Featured Video: Operator Math

In a lot of ways, the ability to do math is like the ability to use a muscle. You always have muscles, of course, but whether you're able to use a particular muscle or muscle group depends on how developed it is. In other words, it depends on how often you use those muscles, whether you're lifting weights regularly or just hauling around a heavy toolbox on a daily basis. Math is the same way. Sure, on any good day you can probably handle 2 + 2. But for more complicated problems, regular practice and a thorough understanding of the principles can help those equations go from a headache to a breeze. Since water and wastewater operators often find themselves calculating things like chemical doses, the volume of complicated objects, and rate of flow, keeping in good mathematic shape can go a long way to making your life easier. And of course, being in practice doesn't do any harm when it's time to sit for your exams either!

There are a lot of ways to brush up on your math skills, and sometimes it helps to try a couple until you find what works best for you. Our document database has collected math help in a wide variety of formats under the Certification/Exam Prep category. Use "math" (without the quote marks) in the keyword filter box to narrow it down to just math help. But if you're someone who needs to see someone else work the problem in order to get what's going on, this week's videos might be a particularly good fit.

Indigo Water Group, a water and wastewater operator trainer in Colorado, has created a playlist of videos in which their owner works common water and wastewater math problems. Most of these videos are short and broken down by kind of problem. The exception is an hour long video devoted to wastewater math. At the time of this writing, the other videos in the playlist covered unit conversions, geometry, dosing, reducing MLSS concentrations, velocity and HRT, and digester problems. But more topics have been slowly added over time, so there may be more in the future. The video below links the entire playlist, which starts with three short unit conversion videos.

The YouTube channel CAwastewater takes a slightly different approach. Instead of breaking the videos down by topic, the channel owner (who is an operator himself) breaks down the videos by the state exam level where the problems are most likely to appear. He has playlists for the California exam levels 1, 2, and 3, and one playlist that combines the math for 4 and 5. Though these videos are aimed at California wastewater operators, both water and wastewater operators from across the country will likely get something out of them. The individual videos are about 5-10 minutes long, and the playlists are about a half hour to an hour. Choose the playlist that looks most interesting to you.

Hopefully, these operator math videos will help you round out your mathematical fitness routine, leaving you well prepared for operations challenges and certification exams alike. And if there's a great free math resource that we didn't mention here that you want to be sure we know about, let us know in the comments!