Extended Introduction

The eighteenth century English author and lexicographer, Samuel Johnson, has been attributed with having had this to say of a contemporary's work: 

"The manuscript was both good and original, but the part that was good was not original, and the part that was original was not good."

On guard against equally scathing criticism, I will not dare to presume my website’s own content will fare any better under close scrutiny from my visiting guests. Nevertheless, I do hope you will find it to be, at the very least, both useful and interesting in places, and just maybe - at its most inspired - the two of those things combined.

First and foremost, this site will be dedicated to providing you with information pertaining to my one-to-one personal maths tutoring services along with useful and free resources which I hope will prove to be of value to you in your academic development.

I am confident the comprehensive collection of Past Papers and Worked Solutions will prove highly useful to those of you studying Maths at Key Stages 3 and 4 (ages 11-14 and GCSE levels respectively). Within the former you will find an extensive listing of past papers to help you practice and fully prepare yourself for sitting SATs or GCSE exams. I will be updating new papers on this page as best I can going forward. 

On the 'Worked solutions' page I have reposted each and every past paper from the page before, but this time complete with method and answers. Perhaps you can use my worked solutions to guide you on your first practice attempt and then see how far you can get without the solutions on your second practice go, all the while trying to improve your understanding of the methods used on each question and your time taken to complete each paper. I've had to work long and hard to make these resources available for all visitors to my site. What's more, I'm giving away the fruits of my labour entirely free!

Where my worked solutions are concerned, I believe they will prove the next best thing to having me there beside you, guiding you through each question step-by-step. That said, it wasn’t feasible within my solutions to provide quite the same level of detail, reductionism and simplification that I am able to provide when tutoring on a one-to-one basis. Nevertheless, you should find most solutions sufficiently straightforward excepting only those areas of the syllabus which need a little extra background work and explaining for the beginner.

For those of you who would like the additional one-to-one support, I will be only too happy to book you in for some lessons. This is largely how I sustain myself after all. For bookings I refer you to the page entitled Maths Tutoring Services. Here you will find information about me, details of the services I provide and info on how you can make a booking with me through the website.

Everything I work to bring you on this site is completely free of charge and 'pro bono'. I rely on the bookings I make with students to fund myself and to dedicate the time and effort needed to maintain, update and expand the website’s content.

So whether you’re preparing for exams, or just looking to master the entire syllabus at your designated level before developing your maths further, I’m sure you'll find useful information and resources here to assist you.

Now that I’ve elaborated a bit on the primary raison d'être of 'Maths Made Elementary', let me take this opportunity to express my gratitude to those of you who have taken the time out of your day to have a look around my humble cyber abode. By way of thanking you for your visit, I have added to my site some mostly non-maths related, bonus material, which I sincerely hope will prove to be both of use and of interest to you, even if it doesn’t quite meet Dr. Johnson’s criteria for being simultaneously “good and original”.

Literature is a particular passion of mine, and I have listed a relatively large number of title recommendations on the Books page. The recommended reading lists I have included are taken from a broad range of subjects including the classics, science, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and more. 

On the Careers page I examine some of the ways in which you can attempt to narrow down the search for your ideal career, or indeed, double check you’re already in the ideal career as the case may be. I also include a Personality Profiling Questionnaire which I invite you to read through and answer as honestly and as objectively as you can. You then have the option to submit your answers to me via the website for a full summary report. For each completed questionnaire submitted I am able to generate a full personality profile from formulae I have put together within a spread sheet. (A bit of maths to complement my amateur attempts at psychology.) The feedback I aim to provide to each and every individual willing to take me up on my free offer will outline the rankings for that individual's 16 featured personality types in descending order from closest to weakest match. In addition to this, I will then provide a more detailed summary description of the personality type that ranked closest to the participant’s along with a list of some of the careers that typically suit the personality type highlighted. 

Before you come to my Blog, which I mention within the shorter introduction on the Home page, you will encounter the Quotations and Site Art pages. 

I have included a few select categories from my own extensive collection of quotes, which I feel are “on-topic” and in keeping with some of the themes on this site. If these quotes prove popular amongst guests to my site, and I hope they will, then I may consider opening up this section to include my entire database of quotations, which numbers well over 5,000 and can be filtered by author, category or whichever format my guests find most congenial.

The Site Art page features mainly images incorporated into my home page and main banner. On this page is included more information about some of the mathematical constants that feature prominently in these images such as π, j (pronounced phi) and Euler's number, e.

So if you're looking to book personal one-to-one maths lessons or just searching for useful Key Stage 3-4 resources to assist your studies, you've definitely come to the right place. In addition, you will find useful and practical careers advice, “good book” recommendations, articles to pique your interest, brain teasers to challenge and improve your problem-solving skils, and quotes to amuse, motivate and inspire you. In short, a little bit of everything for everyone.

Thanks again for visiting. Please add me to your favourites for future visits. My cyber home will remain open to you at all times ready and waiting to offer you a warm welcome.

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