Ruiyang
University College London, University of London
Mathematics
2nd Year
5
3
2About Me
Summary:
Hi! I am Ruiyang (a.k.a. Charlie), a Study Mind tutor since February 2023 and a maths student at UCL in his second year. Prior to coming to London, I spent a year at the University of Warwick studying maths and statistics. I was a top student during both those years (if you like, you can see more about this below).
My stop before the UK was Spain, where I took IB, and in particular its maths analysis & approaches HL course. I worked very hard to obtain 7 points, and also did very well in my internal assessment (by total IB points, by the way, was 45).
Why should you choose me as your (or your son or daughter’s) tutor?
1. I’ve been helping my classmates and students improve in maths for many years.
2. I’ll be able to connect with you. During my time in international schools, at UCL and as a tutor, I’ve had the chance to work and make friends with people of many ethnicities and nationalities. So, I’m confident that no matter what your background is, we’ll get along.
3. I’m passionate about maths and teaching it; seeing others get better in maths and develop a genuine understanding of concepts and formulae gives me indescribable joy.
3. I’m patient. I understand that maths can be hard to grasp and frustrating at times (even as a top student in maths, I feel these often), so I’m perfectly happy to explain things repeatedly, using examples, analogies, visual aids and so on.
4. I can explain things clearly and concisely, often by using the tools mentioned above.
5. I can boast your confidence at maths. The lack of it has various causes: making arithmetic mistakes often, finding it hard to remember formulas… Many of these issues are common to everyone: yes, even top students in your class or students performing well in a university maths degree still suffer from, say, messing up matrix multiplication. So, there’s no reason for you to be frustrated if you often make these mistakes.
Other issues usually stem from the fact that maths is often not taught properly. For example, we are given formulas without an explanation of where they come from, connections between seemingly different maths concepts are seldom mentioned, and the logic underlying maths is often deemed as unimportant in schools. I can fix this by:
6. Walking you through facts and “tricks” that, despite being essential to understanding maths and problem-solving in maths, are often left out of standard school syllabus.
7. Finally, I would like to assure you that I’m totally open to questions. If, at any point of a lesson, you find anything unclear, just let me know!
My teaching style
I’m very flexible. So, although I’ve outlined a lesson structure below (this is how I taught some of my previous students), I can change it to suit your needs.
1. I prepare extensively before each lesson (by selecting important exercises we will cover, by thinking about common mistakes and how to avoid them etc.).
2. If you want to, we can start off every lesson with an informal chat. After that, we’ll go through the homework assignment from the previous lesson (you can also choose to submit it to me before the lesson begins, in which case we might be able to skip this part).
3. Now we formally begin the lesson. Each lesson has a specific topic (e.g. normal distributions, or integrals of specific classes of functions), and a number of fundamental concepts and problem-solving methods associated with it. I’ll make sure that you understand and can manipulate these to solve simple problems.
4. Then, I’ll ramp up the difficulty of problems that we go through; I’ll also seek to generalise or ask you questions that require a bit of creative thinking (e.g. if we have solved an differential equation, I might make that equation slightly more complicated and ask you how to solve the new one) – these are critical when it comes to the exam!
5. At the end of the lesson, there’ll be a recap on the most important ideas and methods that we have looked at (if time runs out, I’ll send you a lesson summary afterwards).
6. I’ll set some homework (don’t get stressed – I won’t make it very hard!) The homework will be a combination of basic questions, and more advanced ones (especially those from past papers).
My past experience
I have been a Study Mind tutor since February 2023. I taught A-level mechanics (friction) for a few weeks, and then focused on an IB maths HL (A & A) student. We mainly covered vectors (vector algebra, scalar and cross products, lines and planes), linear algebra and kinematics; we also talked about calculus very briefly.
We had quite good chemistry, so the atmosphere was relaxed and cheerful despite the workload. She wanted from having some degree of understanding about the topics covered to being able to master them in a few months. We were both happy and satisfied with this result.
My Proudest Achievements
Maths-related:
I have made a positive influence in the overall maths abilities of several of my fellow classmates and students.
My notes-taking habits developed into a gigantic project, and now I have a comprehensive set of maths notes (covering all of IB and almost all of A-level maths and further maths) in my computer. The total word count is around 170,000 words as of now.
My hard work and excellent grades at Warwick was recognised by my Department, which awarded me the Warwick Statistics Prize, along with 400 pounds of prize money. I was awarded an analogous prize in UCL for being one of the top 10 finishers (6th place to be concrete, and there were about 340 students in total) in the Department.
Other achievements:
I’m at the top amateur level for Chinese calligraphy.
I managed to become fluent in Spanish after learning it for about two years.
Reviews (1)
I teach
- Maths
- Maths
My Results and Achievements
- "IB: 7 points in maths A & A (HL)"
- "IB: A in maths internal assessment"
- "IB: A in (mathematical) biology EE"