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"Why" is something that was always a noticable omission from my math classes in school. I got by simply by learning the mechanical motions of whatever topic we were learning but there was never any cohesion to the concepts. I've been working through this book (and necessarily brushing up on my algebra which has atrophied for the same reason) and I've been absolutely loving it.

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I was a math tutor in college, and many of the tutees would come into the tutor lab completely downtrodden, dreading their homework. I found the most helpful thing I could do with them was to focus more on getting them to understand the motivation behind what they had gone over in class that day, and in particular saying things like "now why would we do this" as soon as I could see in their face that it was clicking. Getting them to understand the why (and getting them to feel like they understood the why) was incredibly effective for helping them feel less insecure when going to class.

When I was taking calculus classes, and struggling, a tutor helped me immensely in the exact same way; explaining both practical applications and often the historical context around the method he was teaching me.

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