What specifically do you not like about it. And I don’t just mean “it’s too hard”, what specifically is hard?
I feel like most people would like mathematics, but the education system failed them, teaching in a way that’s not enjoyable.
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Generally I like to ask a lot of questions in order to fully understand concepts. Additionaly maths are unintuitive to me. So, for me class moved to fast, I didn’t dare to ask questions, because my classmates would assume you were dumb if you did, and my parent insulting me for my lack of understanding built resentment and the believe that maths simply aren’t for me.
I read an article recently that explains that this believe further perpetuates the lack of understanding and that it’s basically a downwards spiral. And it made sense to me. Not just in respect to maths, but school overall. I always assumed I was an idiot because my grades, my classmates, teachers, friends and parents suggested or deepened that believe. Now I am studying a field I am interested in and thrive, to the point that one teacher actually complimented my intelligence. and then everyone got up and applauded
So yeah, I agree. Given a relaxed environment to learn maths, I can absolutely see myself enjoying it. Even if it’s just the teachers fascination rubbing off on me.
I find it hard to keep numbers in mind, and memorizing huge lists of numbers doesn’t work well for me. I need a purpose, a story, a reason behind the numbers. I’m the weirdo who loves story problems.
I don’t like busywork, running meaningless numbers for the sake of doing it is dull to me.
Someone who used to dislike it in school and university here.
Having to cram a lot of information and formulas, and then reproduce it without error for an exam. None of it made sense, and I wasn’t even aware it was possible for it to make sense.
Only after many years did I understand it’s all connected, there’s a logic to it. It’s possible to understand rather than just blindly learn.
Btw the notation really doesn’t help.
I think this is true for lots of people. I also think there’s a bunch of us that have never had that feeling of it being a memorisation task.
In fact, the reason I liked maths and science was because it wasn’t memorisation. Unlike languages (for example) you could always work out the bit you forgot, and didn’t need to depend on some made-up aide-memoire that only applied 75% of the time and remember what 25% it didn’t apply to.
All I can think is that some early teacher failed you, and didn’t lay out how the foundations worked.
This is true in all cases. The proof is left as an exercise for the student.
if the foundations of mathematics are dependent on a single early teacher… that’s a serious dependency for mathematics then.
The foundations of everything are dependent on those early teachers.
I think the issue is that mathematical logical thinking is what needs to be taught, like that everything can be described as equations.
The teachers put too much emphasis on formulas and notation and equations and so we are led to believe that math is only about rote memory of math grammar and so it never makes sense.
I’ll offer a different perspective. I’m actually really good at math, and I hated it in school because I didn’t want to do dozens of homework problems because I already knew how to do it and it was pointless work.
And I didn’t, which led to me having to take my tests sitting next to the teacher because she wouldn’t believe I could make > 90% on the tests without doing any practice problems.
thats why theres always an ongoing debate on grading homework. what matters more are the exam grades to show if a given person understands a concept, but it runs the riak of more people failing out without the weight of graded homework easing up scores.
back in middleschool, i was basically told i would instantly fail a geometry class if i didnt start doing homework, despite aceing exams. The goal of homework is to teach students more about meeting deadlines, and that message often gets lost in education.
The main purpose of homework, at least in the stem classes, is to reinforce the subject. Some kids absolutely need that reinforcement and to have the teacher correct their work to help them understand the concepts.
A big part of the increasing workload to play ratio in elementary school is for learning to do some hard work. If you coast and/or give up easily, there will be a tall wall waiting for you at university level if not earlier. It won’t be hard to scale if you’ve learned to put in the effort, but it will be too late to start practicing that then.
Same goes for figuring out how to make your brain retain information (association building). At some point rote memorization isn’t going to cut it anymore.
These things need to be built up along with the basic knowledge. And yes, schools and teachers all around the world are often failing the students in that. There’s no simple blame or simple cure. Education is a huge task.
Classic elementary/high school scenario: “This kid is ahead of the curve… a little too far ahead if you ask me. I’d better accuse them of cheating, given that the rest of the class sucks ass at long division/algebra/calculus…”
nah they just make you tutor the stupid kids. at least mine always did.
I feel seen, had forgotten all about that.
I was never made to “tutor” but my assigned groups for projects were conspicuously full of problem children I was expected to balance.
It was a tiny rural school and I was a kid from a major metropolitan area who was in honors classes before relocating to a school that had none.
In her defense, like 99% of students at the school not doing homework and acing the tests would have been cheating.
In school, I liked anything related to geometry where there were shapes and things to look at (note that I liked it, not that I was good at it). Anything more abstract was just juggling numbers to me, it all meant nothing, I never knew why I was doing anything.
Although i do like math, it’s very easy for me to understand why someone wouldn’t. Just think about any subject that you dislike, and now you know the approximate feeling of someone not liking math
Because through my game development career I learned to solve mathematical problems algorithmically, and my brain is just structured that way, I cannot do formulas. Well I can, but it takes active fighting against my brain structure.
I just don’t care for it. I know it matters and makes up all our rules for the physical world and everything but it’s not interesting to me. I’m much more interested in social/psychological studies of life, so math talk just flies over my head most of the time.
Also would agree with you about the educational system though. Growing up I was always held back and taken aside because I wasn’t doing the math either fast enough or “the right way”. I learned different tricks for multiplication than were taught at my school, but I would get to the correct answer. I was punished for this. It also shouldn’t matter how fast you can do math, as long as you’re getting the right answer. I fucking hated “math minutes” and had a lot of shitty teachers. Had some good ones too though.
If you don’t mind, what the hell is a math minute? Is that some form of torture where you have to do math in a minute?
Yes exactly that. They’d give us a sheet of equations and we were supposed to complete it in one minute. It’s usually basic stuff like addition or multiplication, but mind you this was when we’re just learning it like grade 2-3. Then they would pu t us in groups based on how many equations we got through.
Because my brain had/has enough room to hold diagraming sentences or higher mathematics. And I chose the one that allows for me to insult people in a way where they know I’m insulting them, but are unable to articulate how I’m insulting them.
This comes off like a person who has no empathy, or who assumes everyone else thinks like they do. When I was in college, I tutored math to middle school kids, and I can say with certainty that some people’s brains take to it more naturally than others. You can be very smart and still struggle with math.
And putting that aside, “enjoyment” is inherently subjective. It’s like saying most people would enjoy liver and onions if they had it cooked right. No, some people will and some people won’t. It’s okay - people are a diverse lot and it’s fine if some people don’t like what you like.
You can be very smart and struggle with anything.
Absolutely
I’m bad at it and I get numbers mixed up pretty easily.
Example: I went to a pro sports game over the weekend. I sat 4 of us in the wrong row because I read the row number wrong. I saw row 12 but read row 15. I tend to mix up numbers like that often and then I get the answers to math problems wrong. This is highly frustrating to me and it makes me not like math very much.
Sounds like you might be dyslexic.
I’ve long suspected it’s something like that. I am fine with words, it’s just numbers that are the issue.
Because I only have a limited amount of dopamine to spend each day, and I rather not waste it on something as boring as math. ADHD does not allow me to pursue things that don’t interest me unless I’m forced to.
Neurotypical people with plenty of dopamine to spare may struggle to understand the concept of their brain physically stopping their body from doing anything that doesn’t feel satisfying nor rewarding to do.
I don’t trust math. Something doesn’t add up here.
I enjoy the concepts and structures of mathematics. Fractal geometry, holomorphic dynamics, computational theory, uncertainty principles and all that are fascinating as hell. Discrete systems dancing with continuous integrals at process limits.
I DO NOT ENJOY working with math. Specifically I cant read complex equations. I don’t have an attention disorder but I swear the moment I try reading anything that looks like this I get overloaded and nope out. If it aint highschool algebra with PEMDAS I cant do it. If you put a bullet to my head and pinned my survival on properly solving a quadratic equation I’d just tell you to shoot me.
The concepts are cool once you can get past the notation to understand the ontology of whats trying to be conveyed. The actual expanded out notations and trying to do work with them is a fuckin nightmare.
Also since im ranting can I just say, across STEM the biggest problem is the naming convention. Math and science would be at least 60% more accessable if we went back and renamed all theorems, hypothesis, proofs, to be what they are about instead of just shouting out the guy who discovered it. “eulers identity” doesnt mean a fucking thing. Neither does scrodingers equations or the riemann hypothesis or turing machines. THESE ARE NOT ACCESSABLE NAMES THEY CONVEY NOTHING INTRINSICALLY BESIDES SOME DEAD GUYS LAST NAME. GET SOME PROGRAMMERS WHO KNOW HOW TO ACTUALLY DECLARE HUMAN READABLE STRINGS FOR YOUR FUCKING ABSTRACTION OBJECTS.
This is basically how I feel. I love physics…concepts. Relativity is really cool. Optics is really cool. Magnetism is really cool.
Sitting down to calculate the force a charged particle feels in an electric field if fired at a certain velocity? That sucks. It’s so easy to make a mistake and a chore to do.
Also, to your point about naming conventions, it’s an unfortunate side effect of always building on top of existing work. Why is integral symbol the way it is? Isaac Newton wrote an S next to his calculations (I think for “sum”, but I could be wrong). A lot of math is really old. What was a good way of keeping track of math concepts 300 years ago? Idk, but that Riemann guy came up with a way to add an infinite amount of numbers.
Sure we could rename everything, but then all the textbooks written beforehand would be really confusing.
I like algebra, it’s logical and understandable for me. But calculus just falls out of my head the minute I take my eyes off of it.
I am an accountant, I love numbers and number trivia, little puzzles.
But math math, like beyond algebra? Not as much.
And early math, like arithmetic, was poisoned by bad teachers and bad teaching methods. I didn’t like it before algebra, it was boring.
