<p>What’s my theory? Well, i feel like everyone has their limits and different people are on different sides of the divide between the so called left brain/right brain. </p>
<p>I know people who are very creative in addition to being very mathematically inclined, but i feel that most people see some sort or sine pointing them one way or another. It’s like baking - some people are great at baking pis, while other people are better at grating carrots. Different people have different powers, like balancing on a log, or being superman or batman or…</p>
<p>sorry to go off on a tangent. </p>
<p>People have their plusses and minuses in various subjects. Not everyone gets math.</p>
<p>I think teachers have a lot to do with a student’s enjoyment with math.
I had one teacher who really enjoyed Statistics and I really enjoyed his class. The only math class I truly enjoyed. I also enjoyed a financial mathematics class I took in college because I was able to apply it to my everyday life and my teacher was really happy about teaching it LOL. When we didn’t understand something about something, he would not hesitate to answer you fully. Taxes can get confusing (and boring), yeah, but he explained it so well and I enjoyed it!</p>
<p>My other teachers in high school were really sucky and only seemed to teach because they had to. I really tried to get math, and sometimes I’d ask for help to further understand it, but I’d have teachers unwilling to help and give me the “OMG I cant believe you don’t get this crap” attitude for asking for help.</p>
<p>I also had a pre-calc prof in my freshman college year and oh my god WAS HE TERRIBLE. I swear, he wanted to see his students FAIL. His first words in class were: “Most, if not all of you, will probably NOT get an A.” He graded his tests based on answers, not on process, so I felt like if I understood how to do it but maybe miscalculated, my whole grade was messed up! I averaged C’s on his test even though I understood the material but may have had a slight hand-calculated errors.</p>
<p>I know math isn’t about grades but when you have teachers who discourage you to learn the how’s, the why’s, and maybe to even help a student understand more, it just discourages you to even like math.</p>