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[NT] NT's Good at Math?

IrishGuy

New member
Joined
Sep 27, 2009
Messages
11
MBTI Type
INTJ
Well, I'm an INTJ but my N and S are relatively close (I test ast ISTJ about 15% of time) and math did come to me quite naturally. I think it came to me naturally because as a child and later as an adult because I always wanted to put things into order and math can help to accomplish that (like building something).

My ISTJ friends were always very good at math and tend to be quite talented when it comes to working through the details of a problem/project. However, they seem to have a terrible time applying those concepts beyond math problems. They can understand what's going on, but putting that understanding into 3 dimensions can be a challenge for them.

Bottom line is that I think there is something to be said for the suggestion that an N/S balance helps with math. The S will help you to understand the details, but the N will help to apply those concepts in unique ways.
 

corey_vann

New member
Joined
Aug 22, 2009
Messages
153
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
8sx
I have a love/hate relationship with math. I love it because it's one of the few things I find mentally challenging (good this this is the NT forum, or that could have sounded cocky). I hate it because when I'm doing poorly at it, I feel like I'm somehow less than I should be. It's nice to know being a math nerd isn't a requirement to be an NT.
 

Haphazard

Don't Judge Me!
Joined
Apr 14, 2008
Messages
6,704
MBTI Type
ENFJ
I can only understand math as part of a system. The only way I 'get it' is if I see it in action, so I might not 'get' something until long after I 'learned' it.
 

Venom

Babylon Candle
Joined
Feb 10, 2008
Messages
2,126
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
1w9
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I can only understand math as part of a system. The only way I 'get it' is if I see it in action, so I might not 'get' something until long after I 'learned' it.

i second this. learning proofs never helped me. watching 1000000 examples and I 'll learn it without even trying. Chemistry and Physics dept should be in charge of math teaching. The math department needs to stay the fuck away haha.
 

Matthew_Z

That chalkboard guy
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
1,256
MBTI Type
xxxx
i second this. learning proofs never helped me. watching 1000000 examples and I 'll learn it without even trying. Chemistry and Physics dept should be in charge of math teaching. The math department needs to stay the fuck away haha.

Math Departments are usually consistent. While I can appreciate change, I do not appreciate "let's uproot a fully functional system because we can, giving everyone the stress of having to change their schedules in order to adapt." Darned English Department. INTP "keep external world simple," if you will.

</slightly-on-topic rant>
 

paintmuffin

New member
Joined
May 14, 2009
Messages
159
MBTI Type
eNTP
I love math as a concept, but hate math CLASS. It was just too easy and slow! I always leaned heavily on test scores or my habit of (semi-politely) correcting my teachers' work for my straight-A grades; I never had to do much homework or take any notes... I just, well, understood things immediately. People came to me with questions instead of the math teacher (although whether I helped them or not depended on my mood)..

Please don't tell me I'm actually an SJ.....
 

Nyx

New member
Joined
Jul 31, 2009
Messages
444
Am I the only NT who is rubbish with math? I can't understand it at all, I was only just slightly above average in primary school and once I hit high school I become below average. I can do well in every other subject but with math...I just freeze and my mind goes blank and I feel stupid and I hate feeling stupid. No matter how hard I study I always end up making stupid little mistakes on my tests that deduct from my marks and while I don't actually fail I end up with a mark that's much lower than what I anticipated.

I've always been under the illusion that NT's or maybe just T's in general were better with mathematics than their F counterparts but even the airhead of our grade does better on tests than I do...it's completely humiliating because I work my ass off and she's off listening to the Jonas Brothers -_-

Everyone here has made good points already.
You might not necessary "suck" at math. It is more likely that it was not taught properly to you. Elementary arithmetic is fairly easy to teach. High school math class was always exceedingly boring to me. There was nothing behind it. There was no cerebral challenge. The higher levels of math are increasingly more difficult to teach someone. I suppose it is also extraordinarily frustrating to try and teach something complex, that you thoroughly understand, to someone who cannot readily grasp it. Math is like learning another language. A language used to described patterns and concepts. I believe NTs should be taught math holistically. Or any N for that matter. I craved to be taught the history behind math and where the formulas are derived from. Until you get to Calculus math is seriously boring and an SJ, in some cases, will out do an NT.
 

CJ99

Is Willard in Footloose!!
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
582
MBTI Type
ENTP
I love maths!
At school I was always the best at it but constantly got on my teachers nerves by re-inventing solutions to almost every kind of problem. My teachers would get annoyed because I'd start working through an exercise before they had finished explaining it. They would ask me what the next step to the example was and I'd just tell them the answer.

Totally disagree with maths being easy for SJs. Any exam with problem solving seems to have SJs completely lost as they rarely have a n understanding of the logic behind the rules.
 

paintmuffin

New member
Joined
May 14, 2009
Messages
159
MBTI Type
eNTP
I love maths!
At school I was always the best at it but constantly got on my teachers nerves by re-inventing solutions to almost every kind of problem. My teachers would get annoyed because I'd start working through an exercise before they had finished explaining it. They would ask me what the next step to the example was and I'd just tell them the answer.

Totally disagree with maths being easy for SJs. Any exam with problem solving seems to have SJs completely lost as they rarely have a n understanding of the logic behind the rules.

Story of my life.
 

jenocyde

half mystic, half skeksis
Joined
Jan 2, 2009
Messages
6,387
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
7w8
i have noticed a weird phenomenon though

in university,
calculus and circuit analysis comes easy to users with secondary Ni. i have seen this in ENTJ, ENFJ
linear algebra, programming and sciences come easy to Ne dominant/secondary users. i have seen this in ENTP, INFP

I've seen this, as well.

I can only understand math as part of a system. The only way I 'get it' is if I see it in action, so I might not 'get' something until long after I 'learned' it.

Yep. I am very good at things when I understand how they relate to other things. If I memorize a formula, I will forget it immediately after the exam. If I can apply it to something real, then I will never forget it. I am good at algebraic math and problem solving but never really cared for any other type of math until I started to really get into chem and physics.
 

tinkerbell

New member
Joined
Aug 31, 2008
Messages
3,487
MBTI Type
ENTP
I was really into linear programming at Uni and algebra generally. I seem to have skipped any real teaching on calculus... Not sure why, I think I stopped maths at high school and at Uni it was business stats I was learning.


I used to have a 4 hour stats lecture on Fridays, I'd always end up feeling very frisky by the end of it... maybe too much left brain for me....
 

intuitivethinker

New member
Joined
Oct 12, 2009
Messages
9
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
1/5
Am I the only NT who is rubbish with math? I can't understand it at all, I was only just slightly above average in primary school and once I hit high school I become below average. I can do well in every other subject but with math...I just freeze and my mind goes blank and I feel stupid and I hate feeling stupid. No matter how hard I study I always end up making stupid little mistakes on my tests that deduct from my marks and while I don't actually fail I end up with a mark that's much lower than what I anticipated.

I've always been under the illusion that NT's or maybe just T's in general were better with mathematics than their F counterparts but even the airhead of our grade does better on tests than I do...it's completely humiliating because I work my ass off and she's off listening to the Jonas Brothers -_-

I am terrible at maths, I couldn't do it to save my life. The only thing I could ever do was the shape part (flipping shapes and such) and algebra (very basic stuff thought). I also took no interest in it, which may have something to do with my being really quite bad, as well as a lack of natural ability.
 

Lithium Onyx

New member
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
64
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w6
In Geometry and Calculus, I don't have trouble. Algebra, I was only so-so. If I actually dig deeper and reason it out, it makes perfect sense to me (and I actually find it very fascinating and energizing when I visualize the logic behind it), so I actually have to think about it for a while before coming to an understanding. Peculiarly, I'm terrible at easy problems. To this day I forget 11 - 7, and problems like 214 x 1083 drive me crazy. It may be that I am able to juggle broader concepts with more ease than rote memorization.

Most of the time, when I received/receive bad grades on a math assignment, it's either because I made a stupid mistake or just failed to read the instructions properly. :doh:
 
Joined
Aug 7, 2019
Messages
775
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
-
Interesting. I am good at math from elementary school (class 1-6th), (class 7-9th),I even dare not to study math, may be because of confidence , but still scored, if converted, an A (80-100) and A- (75-80) range when I had to take a national examination. But I struggled in descriptive statistics and inferential statistics in university that I had to take remedials. The statistics was the subject used in conducting research.
Some topic that I am particularly enthusiastic and interested in was: Set theory, and arithmetics.
Mathematics is a broad subject. It is really a union of a lot of some separate topics. I think Some may be bad at some topic yet may be good at another. To know whether we are good at math, It would be useful to list each topics of mathematics and do a separate assessment,e.g arithmetics test, set theory test, algebra test, geometry test, etc.
 
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