Shortcuts to Mental Math

Hi, I’m Josh Sipes. I teach high school and middle school math at Oxford Junior/Senior High School. I will be just doing a short little lesson on how to effectively do mental math. A lot of mental math is an understanding of place value, and the fact the 7 is in the ones place. And, the six is in the tens place. So, what this means is, it’s not just six and seven. It’s six tens, which makes it 60 and 7. Likewise this would be 90 and 4. So, to do this effectively mentally, what you could so is you could take 7 plus 4 is 11. And, 60 plus 90 is 150. So, in your head, you could do, 150 plus 11 is 161. Using the fact that place value is important, to, when grouping and those types of things will help you effectively do mental math better.