Algebra Rules: Every Rule You Forgot, On One Page

Algebra Rules is a website that solves a problem almost everyone has and almost nobody admits to. You know how algebra works. You have used it. And then at some point you stare at a log identity or an exponent rule and realize you have no idea whether the thing you are about to write down is true.

This site is the answer to that, and it fits on one page.

What is Algebra Rules?

The pitch is in the subtitle: the most useful rules of basic algebra, collected in one place. Not a course. Not a tutorial series. A reference sheet, typeset properly, that you can scan in thirty seconds.

The rules are grouped the way you would actually look for them, exponents together, radicals together, logarithms together, fractions together, and each one is displayed large and clean with nothing competing for attention. There is no sidebar of related courses, no autoplay video, no email capture, no “sign up to continue reading.” Somebody decided the content was the product and then behaved accordingly, which in the modern educational web is close to radical.

Click any rule and you get its own page with worked examples showing the rule applied to real expressions. That second layer is what separates this from a printed formula sheet. The identity alone is often not enough, because the confusion is usually not “what is the rule” but “does it apply here, in this shape, with these signs.” Seeing three concrete instances resolves that faster than a paragraph of prose.

The scope is deliberately narrow. It stops well before calculus and does not attempt to cover everything a curriculum would. That restraint is the reason it works: a complete reference is a textbook and you will not read it, while a page of the forty-odd things you keep forgetting is something you will genuinely come back to.

It is also a nice piece of design in its own right. Large type, generous spacing, math set carefully rather than dumped in as low-resolution images. It reads like a well-made poster, which is roughly the use case.

What can you do with Algebra Rules?

• Look up a rule in seconds. Scan the page, find the shape you are staring at, confirm you are not about to do something illegal to an exponent.
• Check examples for each rule. Every rule has a page showing it applied to concrete expressions, which is where the ambiguity usually gets resolved.
• Self-test by covering half. Read the left side of each identity and try to write the right side before looking. It exposes the rules you only think you know.
• Print it or bookmark it. The single-page format survives being printed, which is unusual and genuinely useful for a desk or a study wall.
• Refresh before a course. If you are starting statistics, physics or anything with calculus in it, this is a fast way to find out which algebra you have quietly lost.
• Hand it to a student. No signup, no ads, nothing to explain. Just a link that shows the thing.

Tips to get the most out of it

Keep it open in a pinned tab during any math-adjacent work. The value is entirely in speed of lookup. A bookmark you have to go hunting for defeats the purpose.

Do not read it front to back. It is a reference, and reading a reference cover to cover produces a warm sense of familiarity and almost no retention. Use it when you have an actual problem in front of you.

Always click through to the examples. The identity in isolation is the part your brain will nod at and then misapply. The examples are where you find out whether you really had it.

Note which rules you keep returning to. The two or three you look up repeatedly are your genuine gaps. Those are worth ten minutes of deliberate practice rather than another lookup.

Use it alongside a solver, not instead of one. Something like Wolfram Alpha will tell you the answer; this tells you which manipulation was legal. You want both.

Steal the format. If you are building any kind of reference material, this page is a good argument that one screen of well-set information beats forty pages of prose.

If you like Algebra Rules, also try…

• BetterExplained: the intuition behind the rules, once you want to know why rather than what.
• Learn X in Y Minutes: the same compress-it-to-one-page instinct, applied to programming languages.
• Cheatography: thousands of community-made reference sheets for everything else.
• Wolfram Alpha: for when you need the answer worked out rather than the rule confirmed.

More things that make you smarter without asking for your email in Learning & Education and Tools & Utilities.