At what age can you tell if you're good at math?

[MECHster]

I don't know if hard work is the only requirement. I work as a tutor at my university and mainly handle pre-algebra to calculus I topics. I see many people who are in there every single day working through their College Algebra homework. They are in there, face in the book, asking good questions, having problems, figuring them out, for sometimes 8 hours a day, and they seem thankful when they get a test back that is in the 70's. I absolutely never put that much time into College Algebra of all things, and I would die if I ever got a 70. These are perfectly smart people in many other aspects of life/academics, mathematics is just not one of them.

That's not to say that anyone couldn't accomplish any degree of mathematical proficiency they desired, but it would certainly take some people much more time and involvement to accomplish the same level of understanding, and I think that eventually a point would come when time no longer permits that much "grit".

I'm really just throwing this out there but maybe it's because their foundations are so poor that it's very hard to learn the next step without mastering the last. I for one have never found a math course that difficult because I understood the prerequisite course so well that it's just a tiny step more of basically the same thing.

I've also noticed this of sports. People who didn't play sports as a kid but tried to learn it later never really became any good, probably because their foundation as a kid was never built. However, YMMV.

 

[Sankaku]

Man, this post is just one straw man argument after another.

You obviously don't understand the use of irony or reductio ad absurdum. You must not be talented enough to be using the English language...

 

[Functor97]

Guys, seriously. Stop talking about gifts, talents and skills, and instead go and do some math. This discussion really isn't going to change anything, even if it were true.

 

[mathsciguy]

I don't know if hard work is the only requirement. I work as a tutor at my university and mainly handle pre-algebra to calculus I topics. I see many people who are in there every single day working through their College Algebra homework. They are in there, face in the book, asking good questions, having problems, figuring them out, for sometimes 8 hours a day, and they seem thankful when they get a test back that is in the 70's. I absolutely never put that much time into College Algebra of all things, and I would die if I ever got a 70. These are perfectly smart people in many other aspects of life/academics, mathematics is just not one of them.

That's not to say that anyone couldn't accomplish any degree of mathematical proficiency they desired, but it would certainly take some people much more time and involvement to accomplish the same level of understanding, and I think that eventually a point would come when time no longer permits that much "grit".

I don't know how would people who study mathematics for 8 hours still fail at it. Maybe they study it like how some people study biology which is by rote (and I don't think this is the proper way of studying biology either), though in biology exams this way of 'cramming' does give favorable result at times. Mathematics as I see it is something really different from that, it requires more familiarity and critical thinking.

 

[radium]

Benjamin Franklin said "Genius without education is like silver in the mine." I personally think this is true, if one is gifted it takes hard work and dedication to truly be extraordinary. You still need to have the gift at some level, but you must nurture it to get it to grow into something more.