For me, it’s that I suck at math relative to everything else. In high school, math was the class I actually had to work at, and I was kinda slow at working out problems relative to my peers even though I got As. In fact whether or not I made Salutatorian my senior year came down to one score on one math exam - which I aced after hours and hours of studying. But my need to take my time always dragged down my composite score on standardized tests, which were timed. I also struggle with working memory so mental math is particularly difficult for me. And as an adult, mental math is the most common math I encounter, so I feel relatively impaired.
Figures I would have a kid showing giftedness in math. At three years old, he insists on being tucked in with his calculator and his plastic multiplication tables. I’m not even sure what to do with that! Pretty soon he’s going to be asking me things I don’t remember/know.
Yeah, there are a lot of jokes along those lines, too. “My parents should have taken me to you when I was younger,” “I probably should be making an appointment with you,” etc.
Math teacher here. Add to that that society condones and even gives positive reinforcement (It’s ok. I was bad at math too.) to those that are “bad at math”. Can you imagine as an adult the reactions you would get if you say you’re bad at writing and can’t write even a sentence?
While working on a doctorate in math education, my research showed that 90-93% of students are “bad at math” because only 7-10% can master math using traditional teaching methods. When I changed to using more progressive methods of pedagogy, it is amazing how all my “bad” students now got As, Bs and Cs.
What really jerked my chain was when my supervisor would come by my desk a few minutes after my scheduled lunch break ended and if I wasn’t working would say things like “did you start lunch late?” Meanwhile, two cubicles away two other employees would be (loudly) chatting about their kids, or their weekend plans, or other non-work related matters, and not a word would be said to them.
When my father told a friend that I was majoring in math, the friend imagined I would spend all day adding up columns of figures. Even in those days (mid 1950s) there were excellent electro-mechanical calculators and computers were coming on strong. At least no one asks me to do their taxes. But I don’t imagine very many people have a clear idea what a mathematician actually does. One answer is this: You know all those formulas you learned in engineering calculus? Well, long ago, some mathematician discovered them.
But I really believe that by the time someone is in college, they can learn mathematics if they put their mind to it. It is really learning to think.
One of the earlier posts here reminded me that when Jocelyne Bell (the actual discoverer of quasers, for whom her advisor won a Nobel prize) spoke at McGill, the Montreal Gazette described her as an astrologer.
When I was an employee of the Department of State, most everyone assumed that I was CIA (I wasn’t). The ones who didn’t assume that wanted to know how many CIA people were at each embassy; ummm. . .I don’t know, because they’re, you know, CIA (like they’re going to tell me, right?). About the only person you know of for sure is the Station Chief, because he’s declared to the host government. I’m pretty sure my sister went to her grave thinking that I was some sort of spook.
“Yeah? Well good luck pressing take off, autopilot, then land!” - Matt Damon, 30 Rock
Jokes aside, I watch a lot of aviation channels on youtube and I actually have a lot of respect for what pilots do, even on highly automated planes.
The key to learning math is to learn why. A big problem for most people is that they learn what one of my teachers called “monkey math”, which is monkey-see, monkey-do. They don’t learn why they do the things they do, they just learn that if they see this type of problem on the test, they follow the procedure that have been taught to solve it. Everything in math builds on what comes before it, so if you don’t learn the why behind it, you’ll never do well at more advanced mathematics.
If all you have done by the time you get to college is monkey math, you are never going to be good at math.
Former night auditor here. No. We don’t sleep all night.
I’m not going to come down to your room and have sex with you because they do in porno movies. No, I don’t find it funny or flattering.
You wouldn’t believe the number of co-workers who think I have the rest of the day free. When I pointed out I went home and slept they always stared like it never occured to them that I have to sleep during the day.
Argh. My sister is like this. But she is so tech-phobic, her brain essentially shuts down when she runs into a problem. I try to coach her to relax and take it step-by-step, but she can’t seem to unfreeze herself. And I’m not expert on PCs! I was a dinosaur COBOL programmer who later used SAS a lot before moving into managment-type tasks.
I’m a crocheter, and I concur with this. If someone refers to my knitting, I always correct it to “crocheting.” Hoping against hope it sinks in eventually.
Yeah, I took a Physics for Non-Majors course in college, and we didn’t have to come up with the correct answeres necessarily but if we could show our reasoning and demonstrate that we understood the concepts, we’d pass. I really enjoyed that class.
I’m an environmental scientist working for a government organization. I regularly get comments/accusations about how I sell out to industry. I always respond with “I wish someone would bribe me! I’d sell out in a minute!”, then walk away.
Also, I’m the first in my family to go to college. I would get questions about anything and if I didn’t know the answer would get the “Why’d we pay all that money to send you to college? hyuk-hyuk”. I learned to convincingly lie to my family. (Pro tip-if you need to make up a fish name just add Lesser/Greater or a direction like Eastern/Western to a name. Sounds impressive. “Hey Kelevra what’s that fish? Oh, that’s the Western Dogfish.”
My recollection of middle school was that I was actively discouraged from asking why. “What does X stand for?”
“Nothing. Just solve for it.”
That really annoyed me. It wasn’t until I got into physics that I was able to do it because X actually meant something. Now, call me pedantic for not grasping that we were meant to be learning how to solve equations because X would later mean something. But the real problem for me was that, as noted earlier, math skills build upon each other. But traditional education doesn’t have time for the kid who didn’t understand the last step.
In eighth grade I vividly remember getting lost, the teacher going on to the next steps and that was it. There was no chance. I needed to ask questions, have the teacher answer them and bring me along. There was no time for that.
I’ve felt this sort of pressure as an adult. When I was training as an airline pilot I was in a systems class for a fairly complex turbo prop. “OK, everyone got that?” the instructor asked one day. I said no, I didn’t. That brought him up short. He didn’t seem prepared for someone saying no, they didn’t understand. He actually tried to talk me into saying I did understand. Reminded me a lot of middle school math. I told him I would study it that evening, probably come in the next day with questions and then I’d probably have it. That’s pretty much what happened. Wish I had had the wherewithal to stand up and make that happen in eighth grade.
Not if you have dyscalculia. I’ve been told things like that my whole life. Why did I get A’s in all my other classes but struggled to get a D in math? Just make more of an effort! Think!
Maybe all everyone else bad at math has to do is put their mind to it. I’m pretty sure I put all the mind I possessed to it. Other learning disabilities get support these days but not that one.
Man, no kidding. I did fine in algebra and trig in high school, but never understood that there were practical world applications, especially for trig. And I still don’t know WTF I’m supposed to do with calculus. Anyhow, for algebra and trig, when I was in electrician school, it was like a lightbulb came on. And algebra is used all the time, whether or not one realizes that that’s what they’re using to figure out the best price on a can of beans.
Or, if you’re an ad executive in front of a potential client who would benefit from advertising: “We don’t need to advertise. Everybody knows who we are.”
Six months later, you smile when Going Out of Business signs adorn their front windows. Now, they’re happy to sign a contract so they can quickly liquidate all the merchanse that “everybody” bought at the big box store down the street.
I spent quite a bit of time in advertising, both creating it and selling it. I’ve heard them all.
I am convinced that there is no one reason why people are bad at math. There are a number of reasons why people might struggle with math, including but not limited to those that have been mentioned in this thread. I would never just assume, without strong evidence, that a particular person “just isn’t good at math”; but neither would I assume that they would be good if only they would work harder or think harder or have the right attitude.
I also have seen that the practical real world applications—seeing what math is useful for—is a strong motivating factor for some people to learn and appreciate math. But only for some. Other people find math itself interesting or beautiful or fun, but they get turned off when you get into the complexities of applying it to some other area that they’re not interested in.
I’m a commercial landscape estimator. Basically going through landscape documents for downtown buildings, roof decks, warehouses, etc to determine how the architect wants things done, quantities of materials, costs, labor to install, reading specification manuals, etc. Then packaging it all up into a proposal. One thing that I don’t do is worry about how it’s going to look in an editorial sense; I might call out something that’s just a bad idea but I don’t think “Wow, those lilac bushes behind those perennials are going to look great next May!”.
That, of course, doesn’t stop every member of my extended family from going “Can you come over and look at my yard next Saturday? I’m thinking about doing some stuff and want you to tell me what to do…” I’m not a landscape architect or even a designer. I look at (essentially) blueprints with stuff represented by symbols and exciting cross sections of detention basin drainage layers. When I mention this, it’s still “But you should know something and more than me…”
There’s also people who say “Heh, so you look at a rock and say ‘That’s a $30 rock’, huh?” which is a bit reductive for a $5mil project but at least they kind of get the idea and aren’t trying to ruin my weekend.
Oh my goodness, I get this (or similar) all the time. My parents, especially. I currently rent a townhome in an affordable part of town and have no plans to purchase a home for myself any time soon. The housing market where I live is outrageous right now. My mom’s response when I say I’m happy where I am is always, “Oh well, you’re a lawyer; you make good money. You can get a house!” or “you can get a brand new car!” or “you can take a week off of work to go on an extravagant vacation!”
I’m like…“not quite”.
I have friends who snidely try to get me to pick up the tab, or expect me to be the one to cover stuff when we go out, simply because of my profession. I don’t mind buying a round of drinks or just covering the cost of movie tickets or whatever from time to time…but when people just start assuming I will do that? Or expect me to? Or feel entitled to just take advantage of me? That’s when I am super over it.
Just cause “I’m a lawyer” does NOT mean I am in the class of being able to afford anything I want at anytime. In fact, here in a few months when student loan repayment starts up again, I’m going to be tightening my pockets anyway. It’s just ridiculous when people make these assumptions.
