MATH TUTOR, all levels, 20 years of college teaching and H.S. tutoring. On the average, I can lift student from 6%tile to above average and average student into the top 6% of the class.

Background

After retiring from UIC my next urge was to pass the accumulated mathematical knowledge to students (I did teach there, but I spent most of my time in R&D). Sixteen years ago, I started to teach math part-time at several universities in the Chicago area. Often I had to find my own approach which might give me an edge over just blindly following the textbooks. It helped me to understand the value - or the lack of it - of different mathematical methods, regardless of how they were selected or presented in textbooks. Occasionally, I may come with alternative solutions that are not taught in school but may be easier for the student. Sometimes students have difficulties with elemental mathematical concepts. I am well aware of these problems - and found that there is no problem too low to teach. Over the decades I have also collected a bag of "tricks" that make some solutions easier and straightforward (as one of my professor told us: "Every good mathematician is lazy!") and I share them with my students. For example, I show students how to verify fast their results in calculus by using the latest AI based web software.

Last but not the least, the latest findings in the psychology of learning show that good one-on-one teaching moves up the student’s performance by more than 1.5 standard deviation, i.e., a student in the lowest 6% of the class tends to move above the average, and an average student into top 6% of the class. What more can I say?