Loves Physics, Trouble with Math

[MC70]

Yeah, I'm one of those guys. I've learned over the years that I have a natural intuition for physics. I work with engineers daily and was able to convey a particularly complex issue to another person in a way that finally made sense to them. I can look at how things are working, or materials in use and have a pretty good idea of how and why they act on each other the way they do, or what the outcome of that interaction will be. With that said, I'm sometimes surprised and I enjoy going back and trying to figure out where the gaps in my understanding are; sometimes (often) they are embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.

My math skills are weaker than I'd care for; I suspect much of this is due to the way math is taught. I'm a macro to nano learner; show me the global picture first and then drill down to specific operations. I have never liked 'just do it this way because'; if there's no tangible application or affect it is difficult for me to cement the concept. My most vexing question in math classes was 'why'. If I could keep from asking that question I invariably did better on tests, but until a higher math class came along I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing. It was troubling. I deeply envied the folks who could just blindly memorize without the need to contextualize, though I tended to pity them when they were unable to apply their memorized formulas into an actual application or an abstract thought.

So, here I am. A guy who's too old to be changing careers (probably) and finally reaching out to learn more about what is probably my favorite subject. I hope everyone will bear with me.

 

[berkeman]

Welcome to the PF. It sounds like you will find lots of great information here in your quest!

 

[Ivanovich62]

Yeah, I'm one of those guys. I've learned over the years that I have a natural intuition for physics. I work with engineers daily and was able to convey a particularly complex issue to another person in a way that finally made sense to them. I can look at how things are working, or materials in use and have a pretty good idea of how and why they act on each other the way they do, or what the outcome of that interaction will be. With that said, I'm sometimes surprised and I enjoy going back and trying to figure out where the gaps in my understanding are; sometimes (often) they are embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.

My math skills are weaker than I'd care for; I suspect much of this is due to the way math is taught. I'm a macro to nano learner; show me the global picture first and then drill down to specific operations. I have never liked 'just do it this way because'; if there's no tangible application or affect it is difficult for me to cement the concept. My most vexing question in math classes was 'why'. If I could keep from asking that question I invariably did better on tests, but until a higher math class came along I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing. It was troubling. I deeply envied the folks who could just blindly memorize without the need to contextualize, though I tended to pity them when they were unable to apply their memorized formulas into an actual application or an abstract thought.

So, here I am. A guy who's too old to be changing careers (probably) and finally reaching out to learn more about what is probably my favorite subject. I hope everyone will bear with me.

I graduated maths/comp in '92, but always loved astronomy. Started my physics/astronomy degree course last year (which is why I'm here). I will be over 60 when I graduate. One guy there was 74. Never to old to learn. But anyway, maths - not sure you can start with the global picture; not sure there even is a global picture? Start with the basic building blocks and see where that goes. You don't need to blindly remember everything (in fact that's a very bad idea), you can derive it all, if you need to. Memory is just a lot quicker.

 

[Anthill]

I graduated maths/comp in '92, but always loved astronomy. Started my physics/astronomy degree course last year (which is why I'm here). I will be over 60 when I graduate. One guy there was 74. Never to old to learn. But anyway, maths - not sure you can start with the global picture; not sure there even is a global picture? Start with the basic building blocks and see where that goes. You don't need to blindly remember everything (in fact that's a very bad idea), you can derive it all, if you need to. Memory is just a lot quicker.

Here, I disagree with you. I'm a second year physics student, and I find myself in the exact same situation as the OP. I naturally understand physics concepts, but math (and the way it was taught to me) holds me back.

In my first year we had some advanced math courses and nothing of it made sense to me until we learned how it explains the physics that surrounds us. For example, in high school we learned integrals and derivatives, and no one, not even in college, put this into perspective (that they came from the need to explain the rare of change of things, such as speed and acceleration).

Another example were spherical harmonics, Lagrange, Laguerre and Hermite Polynomials. I was only taught how to work with them, how to compute them, but no one told me the physical "application" of these. How they describe physical systems around us.

To sum up, I think that the way math is taught to us doesn't put anything into perspective and makes it hard for students to really understand what's going on. Moreover, for me, it'd be a lot easier to learn these concepts if I knew why I was learning them.

 

[FactChecker]

If you come to the math from a physics application, then the top-down "why" is already there. Newton derived calculus for a reason. Fourier used Fourier series for a reason. It seems to me that you would have an advantage over a student who doesn't know any applications. There is a lot of mathematics that is more abstract and the motivation may be harder to discover, but they are advanced subjects that you may never need to learn even if you specialize in mathematics.
In the age of the internet, there should be little difficulty in finding some applications for virtually any math subject. Your problem may be that there are too many different applications.