What menial mental task do you struggle with?

[dkotschessaa]

I can not do counting problems involving combinations & permutations etc without writing a lot down. I kid in my high school class failed at pretty much everything but when we did probability he would just yell out the correct answer as soon as the teacher finished saying it. the higher achieving students were frustrated because 10 minutes later after a lot of working out we would verify this kid was correct.

don't know what it was but he just had an instant mental picture of counting re probability.

still now 30 years later I have to write every probability problem out explicitly and do every step. I actually still don't get it even when I get the right answers.

there are a lot of hard topics I know that are actually tough, probability is supposed to be a general topic every high school student can do without much drama, it is not even considered an advanced topic - it is beyond my comprehension - Bayes theorem, the null hypothesis, the old problem where the probability changes as the contestants see what is behind the door...all voodoo magic to me.

Don't worry.. For some reason I do better with graduate level combinatorics than the undergraduate/high school/basic counting stuff. There are so many beautiful theorems and proofs in combinatorics - for me it's easier to deal with. But don't ask me how many ways I can pull something out of a deck of cards!

-Dave K

 

[houlahound]

I might start a thread on probability so I do not derail this one and see if anyone here can help me get Bayes theorem, the null hypothesis and how the probability changes in that common school math comp question where the information behind the door changes in a fake game show.

I am not interested in calculating any right answer, I just want to be less dumb about chance math.

 

[Clairevonne]

Taking two different music classes, on both wind and string instruments I easily get the line notes mixed up- e,g,b,d, f- when I play. I can see just fine and I know how to read music, but when I sightread or even play a familiar piece I mix up those notes quite easily.

In math, it's positive vs negative signs, all the time. (and the simple 7+5= 12 vs 8+5=13)