Triangle Tutoring: Math & Science

GeoCities.us » ResearchTriangle » Campus

Get your FREE home page!

Triangle Tutoring

Math · Chemistry · Physics
For high school and college students · In person or by e-mail · First meeting free

We're Rob and Priti, two graduate students who tutor math and science on the side. We started because a neighbor's daughter was failing Algebra II and her mother asked if we could help. Two months later she had a B, and her mother told three other mothers, and here we are with a web page.

We're not a big tutoring company with a franchise and a workbook. It's the two of us, a table at the public library, a lot of scratch paper, and the belief that almost nobody is "bad at math." Most people who think they are just missed one step somewhere along the way and have been lost ever since. We find the step.

Subjects
Mathematics	Pre-algebra, Algebra I and II, geometry, trigonometry, pre-calculus, calculus (AP Calculus AB and BC, and the first two semesters of college calculus). Also introductory statistics and the math parts of chemistry and physics that trip people up (unit conversions, logarithms, vectors).
Chemistry	High school chemistry, AP Chemistry, and college general chemistry (first year). Stoichiometry, gas laws, equilibrium, acids and bases, thermochemistry, and the dreaded mole. We can also help with organic chemistry, but be honest with us about how far behind you are.
Physics	High school physics, AP Physics, and first-year college physics, with or without calculus. Mechanics, waves, electricity and magnetism, optics. If you can't set up a free-body diagram, that's the first hour, and it fixes half of what's wrong.
SAT Math	The math section of the SAT and the Math IC/IIC subject tests. We work from real released tests, not a "trick" book. Most of the improvement comes from learning to read the problem, and from not spending four minutes on a question that's worth the same as an easy one.
Not on the list? Ask. If we can't help, we'll say so and try to point you to someone who can. (We don't do biology or English. We'd only be pretending.)

Rates
High school students (one-on-one)	$20 per hour
College students (one-on-one)	$25 per hour
Small group (2 to 4 students, same class)	$12 per student per hour (high school) $15 per student per hour (college)
E-mail tutoring	$15 per problem set (up to 10 problems, fully worked with explanations, returned within 48 hours)
First meeting	Free. See below.
Sessions are usually an hour; an hour and a half before a test. Pay by the session, cash or check, no packages to buy up front. A block of ten prepaid sessions gets the eleventh free, if you want to do it that way. If a family genuinely can't afford the rate, talk to us. We've worked something out before and we will again.

How It Works
1. The first meeting is free. About 45 minutes, at the public library downtown (the study rooms on the second floor; we reserve one). Bring your textbook, your last test or two, and your syllabus if you have one. We'll go through where you're getting stuck, figure out which of us is the better fit for your subject, and set up a plan. If it turns out you don't need us, we'll tell you that, too. No charge either way.

2. In person. Regular sessions are at the library, same room, same time each week. Parents are welcome to sit in for the first session or two; after that most students do better without an audience. We do not tutor at our own apartments or yours.

3. By e-mail. This works well for students who are organized and just need to see problems worked correctly, and for anyone who lives too far away to meet. You e-mail us the problems (type them, or describe them clearly; scanned pages are fine if they're readable) and we send back each problem fully worked, step by step, with the reasoning written out next to the math, plus a note about what the problem was really testing. Turnaround is 48 hours, usually faster. We can also do a "check my work" version where you send your solutions and we mark exactly where they go wrong.

4. We don't do your homework. We'll work similar problems with you until you can do yours. If you send us a take-home exam, we'll send it back. Teachers can tell, and so can we.

5. Honest progress reports. If a student isn't doing the work between sessions, we'll say so, to the student first and then to the parent. Tutoring one hour a week doesn't undo six hours of not opening the book.

About Us
Rob is a doctoral student in physics, in his third year. He teaches the lab sections of the introductory physics course at the university, which means he has watched several hundred freshmen meet Newton's laws for the first time and has a pretty good idea of every way it can go wrong. He tutors physics, calculus, and everything below calculus. He was a mediocre math student until tenth grade, when a geometry teacher explained proofs to him in a way that finally made sense, and he's been trying to pay that back since.

Priti is a doctoral candidate in chemistry, finishing her dissertation (ask her how it's going at your own risk). She has been a teaching assistant for general chemistry for four years and has graded, at a rough count, nine thousand stoichiometry problems. She tutors chemistry, algebra, pre-calculus, and SAT math, and she is the one who will make you keep a formula sheet and actually use it. She got a perfect score on the SAT math section in high school and would like you to know that this was mostly because she practiced.

Both of us are patient, both of us are on time, and both of us think a wrong answer is the most useful thing in the room, because it tells us exactly what to fix.

How to Study Math (and Science): The Short Version
We give every new student this list. It's free. If you do all of it, you may not need us.

Do the problems. Don't read them. Reading a worked example and nodding is not studying. Cover the solution, do it yourself on paper, then compare. Math is a sport; you learn it by playing, not by watching.
Do a little every day instead of a lot the night before. Twenty minutes a day beats three hours on Sunday, every time. The brain needs to sleep on it.
Write everything down. Every step. Not because the teacher wants it, but because your working memory holds about seven things and a physics problem has twelve. Paper is cheap.
When you get a problem wrong, find the exact line where it went wrong. Not "I messed up." Which line? Was it the setup, the algebra, the units, or a sign? Keep a list of your own mistake types. Everybody has two or three favorites.
Units are your friend. If you're doing physics or chemistry and you carry the units through every step, they will tell you when you've done something wrong, because you'll get meters where you wanted seconds.
Estimate the answer first. Before you compute, guess. "About 50, probably." Then if you get 5,000, you know to look again.
Learn the definitions cold. Half of "I don't get it" is really "I don't know what that word means." What is a derivative? What is a mole? If you can't say it in a sentence, start there.
Explain it to somebody. A parent, a sibling, the dog. If you can't explain it, you don't understand it yet. If you can, you'll never forget it.
Go to office hours. College students: your professor and TA have office hours and almost nobody goes. Go. It's free tutoring from the person who writes the test.
Don't study tired. After 11 p.m., you're not learning, you're just being awake near a book.

Fall 1999 Availability

As of September 22: We have a few weekly slots left each. Between our own classes and teaching, we can each take about eight regular students per semester, and the slots fill up fast around midterms in October.

Rob: Tuesday and Thursday evenings, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.; Saturday mornings 9:00 to noon. Two slots open.
Priti: Monday and Wednesday evenings, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.; Sunday afternoons 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Three slots open.
E-mail tutoring: Always open. No slot needed.

Test-prep crunch: The SAT is offered October 9, November 6 and December 4 this fall. If you want SAT math help, start at least four weeks out. We'll run a small SAT math group (up to 4 students) on Saturday afternoons in October if there's interest; e-mail us.

Finals: Our own finals are the second week of December, so we take that week off. We'll be available again for high school midterms in January.

Y2K note, since somebody asked: Yes, we'll be tutoring in the year 2000. No, we don't think your graphing calculator will stop working. The math is the same on either side of midnight.

Get in Touch

E-mail: [email protected]
Tell us the student's grade or year, the class and the textbook, what's going wrong, and what days work. We answer within a day, usually the same evening.
Phone: (555) 555-0128 (an answering machine; leave a message and we'll call back after 5 p.m.)
Where: Downtown public library, second-floor study rooms. We'll tell you which one.

Some pages we send students to: The Study Skills Page (from a learning center director; read it before you read ours) · Science at Home: Kitchen Experiments (for the younger siblings, and honestly for the chemistry students too: the cabbage indicator is a better introduction to pH than most textbooks) · Mr. Delgado's 7th Grade Science · Life at State: Marcus's Freshman Year (what the first year actually feels like)

Students and parents who have visited since August 1999:

Last updated September 22, 1999 · © 1999 Triangle Tutoring
We are graduate students tutoring independently. We are not affiliated with any university, school district, or testing company.