Choose a level

The archive is organized into four sections, by level. Choose the level most appropriate to your question from the list below:

• Elementary
• Middle School
• High School
• College

The corresponding page will open in a separate window, which you can use to try the things you're reading about in this window. Don't worry about choosing the wrong one - it will be easy to change later on.

Choose a topic

For shortcuts, see Selected Answers to Common Questions, groups of answers collected for you on special topics.

Each section of the archive is organized by topic. The list for the Middle School section looks like this:

Choose the topic that seems most likely to contain answers to questions like yours. (Again, don't worry about choosing the wrong one.)

Look for a question similar to yours

Under each topic you'll find a listing of questions related to the topic. The listing for the Square Roots topic looks like this:

The answers at the top of each listing (marked with 's) have been identified as particularly good places to start learning about the corresponding topic.

In some cases, a listing will require more than one page. When that happens, you can use the hyperlinked page numbers at the bottom of the page to move between pages.

Try a keyword search

If you can think of keywords or phrases that describe the type of problem you're trying to solve (e.g., circumscribe triangle or prove trig identity), or some distinctive aspect of the problem (e.g., lockers or box whisker or train fly), you can try to zero in on similar questions by entering those keywords or phrases in the search box at the bottom of a listing. It looks like this:

The more specific your keywords, the more specific the search results will be. Searches on very general keywords like 'add fractions' may return hundreds of hits.

Try other topics and levels

What if you've selected the wrong topic? Don't worry! On the left-hand side of each page, you'll find a listing of all the topics for the level you've selected. It looks like this:

Click on any one of them to go to the first page of the listing for that topic.

And what if you've selected the wrong level? Don't worry! At the top of each page, you'll find links to the other levels, along with links to the Dr. Math home page and the Dr. Math FAQ:

Try other resources

What if you just can't seem to find what you're looking for in the archives? Well, in the upper-left part of each page you'll find links to related resources,

including relevant sections of the Dr. Math FAQ and the Math Forum Internet Resource Library, a collection of the best math sites from around the Web.