Just noticed on the latest batch of uploads that I’ve hit the 100-mark when it came to free High School Number Sense practice tests! Hope everyone has enjoyed the material so far and I’m looking forward to providing additional content through my Youtube Channel and my website in the near future.
Thanks for all the support!
Ok, I really took the plunge and started a Youtube Channel that will detail each and every trick outlined in my wildly successful (and free!) Number Sense Tricks Manual.
Please subscribe to the Channel here:
Number Sense Tricks Youtube Channel
I view the videos as a supplement to the Number Sense Manual whereas I will describe less the derivation of each trick and outline more the general thought process when applying the trick under different circumstances. I think having the videos and the Manual sets me a part from other Mental Math channels as you can get exposed to each trick through the Manual, look up the video to see how it can be applied, and go back to the Manual for extra practice.
Anyways, I hope to go through all the tricks by the end of this year. Additionally, I would love to answer student’s questions through videos, so if you have any particular questions you’d like to see answered, e-mail me at: 
I know that all you Number Sense competitors are in the thick of your qualifying and are hungry for more practice tests! As a result, I just updated a fresh batch of four exams that you can find in the Middle School and High School practice test sections. I’ll also be a lot more regular with uploading tests on a weekly basis.
Additionally, I have recently added ~1500 questions into the High School problem database and ~800 questions into the Middle School problem database. As a result, the auto-generated practice exams should be a little bit more reflective of current exams.
Finally, thank you to EVERYONE who has sent me an e-mail! I’ve enjoyed helping a number of students with how to solve a wide variety of questions (some of which aren’t mentioned in the manual). I’ve also received several e-mails outlining errors in the exams that I plan on correcting, en masse, at the end of this year’s competition calendar.
Thanks for making this project so wildly successful!
Just wanted to let everyone know that I have been fairly busy with my normal job (plus a home renovation!) over the summer. As a result, I haven’t been able to do any of the Video Tutorials that I was so enthusiastic about earlier this year.
However, I have done some things in preparation for the 2019-2020 School Year:
Looking forward to another successful year! Again, thanks to everyone who has e-mailed me about the site with corrections/edits/thank-you’s.
Well I know I’ve been talking about it for a while (and at one point settled on not doing them), but I finally decided to do something about providing video tutorials that are meant to accompany the material supplied by my Number Sense Manual. Here is a quick sample video (it was literally a single-take unrehearsed screen capture — the “real-deal” instructional videos will go a lot more smoothly):
My current screen capture set-up is:
If you have any suggestions on how to better screen capture, please leave a comment on this post (note: it will need to be Mac-compatible).
I plan on having the video broken up into two parts: instruction and examples — with a minimal amount of my handwriting as possible. The videos are planned to be less than 5 minutes long each and will follow, sequentially, with the sections in my Number Sense Manual. Eventually when I revise my manual again, at each section I will provide a hyperlink to its corresponding youtube video that will further aid in the trick’s explanation.
I hope to do two to three tricks a week. Also, if you e-mail me with a question on how to do a problem, I’ll either give you .pdf containing the step-by-step instructions or a brief video. So there you go!
Just wanted to let avid readers of the website (particularly Mental Math enthusiasts) that I have re-started posting practice exams into their appropriate repositories. I plan on posting a new exam about once a week, so check back here often! Here are the links:
Happy to announce I’ve finally completed the revision to the Number Sense Tricks Manual I originally made a little over ten years ago. Here is the direct download link (you can also get it from my webpage here).
I cleaned up a lot of the LaTeX programming and split up each section into it’s own .tex file making it a lot easier to compile individual sections. I also made the .pdf a lot more navigable by adding referencing and a few hyperlinks to my free Middle and High School practice exams. Additionally, I double-checked the question/answer pairing and corrected a fair number of problems. Finally, I added about two dozen more tricks that will help with 3rd and 4th column questions on more recent exams which you can find in Section 4 of the manual.
I wanted to get this version out ASAP to help students with their upcoming UIL regional/state meets. Over the summer, I plan on adding a substantial amount of practice problems to each section and doing another run through to make sure I didn’t miss any commonly tested topics. Hope this material is helpful to you!
Just wanted to let all the avid Number Sense participants know that I am (finally!) in the process of revising and editing my Number Sense Manual. I’m about halfway done with revamping the LaTeX code which, hopefully, makes it more readable (a lot has changed in 10 years!). Once I’m done with that I plan on adding a few more sections detailing the tricks that can be used to solve some of the more recent exam questions. I also want to expand the content to include popular Middle School tricks since there seems to be a lot of demand for that. I’m hoping to have an updated manual by the end of March – so stay tuned!
First off, thanks to everyone that has made my Auto-Generated Number Sense Practice Tests (both for High School and Middle School) such a success!
In late July, A friend of mine added a better way to track the number of downloads of all the practice exams posted on my website. I’m very happy to report that there were just about 2,000 unique downloads in about a span of 9 weeks! Incredible! I’m very proud to say that I’ve played (albeit a small) part in fostering a love of math with so many students!
Just to give y’all a quick update of the status of the project:
That’s about it! Good luck to all the students and teachers with their competitions during the 2017-2018 school year!
I’ve been very surprised (and pleased!) by the response of my Auto-Generated High School Number Sense practice exams — we’ve reached upwards of 3,000 total downloads since I began posting about them earlier this year!
As a result of their popularity, several individuals have asked me to produce something similar for the Middle School version of the exam. Since I recently reached my goal of 10,000 questions for my high school competition database, I decided to switch gears and focus on starting up a similar Middle School database. Over the past two weeks, I was able to generate 2,000 questions (sorted in the same way as the high school exam) and I’ve produced my first Auto-generated Exam and Answer Key (which you can download via the links).
I also created a Middle School repository where students can access all the number sense practice exams I generate for free. For the time being, I still intend to publish them on a weekly basis but will ultimately create a button where students can generate a practice test anytime they want a new one. I hope to have this implemented by the end of June — so stay tuned!
