- #1
AnTiFreeze3
- 246
- 9
Forgive me if this is the wrong place to be posting this, but as far as I can tell, this is the most appropriate place to post my question that I can find.
My main question is obviously the title of this thread, but I figured that it would be best for me to give you some background information about my own mathematic abilities in order to make it easier for a response:
I'm currently a sophomore in higschool, and am one year ahead in math, take all Honors and AP classes, but in math, I always seem to struggle to get Bs. It's discouraging to see other people in my class, some of them even a year younger than me, who seem to grasp the concepts with ease, while I'm going home and spending hours going through problems just trying to make sure I know everything.
Now, unfortunately, I fear that my intelligence and my ability to do well in school revolves around my memory and my ability to write well. I would easily give up those skills to obtain a more analytical mind so that I could potentially pursue a career in Physics, and not be way in over my head.
So, my main question is this: Are there any definitive ways for somebody to improve at math? I've heard that a lot of it is the ability to get the main ideas of it down, and to then learn how to apply those concepts to more complicated ideas. Would it be best for me to almost re-learn the basics of each course that I've taken so far?
Also, in a related note, is it worth pursuing a career in Physics if it interests me, when I am stronger in other subjects? I try to think of myself as a humble person, but just this year, my English teacher was bombarding me with praise. I got 100% on virtually all of my essays, and in one assignment that I wrote (a prequel to the Scarlet Letter) she told the class (apparently when I was gone that day) that she couldn't have written it better herself. I wrote it in one hour at 2 in the morning..
I'm sort of in a dilemma right now where Physics is my passion, it's what interests me, but my mind appears to work better for other things.
I'm taking AP Physics next year, so as far as I can tell, that will be the best guideline to tell me whether or not I'll be able to just work towards learning and understanding Physics. I'm fully aware that being a phsyicist obviously isn't something for everyone (there's some statistic where the average IQ of a physicist is 148, or something around that), but I want to know if math is something that a person could substantially improve on through hard work, and if so, what the best ways to achieve that goal are.
Thanks for reading.
My main question is obviously the title of this thread, but I figured that it would be best for me to give you some background information about my own mathematic abilities in order to make it easier for a response:
I'm currently a sophomore in higschool, and am one year ahead in math, take all Honors and AP classes, but in math, I always seem to struggle to get Bs. It's discouraging to see other people in my class, some of them even a year younger than me, who seem to grasp the concepts with ease, while I'm going home and spending hours going through problems just trying to make sure I know everything.
Now, unfortunately, I fear that my intelligence and my ability to do well in school revolves around my memory and my ability to write well. I would easily give up those skills to obtain a more analytical mind so that I could potentially pursue a career in Physics, and not be way in over my head.
So, my main question is this: Are there any definitive ways for somebody to improve at math? I've heard that a lot of it is the ability to get the main ideas of it down, and to then learn how to apply those concepts to more complicated ideas. Would it be best for me to almost re-learn the basics of each course that I've taken so far?
Also, in a related note, is it worth pursuing a career in Physics if it interests me, when I am stronger in other subjects? I try to think of myself as a humble person, but just this year, my English teacher was bombarding me with praise. I got 100% on virtually all of my essays, and in one assignment that I wrote (a prequel to the Scarlet Letter) she told the class (apparently when I was gone that day) that she couldn't have written it better herself. I wrote it in one hour at 2 in the morning..
I'm sort of in a dilemma right now where Physics is my passion, it's what interests me, but my mind appears to work better for other things.
I'm taking AP Physics next year, so as far as I can tell, that will be the best guideline to tell me whether or not I'll be able to just work towards learning and understanding Physics. I'm fully aware that being a phsyicist obviously isn't something for everyone (there's some statistic where the average IQ of a physicist is 148, or something around that), but I want to know if math is something that a person could substantially improve on through hard work, and if so, what the best ways to achieve that goal are.
Thanks for reading.