[commandlinefan]

I'm coaching my son through high school math. One of the things I'm trying to impress upon him is focusing on understanding _why_ these formulas work rather than just memorizing the formulas themselves - if you understand why they work, you can always re-derive them if you need to, and you may forget the details of what they do, but you'll never forget the details of why they work once you understand them.

[bobby358]

The best strategy for this in my opinion is to always ask “what’s the picture” (as in visualization)? I can’t remember the mechanical rules for say Newton’s method, but I have the picture of what Newton’s method does in my head. From that, I can quickly work out the algorithm.