The EduDish blog
Notes from the study desk
Guides to the ideas underneath the tools: how grades are really calculated, how citations are built, how memory and time actually behave during revision. Written to be used alongside the tools, each ending where the relevant tool begins.
How GPA Is Calculated: Credits, Points and the Weighted Mean
Ask a room of students how a GPA is calculated and most will say 'you average your grades'. That answer is close enough to feel tr…
Grades & GPARaising a GPA Honestly: The Arithmetic of a Realistic Comeback
Every GPA comeback story begins with a number somebody finds disappointing, and most comeback plans die in the same place: they ar…
Grades & GPAWeighted vs Unweighted GPA: What the Difference Actually Means
Two applicants sit side by side with GPAs of 3.8 and 4.4, and the second number is not a misprint. It belongs to a weighted scale,…
Grades & GPAFinal Exam Maths: How One Paper Moves a Whole Course Grade
The final exam has a mythology out of proportion to its weight. Students speak of it as if the entire course will be re-judged in …
ConvertersPercentage to GPA: Reading Conversion Tables Without Being Fooled
Somewhere between a school that reports 87% and a university that demands a GPA, a conversion table does its quiet work — and that…
ConvertersLetter Grades Explained: Bands, Points and the Plus/Minus Question
The letter grade is a compression algorithm from the age of paper: squeeze a term's worth of percentages into one symbol a transcr…
Writing & EssaysAPA vs MLA: How to Tell the Styles Apart and Choose Correctly
Every student has lost a mark to a reference list formatted in the wrong style, and it is always an annoying mark to lose, because…
Writing & EssaysBuilding a Reference List That Loses No Marks
Markers rarely say this aloud, but the reference list is the most efficiently marked page of any essay. The argument takes judgeme…
Writing & EssaysWriting to a Word Limit: Planning an Essay That Lands on Length
Every essay brief contains a number that quietly governs the writing: 1,500 words, 2,000 words, no more than 500. Students treat t…
Writing & EssaysOutlining an Essay So It Practically Writes Itself
Some essays feel like pushing a piano upstairs and others feel like reading out a map. The difference is rarely talent; it is whet…
Focus & TimeThe Pomodoro Technique for Studying: Focus Sprints That Actually Work
The hardest part of studying is rarely the material. It is the starting, the continuing, and the knowing when to stop — three deci…
Focus & TimeFlashcards That Actually Work: Retrieval, Spacing and Honest Decks
Flashcards are the most used and most wasted study tool in the building. A deck can be a precision instrument for memory — or a wa…
Focus & TimeSpaced Repetition Explained: Why Reviewing on a Schedule Beats Cramming
There is a graph every student should see once: a forgetting curve, dropping steeply in the first day after learning something, th…
Writing & EssaysAcademic Integrity in the Age of Generators: What Help Is Allowed
Every generation of students inherits a new tool and an old question. Photocopiers, calculators, the internet, and now generators …
Focus & TimeTyping Faster for Exams: Speed, Accuracy and the 5-Character Word
Timed examinations have quietly changed their subject. Alongside history or biology, a typed exam also tests typing — the student …
Writing & EssaysReading Speed vs Comprehension: Finding Your Real Study Pace
Every student has two reading speeds and only ever measures one of them. There is the speed of the eyes across the page — the numb…
Focus & TimeThe Last Six Weeks: Managing Study Time Before Exams
Six weeks before exams, time feels abundant and slightly unreal. Two weeks before, it feels neither. The students who navigate thi…
Focus & TimeCounting School Days: Term Dates, Attendance and Honest Planning
Ask a parent in September how many school days remain until the winter break and you will get a shrug; ask a school administrator …
Maths HelpersFractions, Decimals and Percentages: One Amount in Three Costumes
A price falls by a quarter, a recipe needs 0.75 of a cup, a test score comes back as 75% — and a surprising number of adults freez…
Maths HelpersAdding vs Multiplying Fractions: Why the Rules Differ
Nothing in school maths generates more resigned sighs than the two fraction rules that refuse to match. Adding needs a common deno…
Maths HelpersQuadratic Equations Step by Step: Formula, Discriminant and Vertex
A quadratic equation is a small machine with three outputs, and most students are only taught to want one of them. They grind thro…
Maths HelpersMean, Median, Mode and Standard Deviation: Choosing the Right Summary
A page of numbers is not information. Thirty test scores, two hundred reaction times, a season of rainfall — each is raw until it …
ConvertersScientific Notation Made Simple: Big Numbers, Small Numbers, One System
The observable universe holds roughly 10⁸⁰ atoms. A hydrogen atom weighs about 1.67 × 10⁻²⁷ kilograms. Written out in full, those …
ConvertersRoman Numerals Decoded: The Subtractive Rules Behind IV and IX
Every student meets the same moment of suspicion: IV is 4, but IIII is also four lines — so why does the clock say IIII and the te…
Focus & TimeGroup Study That Works: Sessions With a Structure, Not Just Snacks
Group study has two reputations and both are earned. Done badly, it is three students watching the most confident one be wrong at …
Maths HelpersPercentages in Real Life: Discounts, Interest, Marks and Misleading Headlines
School teaches percentages as a topic with three question shapes, and then life spends decades asking those same three questions i…
Writing & EssaysWriting a Conclusion That Lands (Instead of Fading Out)
Read a stack of student essays and a pattern emerges by the fifth one: introductions that try hard, bodies that work hard, and con…
Writing & EssaysHow Long Is My Talk? Timing Scripts, Speeches and Presentations
Every presenter has lived the same small disaster: the talk rehearsed as 'about ten minutes' that reaches its halfway slide as the…
Maths HelpersChecking Your Own Working: Catching Maths Errors Before the Marker Does
Markers see a particular tragedy every exam season: solutions that are one sign-slip away from full marks, wrong in a way the stud…
Grades & GPAAudit Your Grades Before the Report Card: A Student's Checklist
A report card should never contain a surprise. Every figure on it was assembled from marks you received during the term — in grade…