Math Derivations¶

This site contains derivations of math results that are commonly used in high school math.

Goals and non-goals¶

The purpose of this site is to share nice ways to understand why high school math works like teachers claim. As far as I know, the only people reading this is are students, but some of this could be useful for teachers as well. Most of the derivations are created by me, but in most cases, I'm quite sure that I'm not the first person who finds the derivation.

The goal is not to start with a set of axioms, and then prove everything from the axioms and only from the axioms. Instead of axioms, I tend to use things that are intuitively clear. For example, consider how I derive the equation of a line. Instead of giving a long list of axioms about lines, I write so that it convinces you if you think about what lines look like. I also tend to prefer visual things over long calculations, although I do the calculations and symbol manipulations when needed.