essential that you work through each section of the unit, you may just want to read the section or sections that address your personal areas of interest.
We expect you to be an active learner and, as with your course material, we suggest that you do the activities as you go. You will be able to see where we ask you to do some work by the symbol of a pencil in the margin.
We have tried to provide as many opportunities for you to practise your skills as possible because we believe that this is the best way to gain confidence in doing mathematics. Remember that it often takes time to master a skill completely, so you may want to refer back to this unit from time to time in the future. If this unit gives you a better understanding of some of the mathematical techniques used in your course, then it will have achieved its aim.
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