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Are You Good at Math?

BlueScreen

Fail 2.0
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
2,668
MBTI Type
YMCA
That sounds like bad teaching. No wonder it drove you nuts. Math is about patterns, processes, and results, but I suppose it is harder to teach that way for someone who doesn't really understand it him/herself.
Agree. I used to tutor maths a bit and when someone was struggling it was usually a case of changing how they looked at things rather than feeding them lots of info to rote learn.

You often get these problems because teacher/student styles don't match. Things that are actually quite simple if seen for what they are, suddenly become complex beasts that require lots of learning. I think some teachers want to seem smart too, so make things seem hard when they would actually be easy if communicated to the student in a context that they can readily understand.
 
Joined
Aug 7, 2019
Messages
775
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INTJ
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-
I remember that When I was in elementary school, i was chosen by my teacher to become school representatives for math competition. But in high school, may be because of too much playing playstation, my academic mark was not as good as in elementary school.
 
Joined
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775
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INTJ
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But Now with free ebooks on the net and lots of math forum: mathstackexchange, math10forum, etc, we can pursue our interest in mathematics further if we had the opportunity. I did not choose a math major in university since , I could only predict that the person can only be accepted professionally as a teacher, while in the country I live in, teachers are not paid well.

I have tested my memory of mathematics formula taught in highschool after leaving highschool for about 2 decades by closing any source: internet, books, but my mind. I find that I can still remember of the formulas and i can still mention the topics of math that I haven't studied for 2 decades. It signifies that my mind can still retain a good memory of mathematics. It is different with the more recent business theory that I learnt in university. I find some I couldn't come to my mind. I feel that math is definitely a subject for me.

If I had the chance like getting scholarship, I would go to university again to study math. But, I think that doing a degree in university on my own expense is not worth the money. I can learn math autodidactly which is much cheaper altough there is no diploma I will receive.
 

Morpeko

Noble Wolf
Joined
Sep 20, 2017
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5,414
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LEFV
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461
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sx/sp
I was great at any level of high school math, up until calculus. Algebra, geometry, pre-calculus, and statistics came super naturally to me especially in comparison to my classmates. However, I never took AP Calc because quite frankly, it scared me. I didn't do very well in physics.
 

Frosty

Poking the poodle
Joined
Apr 6, 2015
Messages
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Im better at math than most people I meet. Im not a math genius, but most people just seem so ridiculously bad at math that its crazy to me. Math really isnt that hard, once you understand how to do one type of problem you can do many similar types. Its just a muscle you have to stretch.

Id say Im better than at least 80% of people that I meet at math. Not because I am some kind of genius, but just because Ive always been decent at pattern recognition and I dont run scared at the idea of solving a math problem
 

Kanra Jest

Av'ent'Gar'de ~
Joined
Jun 30, 2015
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2,388
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ENTP
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4w3
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sx/so
Kind of. But I despise it. At least normally. Standardized math I don't care about and find boring as hell?

I use to make dragonball z power level charts way back in the day all the time though. That involves plenty of calculations. Lol

I was obsessed with math in power levels, heights, weights, of people, of objects (like a car weights 1 ton, a pickup truck 4 tons, buildings at 200,000 tons, ect), now mbti types

Fun fact: most celebrities lie about their height
Fun fact: empire state building is around 350,000 tons
Fun fact: A monkey is 4 times stronger than humans (presumably your average humans)

When I throw basketballs into hoops or went bowling I always did precise calculations and minor adjustments to make it in the hoop easily. People ended up asking if I played basketball cuz I got a dozen hoops in a row.

It's still a form of Math


That's more like Ti statistics though than general math (general math annoys me and I often find pointless)
 

Lexicon

Temporal Mechanic
Staff member
Joined
Sep 28, 2008
Messages
12,342
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JINX
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5w6
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sp/sx
Hate it. Horrible at it. My brain just shorts out when it comes to numbers. Letters? I can see paragraphs in my head. My spelling is decent. If I had to choose which I'd rather have a problem with, math wins hands down. If I had that level of difficulty with writing and language in general, I'd live in a cave somewhere.

This reflects my sentiments, 100%.

Math never came easily to me, but I was reading by age 3, & writing at a 'college level' (which, honestly isn't saying much, but all the same) by 5th or 6th grade.

I moved often, growing up. I could catch up in school on practically everything, but teachers didn't always have similar enough sequencing or speeds with their math lesson plans, so I was lost, most of the time. I also had some teachers who seemed to only know how to teach in one way, vs tailor it to the student, or actively seek out where I was struggling within a problem. They'd just tap at the paper impatiently, repeating verbatim what they'd already said that had made no sense to me the first time around.

At one point in college, I took my math class online because of scheduling issues. I actually had a much easier time figuring it out myself, but it still never came as easily to me as reading comprehension or writing ability.
 

Burning Paradigm

Vibe Curator & Night Owl
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May 16, 2020
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Not particularly excellent. Basic arithmetic and enough to complement the tasks at hand for my future career (i.e. basic calculus, statistics, etc.). I find myself really adept at statistics, surprisingly.

If you showed me Calculus BC concepts from HS, though, I need more than a few jolts of electricity to refresh my memory lol.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

Up the Wolves
Joined
Jul 24, 2008
Messages
19,444
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INTP
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5w6
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sp/so
I'm not a math genius, but I would say I'm good at it. For me it involved breaking down the concepts and understanding why things were actually the case. I'd build my own understanding of what was going on, often independently of the way the teacher was introducing things. That's Ti, I suppose.
 

Maou

Mythos
Joined
Jun 20, 2018
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Don't know, I've rarely had a teacher that cared.
 

Saturnal Snowqueen

Solastalgia 𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊
Joined
Jan 9, 2019
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9w1
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so/sp
I was up until like 8th grade, and then it just stopped registering for me. Even when the formulas were right in front of me, my brain would kind of overcomplicate things and not understand the formula right. I knew that I didn't understand it, but I also didn't ask questions, because I was so lost that I didn't know what I didn't know and thus didn't know what to ask. Math in college was especially horrific, I never skipped classes and I got tutoring but I still flopped. I would watch the teacher and read my book, but it's like everything she said went out one ear and out the other and I don't know why. I learned more from my tutors and the online app, but even then I didn't learn much. I suck at all kinds of math beyond times tables and fractions, but I am pretty good at guessing the time and calculating dates so I guess that counts.
 

RadicalDoubt

Alongside Questionable Clarity
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Jun 27, 2017
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9w1
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I'm ok at it, but much slower than a lot of people I know. I am a stem major, so compared to the average I'm likely "pretty good," but compared to my peers I'm average to subpar. I'm good at what interests me (ie. I was really good at QIP and matrix math, but I'm not really great at calculus for example).
 

Indigo Rodent

Active member
Joined
Apr 4, 2019
Messages
439
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INTP
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1w9
I'm very bad at math because I have dysgraphia. When I was in primary and high school, textbooks sort of sucked so I could never catch up the stuff I couldn't learn because I was too slow with writing.
 

Forever_Jung

Active member
Joined
May 23, 2009
Messages
2,644
MBTI Type
ESFJ
You could say I'm good at math in the same way a talking bird could be described as a skilled orator. I have a few mathematical parlour tricks I use to "impress" people, with very little genuine understanding of the subject. I will drunkenly do rapid mental calculations at party to amuse and entertain, and at work I'm quite skilled at fabricating narratives out of statistical data which I know doesn't hold up to real scrutiny, but it keeps dopey higher-ups at bay and impresses my colleagues. I'm really good at calculating percentages in my head as well, and was dubbed "Rain Man" by some of my former HS classmates.
 

Frosty

Poking the poodle
Joined
Apr 6, 2015
Messages
12,667
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sp
You could say I'm good at math in the same way a talking bird could be described as a skilled orator. I have a few mathematical parlour tricks I use to "impress" people, with very little genuine understanding of the subject. I will drunkenly do rapid mental calculations at party to amuse and entertain, and at work I'm quite skilled at fabricating narratives out of statistical data which I know doesn't hold up to real scrutiny, but it keeps dopey higher-ups at bay and impresses my colleagues. I'm really good at calculating percentages in my head as well, and was dubbed "Rain Man" by some of my former HS classmates.

Same. I play sort of math games in my head sometimes. Finding percentages like idk 3/17ths is what percent? Sort of thing. Im decent at it, to the point where I can do easier problems pretty well pretty quickly. Like idk. 1/7th. 3/8ths. That sort of thing. Also do things like doubling, tripling. Finding 3rds. 5ths. Basically multiplication and division.

I can do that sort of stuff pretty significantly above average because I enjoy doing it occasionally in my head like, on the way home from work, waiting in offices for appointments, before sleeping, that sort of thing.

But give me calculus and no. Formulas are hard if I cant understand them, and things like logs and other things that really you cant do in your head just- dont make sense to me.

So I understand bits and pieces. But on the whole not really.
 
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