# 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:** 7
**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:** [April 1, 2009, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/121 "2009-04-01T20:38:20Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Do you actually have troublew understanding the concepts of “Gerunds,” or is it just that nobody’s ever explained them? > > A gerund is just a verb used as a noun. It usually ends with -ing. > > “Cycling is good exercise.” - “Cycling” is used here as a noun, not a verb. > “I think fighting should be banned from hockey.” Wow, thank you. Ignorance fought. Much simpler than the Wikipedia explanations of “non-finite verb form”, “a verb’s action noun”, “present participle (ending in -ing) and can behave as a verb within a clause”… whaaaa?! ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/122 "2009-04-01T20:43:45Z")
> [@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 wish I could remember that. That, and how to multiply matrices. I just can’t remember which values go where. I use both enough that it’s annoying to have to look it up, but not enough to have it stamped in my brain. I basically suck at learning by rote (or maybe I’m just too lazy), which is probably why I had such a hard time learning foreign languages. The only foreign language I’m any good at is English, and that’s more or less just because of American films & TV shows, and that when I was learning programming, the only decent books available were in English (or German, but mostly English). ---
**Author:** ![Foxy40](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a9a28c/32.png) [@Foxy40](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foxy40)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/123 "2009-04-01T20:59:24Z")
> [@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. It took me two hours to go through 15 problems with my daughter last night. I think she is going to be the same as you. She just doesn’t get long division. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/124 "2009-04-01T21:49:04Z")
> [@Charger](#): > > The phrase “6 _times_ 5,” for example, confused me. But the light came on one day when I rearranged it to “6, 5 times.” Unfortunately, that’s wrong. It actually means 5, 6 times. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/125 "2009-04-01T22:45:36Z")
Is this an academic subject? The internal combustion engine. Seriously. I have had NUMEROUS mechanically-inclined significant others and friends and acquaintances take me out to my car, open the hood, and spent the next hour or so explaining how this part works with this part and they both make THAT part do THIS thing… It sticks for about 15 minutes, and then poof, like magic (or the gasoline in the internal combustion engine, I suppose) it vanishes. Makes me a sucker for auto repair places, I’m sure. ---
**Author:** ![Charger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df788c/32.png) [@Charger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charger)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/126 "2009-04-01T23:05:45Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > Unfortunately, that’s wrong. It actually means 5, 6 times. I guess I never though of it that way, but the result is still the same. I just remember the elation of discovering that “times” actually could be applied in a way that made sense. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/127 "2009-04-01T23:24:33Z")
> [@Charger](#): > > I guess I never though of it that way, but the result is still the same. I just remember the elation of discovering that “times” actually could be applied in a way that made sense. If you’re wondering about the distinction let me illustrate (with variables!) 6 \* x can be written as “six times x” or “x, six times”, sure multiplication is commutative and you could write “x times six” or “six, x times” but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. “x, six times”: x + x + x + x + x + x “six, x times”: 6 + uh… wait, what? (Of course, this is meaningless when using constants, 6x5 is the same as 5x6 in result) ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/128 "2009-04-01T23:36:42Z")
“six, x times” makes just as much sense. It’s the sum of some number of 6s. How many, exactly? Well, it’s left unspecified; we’ve just called it “x”. It’s no problem that it’s left unspecified, any more than it’s a problem that the actual quantities being added in x + x + x + x + x + x have been left unspecified. ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/129 "2009-04-01T23:37:01Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > “x, six times”: > x + x + x + x + x + x > > “six, x times”: > > 6 + uh… wait, what? > > (Of course, this is meaningless when using constants, 6x5 is the same as 5x6 in result) Maybe you could reversible placeholders for the “6” and “x” if instead you use summation (∑ sigma) notation. In the second example, the “x” would go on top of the ∑ and the “6” would go to the right. However, I’ve never seen a summation with just a constant on the right so don’t know if that is valid notation. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/130 "2009-04-01T23:45:58Z")
I simply don’t ‘get’ a lot of higher maths. There’s a simple reason for this - I stopped going to school when I was 12, and only went back when I was 16 - and then it wasn’t school, but sixth-form college, where I could choose which subjects to study. I passed GCSE maths, but that’s as far as I go. I don’t even really know what trigonometry _is_. > [@Jragon](#): > > 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. Have you ever tried the ‘beat it out on the table method?’ Uh, for syllables, I mean. 😃 How many times would you beat the table for the word ‘enough’? Syllables is just another way of saying ‘beats.’ Can you beat out a tune on your desk? Can you beat out the tune of the song line ‘I just can’t get enough’? > [@NicePete](#): > > Frustrating. > > If you’re still wondering, I could try explaining, but it might be too confusing. So I’m abstaining and refraining from elaborating on verbal noun-ing. Of course, those are mostly good example of words that aren’t gerunds. 😃 > [@CutterJohn](#): > > Theres a lot in this thread that reminds me of what annoyed me in school.. Syllables. Granted, I understand what they are and how to determine how many are in a sentence, but what in the world is the point of this knowledge? They help with spelling, music, creative writing and learning foreign languages. > [@Reply](#): > > Wow, thank you. Ignorance fought. > > Much simpler than the Wikipedia explanations of “non-finite verb form”, “a verb’s action noun”, “present participle (ending in -ing) and can behave as a verb within a clause”… whaaaa?! Well, the first and third explanations are wrong, so it’s no wonder they don’t help! ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/131 "2009-04-01T23:50:41Z")
I don’t get a lot of higher maths either. Or the middle maths. Or the lower maths. Basically, what I’m saying is I kind of suck at the maths. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/132 "2009-04-01T23:57:37Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > “six, x times” makes just as much sense. It’s the sum of some number of 6s. How many, exactly? Well, it’s left unspecified; we’ve just called it “x”. It’s no problem that it’s left unspecified, any more than it’s a problem that the actual quantities being added in x + x + x + x + x + x have been left unspecified. I was simply illustrating the distinction, what you said is true but I was just showing why “5, 6 times” and “6, 5 times” aren’t the same concept with a convenient method to have to “accidentally” say “oops” in the explanation. It may not be EXACLTY true, but ti helps illustrate (just a little). ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/133 "2009-04-02T00:14:43Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > Maybe you could reversible placeholders for the “6” and “x” if instead you use summation (∑ sigma) notation. In the second example, the “x” would go on top of the ∑ and the “6” would go to the right. However, I’ve never seen a summation with just a constant on the right so don’t know if that is valid notation. Yes, it’s perfectly valid (no point crippling general notation to prevent it from being used in trivial ways). But **Jragon** has clarified that his purpose was merely to help illustrate the distinction between “5, 6 times” [5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5] and “6, 5 times” [6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6]. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/134 "2009-04-02T01:25:59Z")
\ Don’t make me use it. \ 6x5 or 5x6 is still 30. GO AWAY with the rest of it. Chances are the poster will never need to appreciate the fine distinction. \ 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/135 "2009-04-02T01:27:10Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > This is the problem with (what I gather to be) the (rather limited) way they try to teach proof in high school… way too unnecessarily bureaucratic. There’s a time and place for this level of formality, but it’s not the end-all, be-all of proofs, and it only kills intuition to make it one’s first introduction to the very idea of rigorous mathematical argument. Who gives a shit whether you know the name someone once came up with for this particular property? The name doesn’t matter; it’s just terminology. You know the property you’re referring to. You understand the concept. That’s all that matters. That’s for sure. I am, if I may say, awesome at grammar, but I was sometimes hampered at it just by the terminology. I could show you exactly what was wrong with the sentence but not what it was called. I got better, but it seemed to be more of a hindrance than was necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/136 "2009-04-02T01:56:00Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > That’s for sure. I am, if I may say, awesome at grammar, but I was sometimes hampered at it just by the terminology. I could show you exactly what was wrong with the sentence but not what it was called. I got better, but it seemed to be more of a hindrance than was necessary. I got accepted to an MA program in English without knowing what a dependent clause was. I knew what a subordinate clause was; what I didn’t know was that they’re the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/137 "2009-04-02T02:29:06Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Wow, thank you. Ignorance fought. > > Much simpler than the Wikipedia explanations of “non-finite verb form”, “a verb’s action noun”, “present participle (ending in -ing) and can behave as a verb within a clause”… whaaaa?! Wikipedia articles on grammar are absurdly complicated. Everything in that article’s true, it’s just the third-year-college version where what most people need for this stuff is the straighforward normal-human version. There was some other concept in English I looked up once - I don’t remember exactly what it is - and the Wikipedia article, and other resources I found online, left me more confused than I’d started. Here is the Wikipedia opening paragraph for “Noun”: > [@](#): > > In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.[1] Now I’m not sure I know what a noun is. It’s a tangent, but academic writing is quite often the worst writing you’ll ever encounter, every bit as terrible as l33tsp33k. Last year my alma mater, Queen’s University in Kingston, launched a controversial program called the “Intergroup Dialogue Program.” The jist of it was, according to the news reports, that students would be trained to intervene if they heard students saying anything objectionable about a race, gender, etc. As you can imagine, some were screaming “Thought police!” and some were saying “No, it’s not like that.” So I went to the Queen’s website, to the pages explaining the program, to see for myself. I didn’t understand them. None of them. I am an educated man with way above-average skill at reading and writing English. My job requires me to be very precise in reading and understanding English at many levels of complexity. I’m no Einstein, but I know my English. I’m telling you right now it was absolutely indecipherable jabber; I honestly could not gather what the Intergroup Dialogue Program was. I assumed the problem was mine and went back a few times, and finally concluded that the pages had either been cobbled together by a committee of the dumbest sociology grad students in the world, or that they were deliberately written to defy understanding. They read EXACTLY like Wikipedia articles on grammar. I wonder, honestly, how many people in this thread have just never had things explained simply to them and think they’re dumb when in fact the person explaining it was dumb. (Regrettably the program was terminated and the pages taken down because I’d love to link to them to show just how bad academic language can be. They were indescribably terrible.) ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/138 "2009-04-02T02:43:02Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Wikipedia articles on grammar are absurdly complicated. Everything in that article’s true, it’s just the third-year-college version where what most people need for this stuff is the straighforward normal-human version. There was some other concept in English I looked up once - I don’t remember exactly what it is - and the Wikipedia article, and other resources I found online, left me more confused than I’d started. > > Here is the Wikipedia opening paragraph for “Noun”: > Now I’m not sure I know what a noun is. > > It’s a tangent, but academic writing is quite often the worst writing you’ll ever encounter, every bit as terrible as l33tsp33k. Last year my alma mater, Queen’s University in Kingston, launched a controversial program called the “Intergroup Dialogue Program.” The jist of it was, according to the news reports, that students would be trained to intervene if they heard students saying anything objectionable about a race, gender, etc. As you can imagine, some were screaming “Thought police!” and some were saying “No, it’s not like that.” So I went to the Queen’s website, to the pages explaining the program, to see for myself. > > I didn’t understand them. None of them. I am an educated man with way above-average skill at reading and writing English. My job requires me to be very precise in reading and understanding English at many levels of complexity. I’m no Einstein, but I know my English. I’m telling you right now it was absolutely indecipherable jabber; I honestly could not gather what the Intergroup Dialogue Program was. I assumed the problem was mine and went back a few times, and finally concluded that the pages had either been cobbled together by a committee of the dumbest sociology grad students in the world, or that they were deliberately written to defy understanding. > > They read EXACTLY like Wikipedia articles on grammar. > > I wonder, honestly, how many people in this thread have just never had things explained simply to them and think they’re dumb when in fact the person explaining it was dumb. > > (Regrettably the program was terminated and the pages taken down because I’d love to link to them to show just how bad academic language can be. They were indescribably terrible.) This is why [http://simple.wikipedia.org](http://simple.wikipedia.org) is so good sometimes. Here’s their definition of a Noun: > [@](#): > > A noun is a kind of word (see part of speech) that is usually the name of a person, place, thing, quality, or idea. Hooray! Something Jim in Accounting can understand! What simple wikipedia lacks in nuance and depth it more than makes for in being able to, you know, actually understand something. Wikipedia has gotten all kinds of bad, my old Biology teacher (who has a doctorate in some related field) wouldn’t even touch wikipedia pages on his subject because of how dense and unparsable they are. Oddly enough the computer science articles seem to be better, and that’s not just because I know comp-sci fairly well. Check out: > **[Object-oriented programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Oriented)** > > Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on objects – software entities that encapsulate data and function(s). An OOP computer program consists of objects that interact with one another. An OOP language is one that provides object-oriented programming features, but as the set of features that contribute to OOP is contested, classifying a language as OOP – and the degree to which it supports OOP – is debatable. As paradigms are not mutually exclusive, a language c Notabl... The definition may be a bit dense, but there’s not much you won’t understand if you scroll down to “Fundamental concepts.” ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/139 "2009-04-02T02:55:26Z")
Well, as I’ve argued several times here, defining “noun” as “person, place, or thing [or quality, or idea, or what have you]” is both wrong-headed in its focus on what the word means, and so fuzzy as to be useless [Isn’t “hungry” a quality? Isn’t “multiply” an idea? Is there _anything_ which isn’t a thing?]. The thing is, parts of speech _are_ abstract syntactic concepts (which the layperson has little actual need for), not semantic ones; to determine a word’s part of speech, you don’t look at its meaning, but at where it can occur in a sentence. You don’t need to know what the word “masgord” means in “Well, the masgord is cause for concern” to see that it is a noun. The Wikipedia article on “noun” can be rather offputtingly abstruse, but I think the thing to do is to try to say the same thing more clearly, rather than resort to a popular but broken alternative definition on grounds of simplicity. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2009, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355/140 "2009-04-02T14:04:35Z")
> [@eleanorigby](#): > > 6x5 or 5x6 is still 30. GO AWAY with the rest of it. Chances are the poster will never need to appreciate the fine distinction. Funny, though. The distinction is really a grammatical/linguistic one, not really a mathematical one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-simple-academic-concepts-have-you-never-been-able-to-grasp/491355.md?page=8)