• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Do you suck at math?

L

Lager

Diamond Member
I have always been a bad math student, never good at it. I'm in trig right now and it's no fun. Math is a subject I cannot grasp the concept.

Anyone else suck at math?
 
Originally posted by: coldcut
I have always been a bad math student, never good at it. I'm in trig right now and it's no fun. Math is a subject I cannot grasp the concept.

Anyone else suck at math?
Click to expand...

I'm good at math (taken quite a few PhD level math classes). But once you get to that level math is a completely different beast.

You said exactly what my wife said while she was in highschool - word for word. She went to college and avoided math for a few years. Then she finally had to take math to graduate and got A+'s on all of her math related courses. She did well enough to have her professors suggest she should switch majors. What happened? She was truthfully never bad at math. But she had one teacher that was a very bad teacher in grade school. She got lost on one subject and asked the teacher for help and the teacher said "if you didn't get it the first time, I'm not repeating it". So she missed a vital part of math. Well math just builds and builds. Without that vital part she could never understand any of the math that followed. She just got further and further behind eventually hating math with a passion (she plays Jimmy Buffet's song Math Sucks all the time). Well after a few years off and starting math in college, she got to have a professor that was good and filled the very few missing pieces that her elementary teacher failed to let her learn. Suddenly everything made sence and she was great at math.

Does that sound familiar to you?
 
Originally posted by: dullard
Originally posted by: coldcut
I have always been a bad math student, never good at it. I'm in trig right now and it's no fun. Math is a subject I cannot grasp the concept.

Anyone else suck at math?
Click to expand...

I'm good at math (taken quite a few PhD level math classes). But once you get to that level math is a completely different beast.

You said exactly what my wife said while she was in highschool - word for word. She went to college and avoided math for a few years. Then she finally had to take math to graduate and got A+'s on all of her math related courses. She did well enough to have her professors suggest she should switch majors. What happened? She was truthfully never bad at math. But she had one teacher that was a very bad teacher in grade school. She got lost on one subject and asked the teacher for help and the teacher said "if you didn't get it the first time, I'm not repeating it". So she missed a vital part of math. Well math just builds and builds. Without that vital part she could never understand any of the math that followed. She just got further and further behind eventually hating math with a passion (she plays Jimmy Buffet's song Math Sucks all the time). Well after a few years off and starting math in college, she got to have a professor that was good and filled the very few missing pieces that her elementary teacher failed to let her learn. Suddenly everything made sence and she was great at math.

Does that sound familiar to you?
Click to expand...


Very interesting. It does sound familiar to me. I'm not sure if I'l have the success of math as your wife had, but I guess the teachers do make a difference.

I had a anal Algebra 2 teacher.
 
I suck at math. I can do basic stuff like addition, subtraction and multiplication, but long division always kicked my ass. I stick with a calculator nowadays. The worst part was the fact that my father taught college math part-time, so half the time I'd end up having to go over my homework with him for hours.
 
nope. But you have to understand that math is something that takes practice. In college, where they don't collect homework (well, besides a few take home quizzes that we had) you just have to discpline yourself to do it..and when you don't understand it, look in the solution manual and see if that makes sense, or go and ask somebody else for help. THEN go back and do the homework again. Hopefully, the two times thru the homework, and sitting in class (and paying attention, too) you should be able to get it.
 
I'm the other way around. I don't really have a problem with math, it's the subjective subjects like literature that I'm bad at.
 
800 in SatIIC

A in all calc courses

Offered a place to TA in my university

Represented school in Math olympiad.

Ya, I am ok I guess 😛
 
I *use* to be good in math... i was always one or two years ahead of all my class... that is until i went to prison and never got a chance to finish high school calculus. I took calculus in university, and did decent for the first half of the term, then i got massacred in the second half... got like a C- grade, then figured there's no way i'll ever catch up to everybody else. So that's the last math class i took. But i have purchased math books with plans to learn on my own... unfortunately i've been too lazy to. But i enjoy the instant gratification of doing math equations correctly.
 
Originally posted by: dullard
Originally posted by: coldcut
I have always been a bad math student, never good at it. I'm in trig right now and it's no fun. Math is a subject I cannot grasp the concept.

Anyone else suck at math?
Click to expand...

I'm good at math (taken quite a few PhD level math classes). But once you get to that level math is a completely different beast.

You said exactly what my wife said while she was in highschool - word for word. She went to college and avoided math for a few years. Then she finally had to take math to graduate and got A+'s on all of her math related courses. She did well enough to have her professors suggest she should switch majors. What happened? She was truthfully never bad at math. But she had one teacher that was a very bad teacher in grade school. She got lost on one subject and asked the teacher for help and the teacher said "if you didn't get it the first time, I'm not repeating it". So she missed a vital part of math. Well math just builds and builds. Without that vital part she could never understand any of the math that followed. She just got further and further behind eventually hating math with a passion (she plays Jimmy Buffet's song Math Sucks all the time). Well after a few years off and starting math in college, she got to have a professor that was good and filled the very few missing pieces that her elementary teacher failed to let her learn. Suddenly everything made sence and she was great at math.

Does that sound familiar to you?
Click to expand...

Should that be edited to "the very few missing pieces that her high school teacher..."
If you do, I find that extremely believable... my wife had straight A's in math, right up until she didn't realize that if you're going 60 mph, then in one hour, you will have travelled 60 miles. (Really!! I almost wrecked the car laughing when she asked me how I was so accurate at "guessing" the time we'd get to some place).
But, it just doesn't seem like a few missing concepts from elementary school would suddenly turn someone into a math major...

For the people studying math.... the more math you learn (well beyond calculus), the more you learn that there's even more math that you'll never have time to learn in your lifetime.

 
Originally posted by: DrPizza
Should that be edited to "the very few missing pieces that her high school teacher..."
If you do, I find that extremely believable... my wife had straight A's in math, right up until she didn't realize that if you're going 60 mph, then in one hour, you will have travelled 60 miles. (Really!! I almost wrecked the car laughing when she asked me how I was so accurate at "guessing" the time we'd get to some place).
But, it just doesn't seem like a few missing concepts from elementary school would suddenly turn someone into a math major...

For the people studying math.... the more math you learn (well beyond calculus), the more you learn that there's even more math that you'll never have time to learn in your lifetime.
Click to expand...
No I think it was 5th grade. Something with fractions. She never got that so it made algebra impossible to follow. Then she gave up and didn't learn much trig or geometry either. It even spilled over outside of math courses. She was the top in all her science classes until chemistry used math...

She refused help from me so it took years until she got help from a professor.

You are a math teacher right DrPizza? If so please do whatever it takes to fill in those blanks. I think her 5th grade teacher should be fired on the spot for saying that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top