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Who Hates Math?

I despise math!!! I've always gone out of my way to avoid it. When I transferred to a community college I had to take a placement test and failed miserably in the math section.

I can't remember simple multiplication. The multiplication table? Yeah. Learned that in third grade, and here I am at 22 with no idea what 8x7 is unless I have a calculator. It's embarrassing.

I have a hard time keeping numbers straight. Groups of numbers confuse me. I lose track of them, if that makes sense. If there are a lot of 0s, I have to count them all, things like that. Account numbers and such just confuse me. Anything involving numbers seems to go right over my head.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. To be honest, it's really upsetting to me. I feel like I'll never graduate college because I'm terrified of math gen ed classes and any science classes I know involve numbers and equations. I can't graduate without these classes, but I can't get through them. I always fail because I get so overwhelmed and confused.
 
Galaxy Freeze said:
Holy crap! I thought I was the only one who still used their fingers...this is a breath of fresh air to know someone else does it!
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My mum does that too and she is 60 years old!

hojita said:
I can't remember simple multiplication. The multiplication table? Yeah. Learned that in third grade, and here I am at 22 with no idea what 8x7 is unless I have a calculator. It's embarrassing.
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I have never even learned the multiplication table. It's just like anything that involves numbers just gets a total mess in my head and they all kinda look the same.
 
Arithmetic didn't bother me. Algebra, Geometry, linear math, Calculus, and physics (let alone almost all programming languages, except maybe GW-BASIC and AppleSoft FP BASIC that you found on the old CP/M, Apple II and Original IBM-PC's (and I'm definitely showing my age here)) gave me fits.
 
I have no problems with arithmetic, if that's the type of math we're talking about here - all of it is just about second nature to me. Algebra, on the other hand, caused me so much frustration that I'd come home and throw fits over assignments. It took me more than a year to grasp basic algebra and, ironically, I'd finally grasped it while being placed in calculus classes through a make-up program of sorts where you learned everything by computer and not by instruction.
 
It's likely the approach is wrong for you so it's turning you off. Maybe try a whole new approach. I confess maths is also hard for me and I have to work very hard to improve but much of what I do is just with a calculator. Try thinking just about numbers in ways that are useful to you. Lately I've learned a bit how to solve maths problems my own way without books or courses. Sometimes I need to know percentages and fractions of seconds and stuff so I just try and work it out on a calculator. Sometimes I get confused but usually I find answers in time.
It's not really as hard as is made out but just seems dry when taught in schools.


hojita said:
I despise math!!! I've always gone out of my way to avoid it. When I transferred to a community college I had to take a placement test and failed miserably in the math section.

I can't remember simple multiplication. The multiplication table? Yeah. Learned that in third grade, and here I am at 22 with no idea what 8x7 is unless I have a calculator. It's embarrassing.

I have a hard time keeping numbers straight. Groups of numbers confuse me. I lose track of them, if that makes sense. If there are a lot of 0s, I have to count them all, things like that. Account numbers and such just confuse me. Anything involving numbers seems to go right over my head.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. To be honest, it's really upsetting to me. I feel like I'll never graduate college because I'm terrified of math gen ed classes and any science classes I know involve numbers and equations. I can't graduate without these classes, but I can't get through them. I always fail because I get so overwhelmed and confused.
Click to expand...
 
I used to, but I took an accounting class while in college and found that I really enjoyed it. If I went back to high school now, I'm pretty sure I'd like it. It's all in your attitude toward the subject.
 
My advice, do not despair if you're not as quick as other people, and if answers never come naturally to you. Just calm down and work out the problem at your own pace. The quickest way to feel useless and completely incompetent at something is to compare yourself to others. That's probabaly a big part of the reason why I'm so terrible at sport, because there's constant comparison in PE classes. Everyone can see who the worst player is, but students don't look at everyone else's test scores, so in academic subjects it doesn't show up as much.

I think everything becomes easier when you block out the progress of those around you, and just focus on your own work.

I really wished I'd been able to that in PE - definitely my worst subject - but, anyway, I like the ones I'm studying now: Linguistics, Literature, French, Drama and Psychology.
 
Yes, just as Total_Recoil has said, you might need a practical approach for understanding mathematics. I know, it is easier said than done. But, once you figure a way to practically answer your question, then your more than halfway there. One of the best example is Michael Faraday. When Faraday was experimenting with electromagnetism, in order to understand the phenomenon, he used to draw figures of lines of magnetism and flow of electricity, as he did not learn formal math. So, dont get upset and dont lose hope. You can also look for free tutorials on Youtube. I am sure you can find plenty of them.
 
Math is horrible. I would break down and have total meltdowns over it. I was so confused, lost, frustrated and overwhelmed. I had extra math support from first grade all the way through highschool, and I still had to stay after school almost every day for extra help. I worked twice as hard to achieve a C that someone else had to in order to get an A. To this day, simple arithmetic is alright, (I still get stuck a lot, but I can work my way through it.) but I cannot go near an algebraic equation without panicking.
 
I enjoy mathematics, it's creative and interesting.
But what I could say I hate about it is the reason that I'm not really good at it. Namely, I had terrible teacher at junior high after or original, nice math teacher left. I was exceptionally curious pupil and asked all and that, and also tried things he advised not to. So he presumably thought that I was a huge ass and put me in a small group, that everyone kindly called stupid-group. It rhymes better in Finnish so it was supposed to be funny. For long I learned not to ask when interested about any topic, and started to generally dislike math. It wasn't until I got into uni and wanted to minor physics that I realized how interesting that was and how late I was to learn all the basics again. Is this love-hate as it's best? Err.
 
I am diagnosed with dyscalculia, and I find maths very challenging. Luckily, I have mostly had good maths teachers at my current high school, which has made me despise the subject slightly less.
 
I always assumed I was useless at maths because it sort of scared me, I got mental blocks and I didn't seem to take to it. However, I have now realised I need maths due to my interest in valve/vintage radio and, given I'm gradually getting deeper into theory, I need to understand some maths.
One thing I've discovered is that people who teach maths don't seem to agree. I have to do calculations using Ohms Law and, the other day, I had to go a little beyond Ohms law and use the square root of 2 (1.414) for expected wattage calculations. Anyway, I used the net for further info and, following one tutorial, my square root digit led me to conclude I needed a resistance of 800 ohms in a circuit. My book had 980 ohms and the writer was doing a slightly different calculation proceedure.
What also fascinates me me is decimals. I like to analyse milliseconds (thousandths of a second) and microseconds (millionths of a second) so that 0.000001 and 0.00001 10 microseconds and so on. It's like mental gymnastics:
,000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 yoctosecond [ ys ]
0,000 000 000 000 000 000 001 zeptosecond [ zs ]
0,000 000 000 000 000 001 attosecond [ as ]
0,000 000 000 000 001 femtosecond [ fs ]
0,000 000 000 001 [ trillionth ] picosecond [ ps ]
0,000 000 001 [ billionth ] nanosecond [ ns ]
0,000 001 [ millionth ] microsecond [ ?s ]
0,001 [ thousandth ] millisecond [ ms ]
0.01 [ hundredth ] centisecond [ cs ]
1.0 second [



LittlePuff said:
It's math!!!
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Hate it with a passion. But I realize it's useful and am glad some people like it . . .
 
I used to hate it when I was at school. Years later I got into reading about it so I could complete the Pi Day quiz and I really enjoyed it. Since then I've learned that I have an auditory processing disorder, which probably greatly contributed to my dislike of maths at school.
 
I have mild intellectual disability. When I was in elementary and high school, I didn't have the best teacher. I didn't learn as I was supposed to, and learn to dislike math. Even now in my adulthood I am still weak in math. I am glad I have a calculator to help me out.
 
what was the thread where someone was complaining about how much he disliked the rule that something with an exponent of zero is equal to one?
 
I like math, but only when it is interesting. I hate when a problem turns into 50 pages of tedious algebra crap. When it gets to that, it's just work and no fun. Last semester, when my numerical analysis professor started deriving the convergence of the secant method for finding zeros of functions, even he started complaining about how painful tedious algebra was. My sides went into orbit.
 
The subject of maths I don't mind, it's my school's lessons that sometimes bug me, bullying occurs during them sometimes, when I'm depressed during them I can't work well, etc., that sort of thing.
 
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