Sdrawkcab scitamehtam: The case for understanding mathematics backwards

Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the need for graduates with quantitative problem-solving skills, many students enter university having relied heavily on pattern recognition techniques for high school mathematics. While these can often lead students to obtaining correct solutions for problems similar to those which they have practised, they do not lead to a deeper understanding of the material and, critically, may not develop more widely-applicable skills. Even when correct solutions are obtained, students can sometimes not understand or explain why their solution is indeed correct. Here, I present an argument in favour of avoiding predictability in question structures and, in particular, asking questions ``backwards'' to how they might traditionally be asked. 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