View Poll Results: Where did you get your appreciation for math? Home 9 32.14% School 19 67.86% Voters: 28. You may not vote on this poll

Where did you get your appreciation of/respect for, math?

Home - the only maths I've learned in a school was at highschool, so you can probably see why I wouldn't gain any great appreciation there. Everything else I know and love about maths I learned in my own time from textbooks at home.

 Quote by lisab Hmm...actually, that's a pretty good analogy!
Thanks!
 Quote by genericusrnme Home - the only maths I've learned in a school was at highschool, so you can probably see why I wouldn't gain any great appreciation there. Everything else I know and love about maths I learned in my own time from textbooks at home.
I'm getting the impression a lot of people would have liked a third option, which is that they developed their appreciation for math all on their own, that it arose independently of their exposure to it at home or in school.
 Recognitions: Gold Member I've never appreciated it, it's the stick between me and the carrot.
 Mentor Blog Entries: 9 Through grade school and most of Jr. High school I was a solid D student in "math" classes (actually arithmetic classes!). I believe it was going into the 9th grade that my mother literally drug me into the principals office and pounded on his desk insisting that I be put into Algebra. I was in tears with embarrassment and not a little fear. However, once the class started I discovered I had a knack for math. I still suck at arithmetic, but have a BS in math and completed course work for a MS in applied math.
 Recognitions: Gold Member Science Advisor Staff Emeritus I had to think long and hard (about my science interest), it wasn't my parents nor school. Then last night it came to me: Discovery channel. In the 90s the had some really good science shows that inspired me. Now they're mainly airing a lot of burly crab fishing/ gold mining/ rattlesnake catching shows, who knows what I would've become when I'd grown up now

 Quote by Integral Through grade school and most of Jr. High school I was a solid D student in "math" classes (actually arithmetic classes!). I believe it was going into the 9th grade that my mother literally drug me into the principals office and pounded on his desk insisting that I be put into Algebra. I was in tears with embarrassment and not a little fear. However, once the class started I discovered I had a knack for math. I still suck at arithmetic, but have a BS in math and completed course work for a MS in applied math.
I remember a similar existence in primary school, it was when we started with doing two digit by two digit multiplication... I also remember being in tears after the teacher pretty much made a spectacle of me in front of the whole class for not being able to do it very well.
I've not completed any degree so far but I did go on to win joint best in my highschool and a gold in some national maths competition.
 Recognitions: Homework Help I would say "neither" - and by that, I mean that it seems my love of math was largely self-generated. I've always been entranced by the precision, symmetry and beauty of it all. However, the home environment helped to cement my love of the subject. I was certainly encouraged/enabled by my parents, who would get me any math book I wanted. This is why I was able to master basic differential and integral calculus by the age of 12 with self-study, about 4 years before it was taught at school. Certain experiences helped to cement my love of math. When I was about 9, I had self-taught myself basic algebra (it wouldn't be covered in school for another 3 years). I had no clue about the theory of quadratic equations at this point, yet for some silly reason, fixated upon this equation (I still remember it!!): $x^3 = 5x - 5$, which I'd come up with off the top of my head. I didn't know it was called a cubic, and I had no clue how to solve it. But a visitor with a computing background and a slight knowledge of math told me what sort of equation it was. So I knew to search for "cubic equations". This was in the era before the Internet was a global resource, so I buckled down and looked through the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (which my father had previously purchased) and learnt about Niccolo Tartaglia, Girolamo Cardano, and the theory of solution of cubic and quartic equations. Of course, I quickly learnt to solve quadratics along the way, and I preferred to complete the square because it is assured to give an answer, and it seemed cooler than memorising a formula. Later on, I discovered that a good bit of the theory of cubics and quartics had already been elucidated by the ancient Indians, my ancestors. Another example of a significant formative experience is when my family was visited socially by a gentleman by the name of Gopal Prasad. Some of you may know him - he's a prominent mathematician working in abstract algebra at U. Michigan. I was about 13 at this time, I think. I had been playing around with an idealised "multiplying rabbits" problem (again, I'd just been thinking about this idly), and had come up with a simple geometric series (I didn't know that that was the right name!), then generalised it symbolically. However, I didn't have the insight to add it up to get an elegant expression, and had left it in sigma notation. Dr Prasad showed me how to write the progression twice aligned vertically, multiply the top by the common ratio, "frame shift" by one term, then subtract term-by term, and finally divide by (common ratio - 1) to get a neat expression for the sum (identical to the one school would teach me years later). I was thunderstruck when I saw what he'd done, and I immediately set about manipulating other series in similar ways, and that led me to a wondrous journey through Analysis. (I later found out from school that I'd somehow skipped over a more elementary series - the Arithmetic series and gone straight to the Geometric series, but such lack of systematicity is one of the perils of being an autodidact). In the same visit, Dr Prasad introduced me to his field of Group Theory, and tried to explain the basic concept to me (of a closed set of elements under an operator), but I found it all a little too abstract at the time. He gave me a "first print" of a paper of his, entitled "Volumes of S-arithmetic quotients of semi-simple groups". Of course, I found it impossible to understand, and I still can't follow it (despite having learned rudimentary abstract algebra along the way), but the paper still takes pride of place in my math papers and books collection (yes, I have one! ) Well, those are the seminal events that come to mind when I think about what influenced my love for the subject. I guess most of them happened at home, but it seems like the interest in math has always been intrinsic to my personality. It wasn't really due to any member of my immediate family - my dad (coincidentally, also named "Dr Prasad"! ) is a medical doctor, and although I consider him generally brilliant, he isn't that keen on advanced math. I do have him to thank for providing resources to me to enrich myself in my interests. He still felt that Medicine was the safer choice, which is why I ended up doing it for a career, but (as should be obvious), I still have a very keen interest in math, which I pursue as an amateur whenever I find the time. Apologies for the long post. I just felt I had to get this all out.

 Quote by zoobyshoe The average denizen of PF has an above average interest in math. It's my preconception that people don't well at math unless it's reinforced at home. I could be wrong, though. It could be that some people discover it in school and take off with it despite indifference to it at home. I've put two options. The first is that you got a good opinion of math at home, that your parents spoke of math as a good, important thing and encouraged you to do well in it. The second is that your family was indifferent or even hostile to it and you got your interest from exposure at school and good experiences in math classes. Math intrigued you despite your family members speaking of it as "boring," "tedious," or "bleh", and the bulk of your encouragement came from your teachers. Option one probably encompasses option two, but option two does not encompass option one. That's why I've limited it to two. Feel free to explain any third situation that applies to you.
Neither options apply to me.
My first kick to go and learn more advanced math was the realization that it can help me understand reality better; I started reading pop books in cosmology and physics, and thus the spark began.

In school you don't get to talk on cosmology or cool stuff in physics and math, and most of the tasks in HS or Primary school is mundane. In home neither of my parents have an education beyond HS nor an interest in physics or math.