<p>Yea, i remember my dad laughing at me when I was like "O i'm going to skip Pre-Calc and Take calculus as a junior." He was like ...no wonder Americans are stupid... :D we start waaaaaaaay to late...</p>
<p>Man, math sucks. 
I love and can comprehend every subject except for math. I also play music, which is supposed to correspond with skill in math (or the other way around?), but I simply don’t find that to be the case.</p>
<p>Full disclosure: I’m writing this after giving up on my precalc homework.</p>
<p>Because people find math to be a difficult subject because it builds on each other. If u get a d in algebra, it will be hard to get an A in precal</p>
<p>yes yes i do.</p>
<p>Most teachers just suck at teaching math. They’re more concerned with rote memorisation of formulae and methods than emphrasising practical application or imparting a genuine fascination for the subject.</p>
<p>I think you have to keep in mind that peoples brains function differently. I don’t know if it is a right brain/ left brain thing, but some people have a hard time wrapping their minds around numbers. For visual thinkers, those that need to see what the number means it is hard because the way a five looks doesn’t count up to 5 if that makes sense?</p>
<p>It is kind of like numbers are a language that is not natural and has to be learned, like pretty much anything else i guess. But for some people they can’t learn the language so they are always having to interpret the numbers into something that their brain can relate to, such as seeing a 5 on a pair of dice when looking at a 5 on paper.</p>
<p>Also teachers can take some of the blame too. The impatience and meanness that some teachers exhibit when very young kids are trying to untangle the idea of numbers will make some of those kids have almost mental blocks against numbers later on. Some people will read a paragraph and if there are numbers on the page, they are actually perceived as being blurred. Don’t know if some folks have issues with reading that is similar or not.</p>
<p>I think that math might be a lot harder to teach than say English or history, though, because it’s harder to communicate that sort of knowledge. And since it’s hard to teach AND there are way more lucrative math-related careers than teaching out there (like engineering or banking), math teachers are probably the bottom of the math barrel (well, that’s a little offensive, but possibly true), or they are just REALLY dedicated people who love to teach math. But I think they fall into the same category as music teachers… performers are the best, but there is the rare musician who also loves to teach, and the rest are resentful and wish they could be rich performers. Not all math and music teachers are resentful, but a lot of them are, and resentful people don’t make good teachers.</p>
<p>I simply do not have the mental ability to handle solving numerical problems.</p>
<p>It’s the whole “left brain, right brain” thing, even though that’s not how it really works the idea is sound. Some people are more apt to be logical and analytic, and others to be creative and interested in discussion. </p>
<p>I don’t hate math in general, I understand that it’s an important field in many ways. But it’s not important to what I want to do, and I don’t understand it well, so I detest studying it.</p>
<p>While some may feel that math is a lovely puzzle for them to ponder, there are those of us that just can’t relate to it because it is not concrete. Once we get past the phase of counting out pieces of candy as children, figuring out how much 30 percent will take off of those shoes we like in the sale rack, and how much of a percentage gets taken from our weekly paycheck, the math gets confusing.</p>
<p>If an algebra teacher would give students practical applications when teaching math, it would make it much easier to learn and more appreciable. Explaining to a kid with a hot rod racer, how fast he was going when the speedometer quite working, would give every student an idea of how to use math in daily life. If you know the distance traveled and the amount of time it took to get there, it is possible to figure out the speed.</p>
<p>Studying Geometry, for instance, just doesn’t seem related to absolutely anything based in reality. You have a fictional plane of existence with a shape of a certain number of sides, that doesn’t exist, and they want you to determine information about it. Maybe if they used actual buildings, and used Geometry theorems to determine the measure or mass of those, it would help people to learn.</p>
<p>It might help me learn, but word problems, which theoretically connect abstract concepts to concrete examples, are usually the worst of all.</p>
<p>“It’s the one subject that you don’t use consistently in daily life”
“To be good at writing you must be creative; to be good at math, you dont”
When I read this I actually thought you were joking. I cannot even begin to express how wrong you are, wow!!! If I met you in real in life, I would shake your hand. I’m a graduate student with a bachelors and masters in pure mathematics. The most useful people in the world are problem solvers, and mathematics teaches us how to do that. Obviously, no one expects you to determine the length of a ladder that leans agains a wall… But, someone very CREATIVE thought about whether or not we can model heat dissapation?? and thus we have the heat equation. Mathematics is hard because people today don’t care to be thinkers and problem solvers. They just want instructions like everything else in their lives. We use mathematics everyday of our lives, and the most brilliant mathematicians (Tao, Hilbert, Cauchy, … etc) are super creative because no one gave them instructions, they had to sit and think about what was going on. They write text books, invent equations that model fluid flow, my god are you insane. I hope this doesn’t come off as being very rude, by man… You have to be carefull of what you post online because honestly, you sound pretty “dumb”
And for Chaos Theory… I love Topology. I took this course my first year of grad school. And here is what the professor said the first day in class, I quote</p>
<p>“There will be no text book in this class, and you are not allowed to discuss anything with anyone, nor can you consult any websites. You will be given a list of theorems for which you will have to prove on your own. Some of the theorems are not true, it is your job to find the ones that are false, and to provide a counter example.”</p>
<p>^Moore Method, I presume?</p>
<p>Anyways, people hate math because they’ve never taken it. I took math CLASS in grade school and hated it (although I was pretty good at it). Now I’m studying to be a research mathematician. The reason is because I happened to discover REAL math on my own, as opposed to that boring numerical memorization crap they shove down your throats in grade school and dare to call “math”.</p>
<p>Math is one of the most creative disciplines there is. It’s about creating beautiful, elegant, infinitely complex structures out of nothing but pure logic. There are rigid rules for how to build those structures, yes, but as long as you stay in the confines of those rules you can accomplish unimaginably diverse and unexpected things. It’s not limited by reality, only by the imaginations of those who create it. Math is purely an art, not a science. It has its uses, of course (particularly applied math), but that’s almost beside the point. Writing certainly has its uses, but that’s not why great novels are written. They are written because they are beautiful, and mathematics is created because it is beautiful. The many, many important applications of the subject is the icing on the cake. Or perhaps more appropriately, the icing on the pi (groan inducing, I know).</p>
<p>I’m really good at math and it’s still my least favorite subject. I love stories. I love to learn about the world. Math is numbers, not facts or ideas. Math can be used to explain scientific phenomenon or historical patterns, but alone it cannot reveal life’s mysteries. I’m glad that I have a strong math education, but I could never pursue it as as a major. I would be bored to death.</p>
<p>It’s interesting how people are so different, wintertree12! I LOVE math, for its pure power. With imaginary numbers, electrical engineers can design circuits (I still can’t wrap my mind around that, but it’s true). I can design anything from a house to a 100-story skyscraper using math. Without math, there would be NOTHING!</p>
<p>“Math is numbers, not facts or ideas.”</p>
<p>That is so incredibly wrong, I’m not sure how to respond. Math is all about facts and ideas. Well, I guess it depends on how you define “fact”, but it’s certainly all about ideas. I highly suggest you learn some more about math before making such ill-informed statements.</p>
<p>The only reason I like math is that there is always a correct answer that can’t be argued against (at least that holds true for the current level of math I’m in, I guess we’ll see about the future). The same reason is why I hate English and persuasive essays. I can do poetry, but don’t make me explain something…</p>
<p>This is my personal opinion on the matter. I think that it’s neat that people are so different-- some can see the beauty of an algebraic equation, while others can see the beauty of a sentence fragment. I love English because there’s no single right answer! </p>
<p>To revise my statement, I guess I could say math isn’t… Physical substance? I’m using the word ‘ideas’ ad separate from the word ‘concepts’. I’m not exactly sure how to say what I want to say. And no, I will never be able to understand math the way a mathematician can, and a mathematician will never be able to understand English the way a writer/English professor can. My purpose in my post was to express that there are other reasons for disliking math apart from “not being good at it.”</p>
<p>I was a math-hater into my twenties. Math had many sins, I believed. It was boring. It was pointless. I was being forced to do it. I was never going to need it. It was just ultimately a bunch of fancy arithmetic. There was nothing about it to interest me.</p>
<p>IMO, it’s because it isn’t taught in the proper way. Math is an art. Once you get to know the theory behind a formula, you begin appreciating it. Discovering proofs and different solutions to the same problem is very exciting, but most people aren’t challenged in this manner. Most people I know learn up formulae, and are never taught HOW were they derived.
It could also be because they have a preconceived notion about math. “Math is useless”, “maths is tough” etc. It stops them from really learning the subject.
Or maybe they just weren’t meant to like it. Maybe something else interests them. It all depends on their desire to learn and appreciate math. No desire, no love for math.
I love math because it is exciting and challenging. The process of discovering proofs, the first solution, or multiple solutions is amazing. It requires logical ability along with creativity; you’re never going to find better solutions without being creative. It pushes at the borders of my thinking ability. It is FUN. Just like writing is fun for some people, or singing.</p>
<p>Ya I’m just waiting for my PhD apps to come back, very excited about becoming a research mathematician. I’m actually writing my masters thesis, got an original result! Feels good to make that jump from learning mathematics to CREATING mathematics.
You should read ballerforlyfes post, such an idiot.
Anyway, I’m glad there are others who understand what mathematics is really about.</p>