Why Do Some People Struggle with Math?

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One answer to the title topic is the time restrictions of the courses and the need to earn a grade.

 

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Hate Mathematics? Or just learn too slow?

 

[Kevin the Crackpot]

I hate to bring this up, but it may be relevant to your math issues.

How are your parents and family when it comes to homework and learning?

I have Asperger's Syndrome (a kind of high-functioning autism), and schoolwork was difficult because my family made it difficult.

There was a lot of fear attached to schoolwork because of the constant threat of punishment, screaming, yelling, and so on because I'm "worthless" and will "never amount to anything" and so on . . . which is how my learning disabilities were treated. My mother even used to tell me that she wouldn't love me anymore unless I did my times tables perfectly without any mistakes.

If your parents (with the best intentions in the world) do things like this to you and/or have expectations of perfection when you're trying to learn when you have ADD, then it's not surprising that you may have problems with math.

A good way for some people with ADD to study is to lay out your math homework on a table, and next to it your history homework, and then your English homework in a row.

Then, work on math for five minutes, then move to history for five minutes, then English, and then back to math (and so on).

If your parents are authoritarian, they may have a problem with this ie: " . . . the real world doesn't work this way, and you have to do it the right way!" and so on.

I don't have an answer.

With the understanding that my ethics and morality aren't based on conveinence . . . I tend to be biased in favor of pragmatism and doing what works. I am--after all--a paramedic.

 

[Auto-Didact]

Background: I live in the U.S. and I am in 7th grade, 13 years old. I have mild ADHD
I don't really hate math, per se, but I can't help thinking that I'm unfit to do anything related to mathematics. I enjoy geometry and abstract scientific problems, but struggle in areas such as basic equations and terms. Everything just seems like it flies over my head, and despite people praising me as a good thinker and philosopher, I feel deep envy for people who understand math and people who can be in high-level classes, because I find physics fascinating (even though it takes mathematical prowess). I always panic when confronted with math homework, and my mind goes blank.
I feel like I need motivation to do better.

How you describe yourself and your dislike of math, you sound a lot like my younger self... I think you may have just had bad (or merely uninspiring) teachers. I myself definitely had mostly bad ones as a teenager. Incidentally, when I was 13, outside of geometry, I sucked at math, especially algebra, which made me not like the subject either.

I was simply never interested in doing the problems, only in learning and thinking creatively about the concepts. In fact, the only 'good' math teacher I ever had growing up, was also when I was 13; he also liked to talk about concepts and applications, but his main focus was having us finish the problems and pass the tests.

In fact, he knew how bad I was at subject, even though it interested me conceptually, yet he almost single-handedly managed to kill my interest in the subject in the following way: he turned me down in a creative moment, in which I had finally also mustered up the courage to walk up to him and ask him to give me his opinion on something quite curious I had seemed to have discovered.

You see, instead of doing the problems in class (graphing functions), I was trying to understand the properties of different kinds of graphs. Geometrically, I rediscovered something about points in such graphs (which later I would learn was called 'a derivative at a point'); the teacher looked at my work for a bit, remained silent and then told me "forget about it... just focus on finishing the homework problems".

This response practically killed my interest, and as a result I actually failed math class that year. Actually failing math bothered me so much (I had never failed anything before), that the next school year, at 14 years old, I forced myself to confront the subject head on and kick the crap out of the subject by finishing all the assignments as quickly as possible after we started a new chapter in class; usually this took a week or two to do.

As a consequence I had so much free time over in math class that I had extra time to think about math conceptually, eventually even philosophically from first principles, purely from my own thoughts (NB: this subject is called 'foundations of mathematics'). My math grades also started to improve slowly from failing grades to passable levels.

However after about 6 months of this, something clicked in my mind: I had a revelation, it was as if the floodgates had opened and suddenly I understood almost everything that was thrown at me mathematically. My math grades jumped from average to exceptional; curiously, simultaneously almost all my other grades dropped from exceptional to very good.

To make a long story short, at the end of high school my abilities in math made me fall in love with physics (read about it here if I haven't bored you to tears yet). To make a long story short, I went to university in order to study medicine and become a medical doctor, but before long ended up getting a degree in physics as well.

So, young man, my message to you is to never give up the hope and don't be afraid or cautious, neither in the face of difficult math or of having to handle failure! Endure and who knows, you might even end up getting rewarded in ways that you cannot even imagine yet.

 

[symbolipoint]

Auto-Didact,
Interesting post, #55.

Sometimes a teacher takes the wrong way to understand how to teach the subject and what to promote and what not to promote. Algebra in high school saved me, but not before strong discouragement about supposed pre-requisite knowledge from an inexperienced teacher.

Any "Mathematics" student, whether he hates it or not, NEEDS to have concepts AND skills (application of the concepts for practical or potentially life-like purposes).

 

[Auto-Didact]

Indeed, of course one also needs to put some work in, but I think that there is more wrong than just that kids aren't putting in the work. I seriously think math needs to be presented in a fashion more relatable to those not necessarily good at algebra, in a way that captures their imagination without it becoming dull. Here is what Edward Frenkel says about this.

I tutored math for quite a while; usually the kids (and adults) don't understand some practical analytic/algebraic aspect, like division, especially that fractions can be seen as equivalence classes, or what they are doing in trigonometry, or why they are doing something in algebra and they often end up getting stuck.

After they fail, they get discouraged; and bad teachers or tutors aren't able to get through to them because they essentially approach the learner in an ineffective manner. The learners then tend to end up avoiding the subject as much as possible for the rest of their careers.

This clearly seems to be the case to me, since I have sadly heard this tragic ending repeated endlessly from friends, kids, students, patients and other people (including scientists, physicians and artists) who are clearly very much interested in math conceptually, not just at a pop level either.

The same thing is for example true with physics: when people like Walter Levin and Richard Feynman speak, everyone listens on the edge of their seats. The same thing applies to Roger Penrose to some degree but he then tends to very quickly go way too far above their head, while most others (Michio Kaku, Brian Greene, Brian Cox et al.) quickly devolve into pop sci.

Interestingly, Penrose of all people was also literally very slow at algebra as a kid (but good at geometry); his teacher however was good and noticed this and therefore gave him more time to solve the problems. He speaks about this subject at length in one of his interviews posted here, the Heidelberg one I think.

I would also like to mention that Henri Poincaré, mathematician extraordinaire, wrote about this topic at length in his masterpiece, The Foundations of Science, saying that there seemed to be (at least) two type of mathematical thinkers: geometers and analysts. To close, here is Feynman weighing in on this very subject: