# Why do people hate math so much? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 20, 2011, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135 "2011-06-20T11:29:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/161 "2011-06-27T21:23:52Z")
> [@ENugent](#): > > In my experience, relatively few bad math teachers are “mathematicians” - the teachers who destroy students’ interest and self-confidence in math are usually the ones who have been dragooned into teaching it and hate it themselves (especially elementary school teachers, who have to teach all the subjects whether they like them or not). Aha! I didn’t know that. I thought math teachers had to be mathematicians of some sort or another. So, then that brings another question to mind, why then, DON’T mathematicians teach? (or teach more often that is) It sounds, from this thread, as if they have a love and passion for the subject, which (again psychologically speaking) would be brought to the classroom. It seems as if that would be a good place to start. > [@](#): > > The MIT Ballroom Dance Team is arguably the second-best in the country (after BYU, which has a much more intensive academic program - it’s purely extracurricular at MIT). 🙂 That’s right, they ARE! Didn’t they compete on one of those dancing shows a few years back? The one with the two judges from DWTS? ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/162 "2011-06-27T21:26:31Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > “Some of us have to work” is Aruqvan’s quote. Does that change your opinion about who was insulting who? I took her statement to be a shortcut of what I explained above (that is, that by the time a person gets to a certain point in life, it’s illogical and unrealistic to try and go back and relearn something that far back in the dust). I didn’t see it as an insult or to state that mathematicians don’t “work,” merely back up to support “math isn’t easy”. Which, for the purposes of this thread, should possibly be defined. What IS “easy” anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/163 "2011-06-27T22:14:45Z")
> [@CanvasShoes](#): > > Aha! I didn’t know that. I thought math teachers had to be mathematicians of some sort or another. So, then that brings another question to mind, why then, DON’T mathematicians teach? (or teach more often that is) It sounds, from this thread, as if they have a love and passion for the subject, which (again psychologically speaking) would be brought to the classroom. It seems as if that would be a good place to start. Well, I for one am getting there as fast as I can, but I’ve got to get on the teacher training course first. Meanwhile, the class of rising-12s I shepherded through a staffing emergency at the start of the school year - who were eating out of my hand and getting some serious work done -are now being “taught” by someone who not only has no control over the class but whose grasp of math is execrable… but who does have the piece of paper saying “Teacher”. Gets frustrating sometimes. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/164 "2011-06-27T22:41:51Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > This is a nice idea in theory, but impracticable in reality unless you have infinite time. On a 50-minute trig exam, one doesn’t have time to re-derive every trig identity (there are billions of them) necessary to solve each problem. So you have no choice but to commit a minimum number of things to memory. Perhaps this is a “there’s two kinds of people in the world” situation. It seems impossible to you that one could derive these things quickly enough to pass a test. It seems impossible to me that one could memorize enough of these things to pass a test. Similarly to **Indistinguishable** I went through my gradeschool math classes by basically rederiving everything from starting from Grade 6 pre-algebra, with a few new axioms tacked on towards the end of each year. I’d go through this re-derivation every time I’d sit down to take a test. I couldn’t do it any other way–my ability to memorize things seems to be very deficient compared to many other students. I failed hard by my standards at Calculus precisely because there was so much taught in that class which I couldn’t simply rederive from what I’d learned before. (This is one of those “I wish I could live that part of my life over” events for me…) So by that token, perhaps your way is better in some ways–more willingness and ability to memorize on my part may have helped at that point. On the other hand, it seems to me that being able to derive complex math from first-ish principles reflects an important part of the kind of reasoning I think is really valuable in math education. So… ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/165 "2011-06-27T22:44:55Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I just remember the “SOHCAHTOA” mnemonic device we were taught in high school Oh has she any hot cakes or apple tarts? ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/166 "2011-06-27T22:45:41Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Well, I for one am getting there as fast as I can, but I’ve got to get on the teacher training course first. Meanwhile, the class of rising-12s I shepherded through a staffing emergency at the start of the school year - who were eating out of my hand and getting some serious work done -are now being “taught” by someone who not only has no control over the class but whose grasp of math is execrable… but who does have the piece of paper saying “Teacher”. Gets frustrating sometimes. :smack: IMHO, this is really the crux of the matter. From first grade on (where the teacher absolutely traumatized me), until well after high school, math had been a trial for me. (Not “checkbook math” though, If it’s about money, I’m astonishingly on it.). So when I went to college at 30something (I’d decided to have a family instead of going to college right after HS), I was shell shocked by simple things like pi in my petroleum science and instrumentation classes. My science prof kindly (and probably thinking it was of no use) suggested I get a math tutor. The lady’s name was Sandy Green, and from the first she found the “click” that would allow me to understand where I needed to go, to “get” equations and such. I went from barely passing math with d’s in HS to only doing checkbook and waitress math to getting a B in college algebra. And Bs and Cs in other math/chemistry related classes I took. Now, that doesn’t sound all that fabulous until you consider that I’d either flunked, or barely passed with a D, any other math class I’d ever taken since first grade. I’m positive that had I not been working three jobs and raising two kids in addition to school, I probably could have even gotten a few A’s out of the deal. And I wasn’t some “sleeper” either. I’m one who prior to that (and I NEVER have anxiety attacks) would shake, cry and become seriously nauseated when faced with equations and worse. Within literally hours, this woman had cut through the mental block and basically handed me a key. And she never made me feel stupid or defective for not just automatically knowing it all (since it’s all SO easy and all you know). She just gently asked questions, and tried tactics until it just … just clicked. I can’t describe it any better than that. I’ll never be a natural, and I don’t remember a lot of the things I learned back then (that was 20 years ago), but I’ve been much better at math since then, that’s for sure. I wish we could clone her and pass her around US schools. Sandy and attitudes like hers are really what is needed in the math world in order to truly make math “easy”. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/167 "2011-06-27T22:45:57Z")
> [@CanvasShoes](#): > > Aha! I didn’t know that. I thought math teachers had to be mathematicians of some sort or another. So, then that brings another question to mind, why then, DON’T mathematicians teach? (or teach more often that is) It sounds, from this thread, as if they have a love and passion for the subject, which (again psychologically speaking) would be brought to the classroom. It seems as if that would be a good place to start. We do teach at the college level, but the people who leave high school without a strong foundation in math probably aren’t going to get to see any of that. The problems with teaching at lower levels is that the job is much more about classroom management, which is not interesting to a research mathematician, and that the material just isn’t as exciting. I agree that it’d be great if we could get more good math teachers in pre-college education, but you’re not going to attract somebody who wants to spend their time engaged with complex mathematics. (And for the record, I’m a damn good dancer if I do say so myself.) ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/168 "2011-06-27T23:26:51Z")
> [@CanvasShoes](#): > > I took her statement to be a shortcut of what I explained above (that is, that by the time a person gets to a certain point in life, it’s illogical and unrealistic to try and go back and relearn something that far back in the dust). I didn’t see it as an insult or to state that mathematicians don’t “work,” merely back up to support “math isn’t easy”. Which, for the purposes of this thread, should possibly be defined. What IS “easy” anyway? Thanks. I never said math was easy, and I agree that it’s often taught badly by the way. ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/169 "2011-06-27T23:30:24Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Thanks. > > I never said math was easy, and I agree that it’s often taught badly by the way. No, _you_ haven’t, but several people in this thread have, and out in the academic world it’s a standard mentality. That is, “math is easy, if you don’t think it is (and have to struggle at all), you’re an idiot”. That idea as much as (maybe more than) the math itself, is the answer to the OP’s question. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2011, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/170 "2011-06-28T22:21:51Z")
> [@YaraMateo](#): > > Also, people are either left brained or right brained. If you’re more left (I think it’s left) you’re more into the artistic and emotional. Where are right brained people are into logic and science. So, non right brained people wouldn’t enjoy math. I’m also not good at long math problems (and problems that require plugging and rechecking) because I often invert numbers. Complete and utter bullshit. Any cursory reading on the life of Bertrand Russell (arguably the twentieth century’s greatest logician-cum-philosopher and Nobel Prize in Literature winner) will dispel this. I’m not sure why humanities students (and yes, this propaganda is overwhelmingly one-sided in its provenance — I have yet to hear a mathematician or computer scientist rail against literature, for instance, as if it’s an impenetrable enigma in the same way artists will yammer on incessantly about the horrors of mathematics) keep pushing the dichotomy between mathematics and science on the one hand, and the humanities and arts on the other, as if it’s impossible to enjoy and excel in both. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2011, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/171 "2011-06-30T10:38:18Z")
I’m curious if those who are “bad at math” feel they are particularly brilliant in other areas? ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2011, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135/172 "2011-06-30T13:30:12Z")
This is about the equivalent of asking why everyone isn’t a serious artist. The answer is that _gasp_ people are different, and some people’s talents and skills lie elsewhere. In fact, in addition to not going out of my way to perform math tasks beyond what is necessary, I also don’t go out of my way to draw or sketch, because I suck at drawing. I’m good at photography though. Why aren’t you a photographer? Jeez. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-people-hate-math-so-much/586135.md?page=8)