Algebra or Geometry

My sordid story…

I was just a kid when exposed to the wonder that is Geometry. My family was in Ireland for a few months, and I vividly remember the fun I had with geometry class at the age of eleven. It was great stuff.

Then, back to the US and junior high school, where mathematics were being taught on the most basic level possible. Word problems. Yuck.

High school arrived, and I hit Algebra class hoping for some more of that magic I felt in geometry class, all those years ago.

I failed Algebra. It made no sense to me, at all.

I took Algebra again the next year, and struggled through it painfully. I passed, but just barely.

The next year, Algebra II. It hurt.

Then, finally, my senior year arrived. After my ruinous mathematical career so far, I was placed in B-level geometry class. Where I effortlessly made straight A’s. It was fun, it was magical, it was everything I thought numbers should be. I would spend hours at home doing compass and straight edge constructions. I loved it.

In college, I was an English major. Very little math involved. But I can’t help but wonder, if I’d had more exposure to math that I really had an aptitude for, would I have been more inclined toward a less fuzzy college career?

I think that there are very distinct mentalities involved in both mathematical disciplines, and that the two don’t coincide very well. Which is why I want to do this poll.

So, here’s my question. Who here liked/likes Algebra? Who likes Geometry? Who likes both?

What’s your math story?

I loved Algebra. I got like a 90 in it. I got a 90-something in Algebra 2. I got a 60-something in Geometry. I also sucked at art.

I’m an English major because there’s no elem. ed. major here.

I had trouble with every math class - except geometry. I, too, enjoyed figuring out all of the angles and such and would actually do my homework for that class.

Interesting.

Well I’m currently an Undergrad math major so I guess I’m a little biased, but I found geometry to be a very simple math class, I found it more of a simple introduction to logic than a math class but I like algebra and calculus and those classes also. I never had much trouble with either, excpet for that stupid completing the square thing, that’s just stupid.

I liked geometry because the teacher was funny and the subject matter was easy. I took it during the summer before 9th grade, so it passed in only a few weeks. I prefer Algebra, though, because it seems more useful and has more applications in advanced mathematics (such as PreCalc and Calculus). Things like the Quadratic Equation, Polynomials, Law of Sines/Cosines, and more were what I needed. Figuring geometry answers can be easily accomplished by either memorizing the formulas or having a small list somewhere.

I’d say I liked both. My favorite part of geometry was the proofs.

Here in Ontario, one of three grade thirteen math courses is called Algebra and Geometry, and that’s exactly what it is. For many of the units of the course, a and g are thoroughly mixed together, so quite often you’re working with both at the same time.

I liked the course. It was the most abstract of the grade thirteen math courses.

Studi

I wouldn’t say I liked either of them, but I definitely preferred geometry to algebra.

BTW, I failed algebra the first time around, too, but then they had me in the honors section. OTOH, I figured out Shakespeare a lot more quickly than some of my classmates did… :wink:

(There’s nothing fuzzy about being an English major! :D)

Ahh Geometry, Did I ever mention that I have never ever gotten a single proof right? I suppose if I paid attention in class or cared at all I could have, but geometry is right up along history as “classes I will do nothing in, because I am boycotting them”

I loved – still love – both Algebra and Geometry. I use 'em almost every day at work.

If you want to recapture some of the magic of Geometry, pick up The Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Geometry by John Wells (his Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers is great, too). For general Math stuff, dig up Martin Gardner’s old books reprinting his Scientific American columns, “Mathematical Games”.

I loved algebra. I may be a dork when it comes to this, but I did love it. Something about its logicality appealed to me, I could easily solve algebraic equations and graph things. In geometry, since any math class beyond algebra is just building on algebraic skills, it came easily to me too. I’m good in english, art as well, so I don’t see any connection there. Yeah, I am a dork.
~Fox

I liked all of my math classes, except when I wasn’t learning anything new. I got A’s throughout middle school and high school, but I just got a B for the first time in my multivariable calculus class in college. :frowning: . I’m a computer science major, which means that I’ll still need to take plenty more math classes.

I thought I was horrible at math. I’m not exactly sure how I got that idea except that I had trouble memorizing the multiplication tables. I took algebra my freshman year, coincidentally the same year I discovered speed. I didn’t do very well, but I passed without trying. Then I skipped math my sophomore year. My junior year I took Algebra II and I remember doing very well, but I don’t remember what my grade was exactly. Above average, we’ll say. It was supposed to be a horribly hard class with an insensitive teacher by reputation. I didn’t find it that way at all. Then since I wasn’t eligible to take honors classes, I only had trig and geometry to take my senior year, which I did. They were so easy for me that they were boring. Not exciting like Algebra II. When I got to college my advisor recommended that I take college algebra for an easy “A” which I did. Then I took business calculus and I started out not getting it and having panic attacks because of it. Then everything clicked right before the first exam and I pulled an “A” in that too.

So to answer the OP, I like algebra. I do well in geometry but I’d rather be doing algebra.

I took Algebra I in seventh grade and effortlessly got an A+ every quarter. I never did the homework or studied. The next year, I took Geometry with the same teacher. I did all the homework and studied every night, sometimes three or four hours, but still only managed a C+ average. The teacher assumed I was just slacking off since I had done so well in Algebra and made it even harder on me. (Hey, Asmodean, I managed to finish the entire year without doing a single proof right too!) Then I took Algebra II and again breezed through with the highest average in my grade. Now I’m in Pre-Calc and doing even more work than I was in Geometry, and my yearly average is, IIRC, an 82. Weird…

I loved Geometry. I could have done proofs all day long if they had asked me to. Funny, I hated just about all my other math courses.

My first full-time job had me using basic geometry constantly, and I really enjoyed it.

Now, as a chef, I still need to use basic math for converting recipes, which I don’t mind at all.

My math story is damn near the same as yours. Got placed in Algebra in eighth grade, on the basis of strong test scores (my junior high put one class of eighth graders in algebra, while the rest did another year of general math). I scraped along with straight Cs for a while (was otherwise an A student) until things came to a head right after the beginning of the second semester. I brought home a deficiency report informing my parents that I was flunking. They instituted the usual measures. I’d missed about a week of school with strep throat, and had a couple of pop quizzes to make up. I studied my ass off every available minute for two days, took the two quizzes, and aced both of them. The teacher’s response was to accuse me of cheating, since she’d given me the same quizzes she gave the rest of the class and she’d already given back their papers. I was livid – it took the vice principal and the counselor to calm me down. I begged the counselor to let me move to one of the regular math classes. He insisted that I stay, so that I wouldn’t lose credit for the whole year. I limped along again with Cs for the most of the rest of the year, but the wheels fell off completely just before the end of the year, and I flunked the last grading period, which wiped out my grade for the semester, and forced me to take algebra again in ninth grade. I was marginally more successful this time around (I still only made Cs, more from general contrariness than anything else – I’d be damned before I’d put in any effort on it after my experience the year before).

In tenth grade, they taught geometry to everyone except the kids who’d done algebra in eighth grade and geometry in ninth. They put four classrooms’ worth of kids into a big lecture hall and the teachers tag-teamed for the first few weeks, then they gave us all tests. The top quartile went into an accellerated section (where you got 5 points on a 4 point scale for an A, 4 for a B, etc.), while the rest were divided randomly. You guessed it – I ended up in the advanced section, and made As or solid Bs the whole year.

Eleventh grade, Algebra II. Managed not to flunk largely through the efforts of a wonderful, dedicated teacher, but Cs and Ds were still the order of the day.

We moved just before my senior year to a small town that didn’t offer any math courses I hadn’t already taken, so I got a year’s respite from it. In college, I took pre-calculus, and did OK for the first several weeks. Then, about the time I hit the skids, the professor realized he’d fallen woefully behind schedule and needed to pick up the pace in order to finish all the material on the syllabus before the end of the semester. In doing so, he left practically the whole class behind, whacking out the grading curve completely. I got a 54 out of 100 on the last regular exam of the semester, and a 70 out of 150 on the final, and still ended up with a B in the course.

And yes, I was an English major. I still have an aptitude for geometry and for statistics (I used to annoy the hell out of my psych major girlfriend in college by being able to pick up and immediately “get” her psych stat assignments while she could make nothing whatever of them), and still have a huge mental block against anything that smells of algebra.

Love 'em both, with a slight preference for algebra. Though I’ve always been an analytical kind’a guy…

8th grade - Algebra. After doing great in math for the previous seven years, I hit a wall here (A major personality conflict with the teacher probably didn’t help). After more struggling, confusion, rage and tears than I had ever had to put into math before, I somehow managed to finish with a B and qualify for honors-level math the next year.

9th grade - Geometry. Absolute cakewalk. Everything made sense, all the things that were new to me seemed fun and interesting, and I even liked the teacher. Proofs were tedious, but never seemed very hard. I was having fun again. Easy A.

10th grade - Algebra II. I was nervous at first, but after a few weeks I could not for the life of me remember what had been so hard about Algebra. The material here was challenging, but nothing that had me tearing my hair out. A.

–sublight.

6th Grade Pre-algebra, adored the teacher, she loved me to bits and I learned, dear god, did I learn. Would you like to see the Babylonian number system? It’s base 60.
7th Grade Algebra I the teacher sounded like a duck, mathematician by profession, couldn’t teach at all, but we scraped by, the higher level stuff is what I loved and she thrived with.
8th grade Algebra II Adored it, sure the teacher put me to sleep but I thrived with the infamous “drill and kill” I loved it all, the number just all working out so nicely.
9&10th grades, IMP dear god shoot me now, I hate it all, the bits of algebra are what I thrive with, whebever they touch geometry I cringe, I hate it, can’t deal with it at all. Guess IMP just killed my love of math in general, maybe when I’m allowed to take Calc in senior year I’ll get better

Kitty

Algebra is a tool in hand. It’s certainly useful, and it has a kind of hard-edged beauty to it…but oh, geometry. I found geometry so easy that it would have been boring if I hadn’t come to regard it as an art form. From the clean elegance of a two-line proof, an arch supporting a conclusion, to the baroque dance one could drive a proof through, proving everything there was to prove about a subject before bringing it to a perfectly poised close. I brought my geometry teacher near to tears on a regular basis:

<Balance hands in a 5-page proof for homework.>
Teacher: “Ah…you know, this could have been proven in three lines.”
Balance: “Of course.” <rattles off 3-line proof verbally>
T: “So why all this?”
B: “Well, it was more fun this way.”

I never had any problems with a math class until I hit my first Linear Algebra and DiffE class. Differential equations sent me for a loop for a long while–it didn’t really click until the day of the final. Fortunately, I found the linear algebra so much easier than my classmates (“Goody, vector spaces!” I chirped happily, only to be pelted with pencils and calculators.) that my curved scores on those exams kept my grade up. Once I pounded my way through that, multidimensional calculus was easy, and that ended my math requirements.

FPK, my 4th grade math teacher drilled base-n math into our accelerated class very thoroughly. IIRC, one of the questions on the test (mostly trinary, octal, base-7, and the like) was a word problem concerning Sumerian trade, with all the figures expressed in base-60. Her notion was to teach the principles behind base-n math, so we could deal with any base that came up. I bless her for that class every time I have to use convert hex and binary at work (almost daily).