How to Memorize Formulas  by thememorypage  In March 2000, I
wrote an Email message to a young student who had asked me about
memorizing mathematical formulas. With his message he included
some example formulas for perimeter, area, etc. Here was my
reply:  “There are lots of different ways to memorize
mathematical formulas. I have always found that the best way is
to know how the formula was created in the first place. Then, if
I forget the formula on a test, I can just go through the steps
of re-creating the formula. It gives me a great feeling to know
exactly how a formula works rather than just taking the letters
and numbers and trusting the “magic.”  Here is an example, using
the formulas you gave me:  >Perimeter: Rectangle: P=2 (L + W),
Square: P= 4s  To derive the formula for a rectangle, first
picture the rectangle, like this:                |
|             L |                       | L               |
|  The perimeter, as you probably know, is the distance a