What specifically do you not like about it. And I don’t just mean “it’s too hard”, what specifically is hard?
I feel like most people would like mathematics, but the education system failed them, teaching in a way that’s not enjoyable.
You must log in or register to comment.
It’s really hard to understand some of it. It might’ve been fun if I had good math instructors for every class at every step of the way from algebra to ordinary differentials. Because so much material builds on what was taught before, it gradually got more and more incomprehensible until I gave up trying to understand it halfway through cal 2 and just memorized the important parts enough to pass. Besides that, I rarely see applications in day to day life past basic algebra. It’s not like I’m gonna take careful measurements of how fast my car’s going to derive my exact fuel consumption rate. It’s easier to just go off the odometer and gas pump readings between fills for instance.
Most people don’t just like to sit there and solve puzzles. Math is systems of interleaved puzzles that grow in complexity.
If you enjoy that, you like (pure) math. Most people don’t - I don’t think “most” would if the education system didn’t fail them, the same way that most people don’t like sudoku puzzles.
Personally I don’t like pure math, I like applied math. Physics. I like seeing the numbers that represent the forces I can see in the real world. I sort of enjoy geometry for the same reason, but less so. I enjoy stats and probability theory to a degree.
But yeah, most people don’t enjoy just sitting there and doing puzzles. There’s probably a good number of people who would enjoy math if they had a different educational experience, but a ton of people just don’t like doing math.
Someone who used to dislike it in school and university here.
Having to cram a lot of information and formulas, and then reproduce it without error for an exam. None of it made sense, and I wasn’t even aware it was possible for it to make sense.
Only after many years did I understand it’s all connected, there’s a logic to it. It’s possible to understand rather than just blindly learn.
Btw the notation really doesn’t help.
I think this is true for lots of people. I also think there’s a bunch of us that have never had that feeling of it being a memorisation task.
In fact, the reason I liked maths and science was because it wasn’t memorisation. Unlike languages (for example) you could always work out the bit you forgot, and didn’t need to depend on some made-up aide-memoire that only applied 75% of the time and remember what 25% it didn’t apply to.
All I can think is that some early teacher failed you, and didn’t lay out how the foundations worked.
if the foundations of mathematics are dependent on a single early teacher… that’s a serious dependency for mathematics then.
The foundations of everything are dependent on those early teachers.
This is true in all cases. The proof is left as an exercise for the student.
I think the issue is that mathematical logical thinking is what needs to be taught, like that everything can be described as equations.
The teachers put too much emphasis on formulas and notation and equations and so we are led to believe that math is only about rote memory of math grammar and so it never makes sense.
What did you find problematic/hindering with the current notation?
I’ll offer a different perspective. I’m actually really good at math, and I hated it in school because I didn’t want to do dozens of homework problems because I already knew how to do it and it was pointless work.
And I didn’t, which led to me having to take my tests sitting next to the teacher because she wouldn’t believe I could make > 90% on the tests without doing any practice problems.
Classic elementary/high school scenario: “This kid is ahead of the curve… a little too far ahead if you ask me. I’d better accuse them of cheating, given that the rest of the class sucks ass at long division/algebra/calculus…”
It was a tiny rural school and I was a kid from a major metropolitan area who was in honors classes before relocating to a school that had none.
In her defense, like 99% of students at the school not doing homework and acing the tests would have been cheating.
nah they just make you tutor the stupid kids. at least mine always did.
I feel seen, had forgotten all about that.
I was never made to “tutor” but my assigned groups for projects were conspicuously full of problem children I was expected to balance.
thats why theres always an ongoing debate on grading homework. what matters more are the exam grades to show if a given person understands a concept, but it runs the riak of more people failing out without the weight of graded homework easing up scores.
back in middleschool, i was basically told i would instantly fail a geometry class if i didnt start doing homework, despite aceing exams. The goal of homework is to teach students more about meeting deadlines, and that message often gets lost in education.
The main purpose of homework, at least in the stem classes, is to reinforce the subject. Some kids absolutely need that reinforcement and to have the teacher correct their work to help them understand the concepts.
A big part of the increasing workload to play ratio in elementary school is for learning to do some hard work. If you coast and/or give up easily, there will be a tall wall waiting for you at university level if not earlier. It won’t be hard to scale if you’ve learned to put in the effort, but it will be too late to start practicing that then.
Same goes for figuring out how to make your brain retain information (association building). At some point rote memorization isn’t going to cut it anymore.
These things need to be built up along with the basic knowledge. And yes, schools and teachers all around the world are often failing the students in that. There’s no simple blame or simple cure. Education is a huge task.
I had to take algebra 1 twice in highschool. The fist time I took a college level course, and failed, but passed my second year in the gen course. I then failed algebra 2 miserably, though I will say that year was wild for me, and I didn’t really have fucks for math class. I half assed it and was not surprised I failed. You can’t half ass math class.
For me, was that if I missed one lesson, it began this giant snowball effect where I couldn’t catch up, so in case of my first year algebra, I gave up and failed. It’s the only class I ever failed.
The class moved really fast, and I have adhd (unknown to me then). I could thrive in English, History ect because the lessons are structured differently. Math, you dont viciously pay attention, or need more time, I couldn’t keep up with its pacing in highschool. Once imaginary numbers were introduced, I just, yeah.
Exactly me. I aced every English history science class and failed math miserably. Also adhd but not that bad.
Luckily computers can do it now so we dont need those skills as much but I still wish I had them.
Some people don’t jibe with certain ways of thinking. End of.
I have excellent long-term memory but have always struggled with keeping strings of numbers in my short-term memory. You can imagine the struggle when trying to solve a function is like trying to make a bed with a slightly too small fitted sheet
Shit teacher. I had a good teacher one year and it turned out I wasn’t actually bad at maths.
I enjoy the concepts and structures of mathematics. Fractal geometry, holomorphic dynamics, computational theory, uncertainty principles and all that are fascinating as hell. Discrete systems dancing with continuous integrals at process limits.
I DO NOT ENJOY working with math. Specifically I cant read complex equations. I don’t have an attention disorder but I swear the moment I try reading anything that looks like this I get overloaded and nope out. If it aint highschool algebra with PEMDAS I cant do it. If you put a bullet to my head and pinned my survival on properly solving a quadratic equation I’d just tell you to shoot me.
The concepts are cool once you can get past the notation to understand the ontology of whats trying to be conveyed. The actual expanded out notations and trying to do work with them is a fuckin nightmare.
Also since im ranting can I just say, across STEM the biggest problem is the naming convention. Math and science would be at least 60% more accessable if we went back and renamed all theorems, hypothesis, proofs, to be what they are about instead of just shouting out the guy who discovered it. “eulers identity” doesnt mean a fucking thing. Neither does scrodingers equations or the riemann hypothesis or turing machines. THESE ARE NOT ACCESSABLE NAMES THEY CONVEY NOTHING INTRINSICALLY BESIDES SOME DEAD GUYS LAST NAME. GET SOME PROGRAMMERS WHO KNOW HOW TO ACTUALLY DECLARE HUMAN READABLE STRINGS FOR YOUR FUCKING ABSTRACTION OBJECTS.
This is basically how I feel. I love physics…concepts. Relativity is really cool. Optics is really cool. Magnetism is really cool.
Sitting down to calculate the force a charged particle feels in an electric field if fired at a certain velocity? That sucks. It’s so easy to make a mistake and a chore to do.
Also, to your point about naming conventions, it’s an unfortunate side effect of always building on top of existing work. Why is integral symbol the way it is? Isaac Newton wrote an S next to his calculations (I think for “sum”, but I could be wrong). A lot of math is really old. What was a good way of keeping track of math concepts 300 years ago? Idk, but that Riemann guy came up with a way to add an infinite amount of numbers.
Sure we could rename everything, but then all the textbooks written beforehand would be really confusing.
Your rant reminded me of this https://youtube.com/shorts/S65gPwY0i-g about more problems in putting people’s names to theorems
It’s hard for me to remember all of the different formulas and remembering when to use what.
Maybe we should have open book exams for maths…
Its so easy:
b square plus and minus the the square root of negative b minus 2ac all over 2a???
Edit: fuck, i forgor💀
Swap neg b with b square and you got it. I have recently used the quadratic equation for what I hope is the last time ever.
Edit: Oh, and I think it’s 4ac.
Abstract thinking, difficulty seeing the point of doing maths when no teacher explains how it’s actually useful. Essentially a teacher failure, as far as I’m concerned. Today I love maths, at least the little I know, but it took a long time getting over the trauma. Fuck you, inept teachers.
I dont understand it. Most I can do is multiply. Can’t do long division on paper.
Never got it in school, failed algebra 101 3 times. Only passed by hours of tutoring every day.
I enjoy applied math if its something like calculating tolerances while building an engine, but I cant figure out an algebra equation or do large multiplication stuff at all.
I dont know what multiplication tables are either. I just know how to count up so if I need 8x3 I count 8,16, ah, 24!
Also diagnosed adhd and likely autism doesn’t help.
I wish I liked math, because I love computers and mechanical engineering etc but its always held me back. Luckily my job now requires applied thinking not really math so I get to mostly do interesting stuff without complex math.
I have a learning disability which affects my ability to understand math (discalculia). Its really hard to explain how it feels, but any time I do simple math in my head I can’t keep track of the numbers and they are start to blink in and out. Its like having short term memory loss for the duration of the equation? Not sure if that makes sense. I can absolutely do the math, but its an uphill battle and I end up having a lot of anxiety because I think people will judge me for how long it takes. I have a lot of trouble with addition, subtraction and multiplication so, really, the very basics.
I think if I didn’t have this condition I would probably really enjoy math. I didn’t know about this when I was in high school so I don’t know if they could have even helped me. I also had a math teacher for a couple of years who would literally throw a chair at the wall if you did something wrong or he thought you were playing stupid. So that certainly did not help the situation.
The numbers start blinking in and out, yes! This is why I have to write out the numbers on the most simple stuff, and write a d rewrite complex problems to keep track of how the numbers change and which ones go where.
I like math just fine up until trigonometry and at that point my brain just can’t hold onto it. Failed college calculus three times. There’s something about the formulas and rules and applications that isn’t intuitive for me at that level. I’m much better at the Earth Sciences and had no problems with chemistry.
“Liking” math isn’t really accurate either. I don’t care about math, I care about things that require math. Geometry and algebra are useful in a ton of other disciplines and activities. Playing with numbers doesn’t make me feel smart or accomplished the way a puzzle does.
the education system failed them, teaching in a way that’s not enjoyable.
Yeah, pretty much. I had to learn a ton of math, where I never got explained what it could be used for. And when it can be applied in an obvious way, namely physics, most of the complexity lays in memorizing a ton of one-letter-abbreviations and formulas, which feels pointless, too.
I’m a programmer now. That was always easy to me, because the best way to learn that is by gradually solving harder puzzles. You don’t just sit in a classroom and get told all the solutions to all the puzzles…
