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Maths

Old 1st May 2018, 18:10
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Maths

Hey!

My math is dreadful and I mean really bad, I passed my GCSE though but I have been looking around online and dabbling in some online tests that use aviation style questions that I can expect. For some I can somewhat quickly determine what process I need to do to get the answer it's just getting my numerical reasoning improved to a satisfactory level. What are my options? I am absolutely dreading aptitude tests etc.

Thanks in advance

Sean
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Old 1st May 2018, 21:24
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To be honest - get back to the GCSE books, and re-learn the topic more deeply. Anything related to question spotting will find you out - it's a good solid grounding you need. Maybe try some other sources: there are multiple ways to teach maths, and some may suit you better than others.

Very few people are genuinely bad at maths, but many have been poorly taught or have developed the belief that they can't do it because of external negativity.

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Old 2nd May 2018, 05:51
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When you say MATHS, it is not A level maths, but there are certain critical elements that you need, which a bright young person aged 13 would be capable of tackling.

1. Basic SUMS : + : - : x : % to name but a few. You get the drift
2. Basic equations
3. SIN COS TAN

Airline flying is very much NUMBERS orientated. You must feel totally comfortable as it forms part of the fundamental ingredients to the whole shooting match.
Start studying GEN NAV as your first subject. Get you into the mood.Fewest fact to learn. IT IS CRITICAL THAT YOU UNDERSTAND it, the LOGIC behind it. Don't attempt to learn it like a history book. That does not work.
Probably your THREE times table and being able to ADD 10 is the most important day to day calculation you MUST be capable of doing with your eyes closed, standing on your head, so to speak ~ TOD point

The above is the underarm test to start to check whether your brain is wired up correctly for aviation. Not all people make the grade; their talents lie elsewhere.





Last edited by parkfell; 2nd May 2018 at 09:57.
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Old 2nd May 2018, 08:35
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What Parkfell said..it's numbers ...every day on the line it's dealing with numbers:

Typically stuff like at briefing the following conversation with your colleague:

"This is a bit odd given it's a seven hour sector.. The planners have produced a fuel plan anticipating a total burn of 30 tonnes.. we average a burn of seven tonnes an hour... does that plan look credible to you"? ( => multiplication/division)

Half an hour later:

Lining up for take off is the wind is 45 degrees off runway heading at 30 knots...your crosswind limit is 20 knots - can you do the takeoff? =>( bit of an understanding of trig with a bit of division/multiplication/proportions..)

Half an hour later:

13 miles out from the runway on approach on what should be a 3 degree glideslope, you're at 5000 feet above the airfield........Question from the other seat " does that look right to you?" =>(parkfells 3 times table comes into play )

It's almost all basic arithmetic, but there is no time to use a calculator, (certainly in the last two imagined examples) and if you struggle with basic mental maths it will remove from your capacity to fly the aircraft and might adversly effect your ability to pass a flying course. It's not differential calculus as parkfell says there are certain critical elements that you really do need to have nailed down ..and I would therefore recommend Genghis's advice to somehow re-learn the core topics..
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Old 2nd May 2018, 08:58
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wiggy and parkfell are both absolutely right. Good luck with your studies!
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Old 2nd May 2018, 11:55
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Thanks for all the replies gentlemen it's my mental math I really need to work on, everyone panics when they get put on the spot, I'm considering possibly night school or getting a tutor if I really start to struggle.
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Old 2nd May 2018, 20:27
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I would recommend looking on YouTube at ‘Vedic’ math tricks for mental maths. There’s a series on there with a turtle in the preview image which helped me a lot in preparing for aptitude tests etc. Those videos will help with learning techniques to do more complicated maths quickly but the basics are only learnt from lots of practice. If you spend an hour or two a day for a week doing basic addition and multiplication then you should have the basics down and the rest will get a lot easier, especially when under pressure
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Old 3rd May 2018, 09:51
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I once attended a airline selection, which required long division, which was out of vogue when I was at school, luckily my older brother who did long division at school, gave me a tutorial. I wouldn't get to worried about maths, but often what is lack in pilots is sines and cosines. Example as follows:

You are going to land on runway 27, the wind is 240 degrees at 20kts,

Q. What is the crosswind and headwing conponent without using a calculator or tables:
A. Headwind is 17.2 degrees and crowind is 10 degress.

How would you know that? difference between runway heading and wind is 30 degrees. You should know that Sin 30 = 0.5 and Cosine 30 = 0.86. Sin equals crosswind, so 0.5 equals, crosswind equals 0.5 x 20kts = 10kts, likewise Cosine equals headwind, so Cosine 30 equals 0.86, so 0.86 x 20 knots, which is a headwind of 17.2 kts.

Another thing to ask yourself, could your explain to an interview panel the trignometry behind the one in sixty rule?

Likewise know the ROD and heights rule of thumb for a specific glidescope of 3 degrees for a specific speed.

If you have GCSE in Mathematics I think that is good enough, but you need to demonstrate you can think on your feet.

As previous mentioned there is probably a lot of matter on the internet on this subject.
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Old 3rd May 2018, 12:08
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TBH you’ve possibly frightened OP *****less and got him/her thinking they need to memorise the trig tables (still got mine)...he/she only really understands the idea of SIN, COS etc.

for the benefit of Sean there’s trick sometimes called the clock code that allows you to approximate the values for the crosswind and headwind quickly.

30 minutes is half an hour...sin of 30 is 0.5...so if the wind is 30 degrees off half of it is crosswind...
45 minutes is three quarters of an hour, sin 45 of 45 degrees is .7. (And a bit, so call it three quarters), so crosswind is 3/4 of the total.
60 minutes is the full hour, sin of 60 degrees is a bit more than .8 so it’s safe treat the full wind as crosswind.

IMHO the trick is understanding the triangle rather than memorising tables.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_code







Last edited by wiggy; 4th May 2018 at 12:56.
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Old 3rd May 2018, 12:09
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Knowing the sine & cosine values for 30 and 60 degrees of latitude is good for nav as well
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Old 3rd May 2018, 13:11
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I would say to pass the aptitude tests and subsequent ATPL exams you would need to have a good grasp of; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, BIDMAS, ratios, fractions, Algebra(understand how to rearrange formula), SOH CAH TOA, Pythagoras Theorem, area & circumference of circles.

A lot of calculations in aviation exams can be done by rounding the numbers up, i.e. 3643/277 becomes 3600/300. A relevant example of rounding would be working out barometric error in altimeter questions, technically you should use 27ft per millibar, though usually its rounded up to 30ft.

However!!

When it comes to actually flying the plane, you haven't got time for all this academic BS. When you are trying to navigate your little Cessna or Piper VFR through SE England with no autopilot or Skydemon, you haven't time to sit there trying to do fancy equations. The clock face rule that Wiggy has explained above is a really important one to understand and use; in critical stages of flight you should be able to calculate crosswind component quickly.

In real navigation for example, before you get into the a/c you can draw a little compass rose on your plog with N,NE,E,SE,S,SW,W,NW, get your CRP5 and figure out what your drift and groundspeed would be on each of those compass heading, then make a note of it on your plog. Therefore, inflight when your instructor asks you to divert in say a north easterly direction, you already know roughly what your groundspeed and drift is from looking at your plog, then you look at your speed/distance table - bingo you know the ETA and heading to take up.

As you can see, flying is or should be very practical. The maths is really for the ground exams.
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Old 3rd May 2018, 13:31
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Isosceles triangles for relative bearigs....
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Old 3rd May 2018, 16:55
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Max drift formula is also very useful to quickly estimate how much you need to steer to remain on course. For 120 knots of TAS, which happens to be more or less the correct speed for a typical MEP used for IR training in the terminal area, you just need to divide the wind speed by 2. That gives your maximum drift you can possibly experience at that speed, then the clock formula comes in handy to further redefine your drift. For example, you've got a 30 knots wind 30 degrees off your course. Divide the wind speed by the nm/min (120 knots is 2 miles per minute) and you get 15 knots. It's 30 degrees off, so you experience a drift of 7,5 degrees, let's round it up to 8 degrees.

It works just fine for navigation. For a typical 90 knots cruise speed on a Cessna 150, you simply get 2/3 of the wind speed. In the example above it would be 20 knots, then you use the clock method to get to a final estimate.

It's not rocket science, really. In my opinion, those aptitude tests don't really reflect what a trainee goes through during his/her training. Heck, I passed GNAV and RadioNav by making simple sketches and eyeball which angle was bigger or smaller.
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Old 3rd May 2018, 17:06
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This has helped somewhat haha it's made me realise there's definitely a lot of improvement to be done in regards to my mental math ability
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Old 3rd May 2018, 17:08
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Get The Secrets of Mental Maths.
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Old 4th May 2018, 11:20
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Get The Secrets of Mental Maths.
And look at Khan Academy on Youtube. Hundreds of 10-15 min vids on evreything maths oriented. From primary to a-level and above.
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Old 4th May 2018, 21:02
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To get a good preview of what you really will encounter during the ATPL studies, download the Maths and Physics for Pilots iBook made by PadPilot. It's free.
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