The Little Green Math Book, together with The Little Red Writing Book, The Little Gold Grammar Book, and The Little Blue Reasoning Book, form a four-part series. Educators and employers frequently complain that students or employees are weak in the "basics." Unfortunately there has existed neither a definable, concrete list as to what constitutes the basics nor an efficient method to acquire such skills. These guidebooks address this deficiency. They provide an answer to two key questions: (1) What are the "basics"? and (2) How might a person review them? These books will enable students or young professionals to quickly review concepts such as parallelism in writing, present perfect tense versus past perfect tense in grammar, cause-and-effect assumptions in reasoning, or weighted averaging in math.

Within the context of primary or elementary school education, the term "3Rs" is commonly used to denote the basic skill categories of Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. In the realm of secondary and post-secondary education, the term 3Rs effectively becomes 4Rs – Reading, Reasoning, wRiting, and aRithmetic (Math).

As it is ostensibly impossible to write a book that teaches someone to read, the journey starts with reasoning skills. With the possible exception of our ability to read, no other single skill is arguably more important than our ability to reason. Reasoning skills help us make sense of the world. Such skills allow us to make decisions, tackle opportunities, evaluate claims, and solve problems.

The primary target audience for this book is the everyday student: high school, community college, or university. A secondary audience includes laypersons and working professionals. A tertiary audience is the test preparation market and, in particular, those taking standardized exams such as the SAT, ACT, GMAT, GRE, and LSAT.