I’d give myself a pass this week for me on KA for my effort and overall progress, but it probably could and should have been better. I watched a handful of videos and got through the four exercises I had left to do from the fourteenth unit of Algebra 1, Quadratic Functions & Equations, but I only spent around 5 hours in total on KA or maybe less. Given that my goal has always been to spend 5 hours studying, I suppose it wasn’t too bad, except I had a lot of time off from work this week and easily could have spent more time on KA but chose not to. Nonetheless, I achieved my goal of getting through the four exercises I wanted to get done this week, so I’ve at least got that going for me which is nice.

Below are the videos and questions I worked through this week. I usually add the title of the videos and mention what exercise the questions were from, but I didn’t anything down this week so I won’t be able to. Here they are:

Video 1

This was a short 5 minute video where Sal reviewed the different parts of a parabola. It was all so straightforward that it was almost not worth mentioning, but I took a screenshot of it so I figured I might as well.

Question 1

Question 2

These two questions are also pretty self-explanatory and tied in with the first video I watched. I didn’t have to write anything out to answer these questions, only think through what was being asked and relate it to the given parabola. Again, so straightforward that partly felt like it wasn’t worth adding to this post but I could also say for most of the math I’m working on, so I figured I might as well. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Video 2

This video reviewed what it means to ‘complete the square’. When I first learned about completing the square, I remember finding it SO confusing. Reviewing this video, even though I still don’t completely understand why completing the square works (as in I can’t visualize the geometry of what’s happening), I definitely know what it is and how to do it and find it very simple. One thing I sort of forgot was that when taking the square root, you need to state that the solution is both (+) and (-), then add the constant from the other side of the equation to leave you with the two solutions for the parabola’s x-intercept.

Question 3

This question was from an exercise in the same section as the previous video I talked about. I did a handful of questions but only took a screenshot of this one as they were all essentially the same thing. It was nice getting to do some pure algebra. I’ve said this many times before, but doing algebra like this for me is like solving little puzzles and is the most fun type of math. 🥳

Question 4

This exercise came just after the previous one. All of the questions were set up exactly like this one, so I only bothered to take screenshots of this one. All of the questions were essentially the same as the question from the previous exercise—I just had to either complete the square or factor the OG expression—so it also seemed redundant to make any extra notes.

Video 2

This was the one concept I worked on this week that I didn’t fully remember from six years ago. It took a binomial written in standard form and rewrote it in what’s called vertex form. The reason why I bothered watching this video was because I attempted the exercise below which asked me to take equations written in standard form and rewrite them in vertex form to find the vertex of the parabola, but I couldn’t remember what vertex form was. After Sal worked through it, it became clear to me that the reason why it’s called vertex form is because you can quickly tell that where the vertex is, which in this example, it’s at (5, –50). Once again, the algebra wasn’t hard, I just didn’t know/couldn’t remember what vertex form was…

Question 5

This questions from the final exercise I worked through asked me to either find the vertex of a parabola or find the parabola’s x-intercept. You can see that the question above is literally the exact same type of question that Sal worked through in the previous video I mentioned (apart from the parabola facing downwards). As you can see, it wasn’t too difficult to solve.

Question 6

I got a question just like this one wrong the first time I worked through this exercise and had to redo it because I couldn’t remember what to do. I thought I had to turn the equation into vertex form and then got confused. After getting it wrong the first time and seeing how to properly solve them, the math wasn’t difficult. t took me a minute or two to remember how to factor a binomial but after that it was smooth sailing. ⛵️

And that was it for this week. Not too bad but as always seems to be the case, I could/should have gotten more done. Regardless, I’m now one unit test away from getting what’s called the “course mastery” of Algebra 1 up to 100%. I mentioned last week that the unit test is 25 questions long, so it will likely take me a few attempts to get through it without making a careless mistake and having to restart. Hopefully it won’t take me too long to pass so I can start making headway on the next course, Geometry, which I’m only 81% of the way through. As always, fingers crossed! 🤞🏼