Before you use your calculator (or even your pencil), use your brain!
Silly errors are easy to make when doing calculations. But often they’re easy to catch before it’s too late. Make it a habit to incorporate a reasonableness check into your calculation routine – ask yourself: Does your answer at least make sense?
There are 3 components of what I call a formal “Reasonableness Check,” which I recommend explicitly writing out when you’re learning different types of problems, but then you can do much of it in your head:
- Expectations:
- Work:
- Reasonableness check:
These consist of. . .
- Before doing calcs… Determine your expecatation
- Think qualitatively/general sense what you expect answer to be…
- For example…
- Now do those calcs… (and show your work so you know what you did and can catch errors if necessary)
- After doing the calcs, ask yourself: Does your answer make sense based on expectations?
- Yes? – it at least has a chance of being right
- No? – check your calcs!
I hope that incorporating a formal “RC” into your calculations will help you avoid making silly errors without realizing. And that it will help you really think about what equations are doing and what the numbers really mean!
More math-related posts: https://thebumblingbiochemist.com/lets-talk-science/math-y-stuff/
