Math Memory

[netmouse]

A friend's post reminded me how it can be hard to remember math definitions, and of one of my favorites to remember.

--Did you ever learn the soh-cah-toa mnemonic?

My math teacher once walked into the room with a bucket of water, took her shoe and sock off, dipped her toe into the water and gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. We all stared at her until she explained that this is an important geometry mnemonic - soak a toe (ah!)

Soh --Sine (Opposite over Hypotenuse)
Cah --Cosine (adjacent over Hypotenuse)
Toa --Tangent (opposite over adjacent)

(if this is unfamiliar, see the pretty picture and explanation)

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep, we did that one!

Like the picture, too.

[alicebentley]

I remember it well.

My other favorite mnemonic is HONClBrIF - the naturally occuring diatomic elements - Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Clorine, Bromene, Iodine and Florine.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I remember socahtoa, and bodmas (or bomdas).

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

what's bodmas for?

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Precedence of operators: brackets, of, division/multiplication, addition/substraction.

[brendand.livejournal.com]

For us, it was always Pretty Please, My Dear Aunt Sally. (Parentheses and Powers)

[metalfatigue]

Or "Hug my dear Aunt Sally." Which leaves out exponentiation.

[lvaughn.livejournal.com]

I was taught "Please excuse my dear aunt Sally", which gets exponentiation (and does parenthesis instead of brackets).

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Nope, I've never seen that before. I learned the trig functions as "wrapping functions", the rolling circle, and the application to triangles was derived later, when there was no possibility of confusion over what bit was which, I think.

[http://users.livejournal.com/jer_/]

That's the way I've always known them...to me it's a much more intuitive method (which helped me not one bit when I swapped my numerator and denominator for tangent and cotangent today on a test... SPLENDID!)

[threemeow.livejournal.com]

Oscar Has (Opposite over Hypotenuse)
A Headache (adjacent over Hypotenuse)
Over Algebra (opposite over adjacent)

[sorcycat.livejournal.com]

I never learned that one, but I recall one from calculus.

Hodehi minus hideho over hoho

This is a mnemonic
for the Quotient Rule. Though I must admit I remembered the mnemonic but I had to look up what it was for. :)

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

oh yeah.... we learned that one too, but I had forgotten it.

[metalfatigue]

If I tried to use that mnemonic, I'd always wind up swapping hideho and hodehi. I was taught the trickle-down rule: the thing on top gets differentiated first.

[metalfatigue]

My eyes took in the second sentence of your post before the rest, probably because it was short and surrounded by blank space.

My first association with "soh-cah-toa" was Ultima IV. "Cah…that's the Mantra of Compassion, right?"

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I don't recall learning the mnemonic with the physical demonstration, but I do recall the made-up word "sohcahtoa".

Then again, I learned that stuff about 25 years ago, so it's quite possible that it was taught that way and I'm just not remembering.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

I learned soh-cah-toa, but not with the live foot demonstration.

[kyril.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it was the teacher or my mental associations, but "Sohcahtoa" was an Indian princess or something.

I remember the phrase "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" though I think I had drilled enough problems by the time I heard it to not need it.

Better Be Right Or Your Great Big Venture Goes West (resistor color codes) still comes to mind.

There's one for the planets but I don't remember it. Though now it can't end in "pizza" any more.

[metalfatigue]

Bad Booze Rots Our Young Guts, But Vodka Goes Well.

There's another one I know that's not appropriate for polite conversation.

[ex-vergil895.livejournal.com]

Hehe, thanks for reminding me we had the same math teacher ;)