# What "simple" academic concepts have you never been able to grasp? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 30, 2009, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355 "2009-03-30T21:32:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/1 "2009-03-30T21:32:07Z")
For me it’s syllables, it takes me forever to count the number of syllables in a word and even then there’s no guarantee I’m correct. I just don’t get how “enough” has 2 (er… right?) syllables. I try to count emphasis change, which helps, but not completely. If you asked what my initial reaction would be, it would be “3” (“ee” “nuh” “ff[sub]ih[/sub]”), because that’s where the sound changes. Maybe my teacher explained it badly when we learned it, maybe that’s a completely different but valid linguistic concept altogether and I’m confusing them without knowing it, but I never fully grasped syllables. What about you guys, what simple school concepts do you still have trouble with? (And don’t hesitate to see if you can clear up someone elses confusion either, this is both a sharing and a learning thread) ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/2 "2009-03-30T22:05:32Z")
Commas. I suppose because the use can be up to style and interpretation. For example, do these sentences mean the same thing? Which is correct? I don’t know: 1. “In the morning, I went to the store to buy milk, but they didn’t have any.” 2. “In the morning, I went to the store to buy milk but they didn’t have any.” 3. “In the morning I went to the store to buy milk, but they didn’t have any.” 4. “In the morning I went to the store to buy milk but they didn’t have any.” ---
**Author:** ![Weston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8797f3/32.png) [@Weston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weston)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/3 "2009-03-30T22:09:24Z")
Long division. Can’t do it. Can’t ever remember _how_ to do it. I’ve been shown it several times, and I understood it while it was being explained to me. But I always forget how it works. It used to bug me. Now I don’t give a shit. My phone’s got a calculator on it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/4 "2009-03-30T22:14:42Z")
Hm… I don’t really know how to explain syllables but I’ve always thought it was extremely intuitive. One thing that I do have a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around though are the actions of cells and molecules and other extremely, extremely small things. You can explain a sodium-potassium pump to me, and draw a diagram (which helps), but it bugs me that I can never see these things, and when I look at ultra-magnified images of anatomical or chemical structures it looks like a jumbled mass of blob which in no way resembles the crisp, colored artist renditions in textbooks. Never liked chemistry or biology for this reason. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/5 "2009-03-30T22:21:13Z")
Pi, as in 3.14 etc. It’s used as a constant (and what is THAT?) in higher math (higher math to me meaning Trig, having never advanced as far as calculus). What is it supposed to do? WHY did I need it? And why did I need to know how to solve the quadratic equation? God knows I did my share of them, but WHY? I’m all for learning for learning’s sake, but not one teacher EVER put this stuff into any kind of a context for me. And why are story problems so incredibly lame for kids? I don’t care how many ducks Tyler and Susie see at the farm. How about story problems with some relevance? I’m also pretty sure I don’t get (concretely) compound interest (freaking MATH, again!). When I was in elementary school, I couldn’t grasp which syllable was stressed in words strange to me (attempting to figure it out by using only the dictionary guide to pronunciation). I overcame that, but still cannot figure out a melody based on sight reading the notes–not just where on the scale, but also how long to hold the note etc. I have to hear a piece before I can play it. ---
**Author:** ![EpicNonsense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c37758/32.png) [@EpicNonsense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EpicNonsense)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/6 "2009-03-30T22:31:43Z")
Proper hyphen and semi-colon usage. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/7 "2009-03-30T22:32:49Z")
> [@Weston](#): > > Long division. Can’t do it. Can’t ever remember _how_ to do it. I’ve been shown it several times, and I understood it while it was being explained to me. But I always forget how it works. It used to bug me. Now I don’t give a shit. My phone’s got a calculator on it anyway. > [@eleanorigby](#): > > Pi, as in 3.14 etc. It’s used as a constant (and what is THAT?) in higher math (higher math to me meaning Trig, having never advanced as far as calculus). What is it supposed to do? WHY did I need it? And why did I need to know how to solve the quadratic equation? God knows I did my share of them, but WHY? I’m all for learning for learning’s sake, but not one teacher EVER put this stuff into any kind of a context for me. I had one absolutely fantastic maths teacher, who had enough real-world experience from a previous career to be able to put things in context on the spot. One that sticks in my mind is calculating the area under a graph - he told a story, which may or may not have been true, of having had a task to redesign a product bottle to change its volume from say 220ml to 250ml, without changing the height or width. Being able to calculate a curve with the required area underneath, and of the specific height and length, which then could be rotated to produce a circular bottle, was the solution. An additional benefit of this was that when he said the best thing was just to learn something by rote, we trusted him. When we hit algebraic long division, he just said “I know you’ve never done long division since primary school, so here’s how you do it…” I’ll also never ever forget “The log of a number is the power to which the base is raised to give that number”, as long as I live. The advice was simply to recite it until it sank in, and it worked. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/8 "2009-03-30T22:53:54Z")
Gerunds. What the heck are they? ---
**Author:** ![AngelSoft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angelsoft/32/440_2.png) [@AngelSoft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelSoft)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/9 "2009-03-30T22:54:25Z")
Another long division here. Actually anything math related eludes me. I need a calculator to do simple addition and subtraction and when I have to do it in my mind, it takes a while and I do it in a round about way. Like for me to figure out what 27+35 is, I have to go through this thinking process: “Ok so…seven plus three is ten…and five minus three is two…so seven plus five is twelve…and twenty plus thirty is fifty and so if I add twelve that’s…62! The answer is 62!” Basically I have to get to ten at some point to be able to figure it out. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/10 "2009-03-30T22:59:38Z")
> [@AngelSoft](#): > > Another long division here. Actually anything math related eludes me. I need a calculator to do simple addition and subtraction and when I have to do it in my mind, it takes a while and I do it in a round about way. Like for me to figure out what 27+35 is, I have to go through this thinking process: > “Ok so…seven plus three is ten…and five minus three is two…so seven plus five is twelve…and twenty plus thirty is fifty and so if I add twelve that’s…62! The answer is 62!” > Basically I have to get to ten at some point to be able to figure it out. Add the tens first! 27+35…20+30=50, add seven, 57, add (or even count on) five, 62. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/11 "2009-03-30T23:02:09Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Add the tens first! 27+35…20+30=50, add seven, 57, add (or even count on) five, 62. That’s how I do it, it’s also how I won board competitions way back when, I would start adding when they started saying the second number and then modify the result if need be if the next number ended up carrying over, it really pissed them off too because that’s not the “correct” way to do it. Edit: The only thing in math i have real trouble with is my stupid 7 times tables, I don’t know if 7 and base 10 just don’t agree or what, but I hate hate hate multiplying by seven. ---
**Author:** ![AngelSoft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angelsoft/32/440_2.png) [@AngelSoft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelSoft)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/12 "2009-03-30T23:04:21Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Add the tens first! 27+35…20+30=50, add seven, 57, add (or even count on) five, 62. I just tried doing that and man it completely confused me and I lost track of the numbers! ---
**Author:** ![Cunctator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/43a26b/32.png) [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/13 "2009-03-30T23:10:06Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > I’ll also never ever forget “The log of a number is the power to which the base is raised to give that number”, as long as I live. The advice was simply to recite it until it sank in, and it worked. I recite this precise phrase too whenever I have to use logs. > [@AngelSoft](#): > > Another long division here. I know many people who say the same thing. I think the problem stems from school where short and long division were taught as if they were two separate things, when conceptually they’re exactly the same. ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/14 "2009-03-30T23:10:31Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > Pi, as in 3.14 etc. It’s used as a constant (and what is THAT?) in higher math (higher math to me meaning Trig, having never advanced as far as calculus). What is it supposed to do? WHY did I need it? And why did I need to know how to solve the quadratic equation? God knows I did my share of them, but WHY? I’m all for learning for learning’s sake, but not one teacher EVER put this stuff into any kind of a context for me. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s diameter (the distance across it) to the circumference (the distance around the outside). The distance around the outside of the circles is always 3.14159… times the distance directly across it. So, for example, the area around the outside of a circle that is 1cm across is 3.14159 cm. The same constant happens to be involved in the equation for a circle’s area, and zillions of other more complicated formulas that involve circles in some way. It’s a constant because it never changes - it’s just a property of the geometry of the world we live in. It comes up often in math and physics for that reason, sometimes in places you wouldn’t intuitively expect geometry to matter… ---
**Author:** ![imfloating](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bc79bd/32.png) [@imfloating](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/imfloating)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/15 "2009-03-30T23:23:20Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > Commas. I suppose because the use can be up to style and interpretation. For example, do these sentences mean the same thing? Which is correct? I don’t know: > > 1. “In the morning, I went to the store to buy milk, but they didn’t have any.” > > 2. “In the morning, I went to the store to buy milk but they didn’t have any.” > > 3. “In the morning I went to the store to buy milk, but they didn’t have any.” > > 4. “In the morning I went to the store to buy milk but they didn’t have any.” Not getting any better, come home soon. Not getting any, better come home soon. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/16 "2009-03-30T23:25:29Z")
I never got passed advanced arithmetic (i.e. multivariable calculus). I didn’t even take everything in that area, since I didn’t have time for linear algebra or differential equations (both of which I’d like to learn at some point, just for fun.) While I’m not _good_ at it, I’m able to learn it. What I have trouble with is the math that (for the most part) isn’t required by other disciplines. Weird (to me) theory stuff. Discrete math. Prove that 0 = -0, or that the square root of two is irrational. Math classes where the homework has no numbers or equations. Pretty much anything with proofs. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/17 "2009-03-30T23:31:25Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > Pi, as in 3.14 etc. \*\*It’s used as a constant \*\*(and what is THAT?) in higher math (higher math to me meaning Trig, having never advanced as far as calculus). What is it supposed to do? WHY did I need it? There’s your problem right there. Pi isn’t USED as a constant; it IS a constant. It’s not arbitrary. It’s a quantity that shows up over and over in the structure of the world, in more than just circles and diameters. I blame Loki. Apparently he thought throwing that number all over the place would be funny. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/18 "2009-03-31T00:07:35Z")
The physics of electricity. You know, those “here’s a circuit diagram with some random resistors thrown in, what is the voltage between points A and B, and the amperage at point C ?” exercises. Never got the hang of that. ---
**Author:** ![starwarsfreek42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@starwarsfreek42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/starwarsfreek42)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/19 "2009-03-31T00:08:34Z")
Imaginary numbers. If you can imagine there’s a number there, you can imagine I got a B+ on this test. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/20 "2009-03-31T00:14:33Z")
To the OP, perhaps counting the number of distinct vowel sounds would be a good intuitive guide to the number of syllables? [Disclaimers: count diphthongs as one vowel sound, this method won’t tell you how to associate onsets and codas with nuclei, there is the technical complication of syllabic sonorant consonants, and, oh, yeah, you do need to actually have some feel for what vowel sounds are… but this basic idea could probably help you build some intuition for what “syllable” means, all the same] [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355.md?page=2)