Improve Your Math Skills With An Electric Jolt To Your Brain*
With just 15 minutes of a barely perceptible electric current passed through the brain, scientists at the University of Oxford have succeeded in improving a person’s math abilities with an effect lasting as long as six months. Using a non-invasive method known as transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS), the scientists passed a mild electric current through the skull into the brain’s parietal lobe, where numbers are processed.
Patients were asked to learn new symbols to represent numbers, then, while they were on TDCS, they attempted to organize the numbers. Participants whose brains were being stimulated demonstrated an improved ability to perform the task. The amazing part is that, when tested again six months later, they retained their higher performance level. The current helps the affected nerves to fire more quickly, making it easier to learn information.
The next trials will involve patients who have lower-than-average number processing skills, and Oxford scientists hope to one day develop a device to deliver TDCS. While it may be some time before such brain-zapping is widely administered, this treatment could help the significant portion of the population (nearly 20 percent) with moderate to severe math disability, and possibly those with difficulty in other subjects as well.
* Do not zap your brain with electricity except under professional supervision.
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Percents
A percent is another way to describe a part of a whole (which means that percents are also another way to talk about fractions or decimals). Percent literally means “of 100” in Latin, so when you attend school 25 percent of the time, that means you only go to school 25/ 100 of the time (or .25).
You would probably fail all your classes if your attendance percentage was that low, so don’t get any ideas from our example. Instead, take a look at this question: 3 is what percent of 15?
This question presents you with a whole, 15, and then asks you to determine how much of that whole 3 represents in percentage form. Since a percent is “of 100,” to solve the question you have to set the fraction 3/ 15 equal to x⁄100:
15 x = 3 × 100 = 300
x= 20
Converting Percents into Fractions or Decimals
You should be skilled at converting percents into fractions and decimals, because these problems will definitely come up on the Math IC test.
Percents relate to decimal numbers very simply and directly. A percent is a decimal number with the decimal point moved two decimal places to the left.
For example:50 % of 12 = .50 × 12 = 6
12 % of 120 = .12 × 120 = 14.4
To convert from a decimal number to a percent, move the decimal point two places to the right:
.07 × 1100 = 7 % of 1100 = 77 .97 × 13 = 97 % of 13 = 12.61
On an even more simplistic level, we can just say that 50% = .5 or 22.346% = .22346. Percentages greater than 100 exist, too. 235% = 2.35, for example.
To convert from a percent to a fraction, take the percentage number and place it as the numerator over the denominator 100. 58 percent is the same as 58/ 100
To convert from a fraction back to a percent, the easiest method is to convert the fraction into a decimal first and then change the resultant decimal into a percent.
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