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I have no doubt they can. There's so much negative cultural conditioning towards mathematics by eliciting negative emotions that it's ridiculous (i.e. math is s

I have no doubt they can. There's so much negative cultural conditioning towards mathematics by eliciting negative emotions that it's ridiculous (i.e. math is scary, math is hard, math is for smart people, etc.). I believe kids who excel at math is not due to them being smarter but due to the bypassing of the cultural conditioning. The bypassing can be due to the parents, teachers, some mentor, or their particular fascination for a math subject.

brogrammernot 9y ago
I think that negative cultural conditioning is an interesting point. The same thing can be said towards statistics. However, once your own personal lens is shifted to show practical application it makes the basics easier to understand.
stephengillie 9y ago
The negative impact of a bad teacher is overwhelming. It really reflects our species' dependence on a (recently often-recorded) oral history, even in the sciences.
jackmott 9y ago
congratulations on believing a thing without rigorous evidence?
d-sc 9y ago
I would agree with this. If only by a personal anecdote: I got through calc 1 & 2 by the end of 8th grade. This was though an online class while at a smaller rural school in Montana. Being 'smarter' than my classmates had little to do with it, instead the immense bureaucracy of public school my parents fought made it happen.
jpamata 9y ago
It's amazing how much this cultural conditioning can affect one's aptitude towards math. When I used to help my brother with his maths, he would oftentimes complain about not being smart enough. Shortly after, he would give up on the problem and come up with a rudimentary solution just to have an output. On these occasions, I'd prod him to solve the problem, ask him about his approach, probe his mental process, and most of the time, he'd tell me the correct steps to solve the problem. Had he not given up sooner, he would've succeeded. I think that an interest in maths, is the fuel to help one cross from problems to solutions. With how mathematics is taught nowadays, mechanical rather than analytical, I can imagine how easy it is for kids to develop a negative sentiment towards math especially when they get dozens of rote problems every day.
- chii 9y ago
  I think kids see those exercise problems as arbitrary and therefore unmotivated to do them. I dunno if there's any way of making then interesting and or relevant to motivate kids to do em. I suspect curiosity is of paramount importance, and that curiosity is not fostered in school about math.
  - fspear 9y ago
    >I think kids see those exercise problems as arbitrary and therefore unmotivated to do them. This is exactly how I felt growing up. It wasn't until actually looking at the practical applications of math that I got it. Doing equations for the sake of it without any actual context constantly frustrated me to no end and made me hate math and physics because it made me feel incompetent and stupid, it's been a struggle getting rid of this feeling even to date.
roceasta 9y ago
The fact that school math is thought to be 'scary' and 'hard' is not the issue. Plenty of video games are known to be scary and hard. For instance, they contain monsters and are difficult to complete. They even have objective grades (scores). What makes the difference is that video games aren't compulsory. So they represent true play. Which is what makes them educational, unlike a school curriculum, however much it is tweaked. Well, until something more fun than video games arrives on the scene...
- chii 9y ago
  There are some aspects of doing math that isn't fun, because it is grinding. Learning the time tables for example - you just have to do lots of exercises to get used to multiplying. No way around that. Just like in sports, where you must also do a lot of basic practise to get good. Making the practise like a game can be done to done degree, but ultimately, a kid is going to see through that after a while, since it gets boring.
  - Micoloth 9y ago
    Maybe they could present kids with timetable After showing them more variate and interesting concepts, so that at that point they have both the spark of interest and the maturity to understand multiplication is important and the attitude at learning that makes it not a torture. I'm just making things up tho
  - zaptheimpaler 9y ago
    Thats the kind of BS math they shouldn't bother teaching. Most of math is about concepts, and if 5 year olds can grapple with super-basic calculus how about teaching 10 year olds proof-based math and concepts (closer to college level) than memorization? Its kind of dumb how arithmetic is seen as a precursor to math when its really not. You could do an ENTIRE college-level course in linear algebra or calculus or graph theory or even combinatorics perfectly well even if you have no idea what 11*15 is off the top of your head and have to look it up every time. Its just a ridiculously backwards approach to teaching. We don't teach CS by testing people on memorizing syntax and API calls - they are rightly relegated to "google it when you need it, eventually you'll remember it". Of course algorithms are more interesting and building things is more fun so we focus on that. Current way of teaching math is just a historical accident IMO. No real reason it couldn't be conceptual and interesting from the start if there wasn't so much inertia around current systems.
pishpash 9y ago
They bypass conditioning because they are smarter and are good at it. Who do you think are the people who espouse anti-intellectual drivel like "math is scary" or "math is uncool"? Hint: not the smart people.
- erispoe 9y ago
  There's plenty of research on the "entity theory" bias, mostly applied to gender. I.e. if you tell girls that they're bad at math, on average, they will act as if they are. Unfortunately, framing math as hard or scary only serves to reinforce stereotypes and bar people who do not have the keys to defuse that framing from advancing. It's not the rich male kids who are told math is hard and scary.
  - ehecatl 9y ago
    Do you now of any research on the potential downsides of the opposite of this? I have a pre-teen son whose confidence with-- and enjoyment in-- maths outstrips his ability (although this might change in either direction). He's not cocky about it; he is more like "Damn. Only got a C. Oh well, next time..." I can't see him hurting himself with maths, but if he decided he's gonna fix something electrical in a few years time, well that could be very bad indeed.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Does the "if you tell girls they're bad at maths ..." work differently with boys? In UK girls get the better results on average. In part I think this might be because they're taught as they are generally quieter and less desirous of rough-and-tumble (in primary school, by the predominantly female teachers, say) that girls are more studious. Generalising further: boys are thus modelled as either boring swots or good for manual labour (they don't sit still, which for some reason seems to make many female teachers think means they're not intelligent). [I'm pressing the point probably a bit much I know].
  - ctlby 9y ago
    > There's plenty of research on the "entity theory" bias, mostly applied to gender. Junk science if there ever was any. The effect sizes for these treatments are tiny, if they even replicate it all. It seems like every day now there's a new rebuttal of stereotype threat, implicit association tests, priming, etc. Just from today: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2017.1359245?journalCode=cphp20 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2017.135... http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~acimpian/reprints/jussim_BBS.pdf http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~acimpian/reprints/j...
hyperpallium 9y ago
One thing that's difficult about math is all the "mathematical maturity" required, much of which is notation and... abuse of notation. Math seems like an Arts subject, where you must learn all the cultural background, as in English Literature. I'm not sure it's necessary, given it's not logical nor self-contained, but is arbitary and historical. Then again, I'm not absolutely convinced it's not necessary...
- nogbit 9y ago
  It is necessary but could be improved. If all we had was roman numerals we would still be in the dark ages.
  - eberkund 9y ago
    Is it really necessary? I have so many memories of sitting in math classes and the teacher simply starts writing letters on the board and I am thinking to myself: what the hell does that symbol or letter represent? Before we even get around to the concept that the equation represents.
    - lingua 9y ago
      What you are describing is not unique to math. It is required in any discipline. In fact, it is required in any social interaction. People are constant;y building common vocabularies. The words and phrases you use at work are different than the ones you use at the neighborhood block party. Even among different friends you have different vocabularies. "Elbow" means something different to plumbers, fishers, basketball coaches, and musicians. "Panama" means something different to a very small subset of your friends. Humans are constantly building common vocabulary, and everyone maintains several different vocabularies simultaneously. To complain about the effort to build a common vocabulary is to complain about the effort of participating in any society.
jamesrcole 9y ago
> cultural conditioning I suspect that mathematics being poorly taught is also a major contributor.
- g00gler 9y ago
  Right. My sister is always having a hard time with math and it seems like the teachers are always focusing on solving equations rather than explaining the reasoning behind it. It's pretty simple when you realize it's (mostly) all about lines.
- rockostrich 9y ago
  This is the biggest contributor. Teachers focus on making sure they follow precise steps whenever trying to work through a problem. While that's helpful for certain things, if the student can explain why they are doing what they are doing then they won't be able to apply what they've learned to solving new problems. It's definitely not an easy problem to solve and I certainly don't envy elementary/middle school teachers.
5040 9y ago
Imagine repeatedly telling those who truly struggle with mathematics that math is soothing, math is easy, even dumb people should be able to do math, etc.
headcanon 9y ago
Its the same for programming. Most of programming isn't rocket science (unless it is :P) and anyone with the ability to apply basic logic can figure out what most programs do. However the language, the text itself, gets in the way, and people throw up their hands immediately once they see something unfamiliar. The difference between literacy and illiteracy in this case, IMO, is almost an emotional one - its the ability to say to yourself, "ok, I may not know what this keyword means, but I know what is in front of me is not magic, that it can be understood, and I can understand it with some research and patience" It helps a lot for ones future if someone is able to be taught this skill early on.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
In my opinion, the biggest problem is the focus on learning math subjects as dependencies for learning the next math subjects. This problem is exasperated by tying a subject to semester or school year. If I'm not supposed to learn Calculus until I learn Algebra, that must mean I can't learn Calculus until I learn Algebra. If my Algebra class lasts for a year, that means it must take an entire year to learn Algebra. If I am supposed to learn Algebra first, then I must not be able to sufficiently wrap my head around anything related to Calculus. That means that whenever I hear about "limits", "d/dx", I should immediately lose attention; after all, those are Calculus-related things, and my underdeveloped brain will not be able to comprehend such subjects for another year, and I shouldn't even try. Of course, none of those are true. If I wanted, I could * learn at my own pace * learn in the wrong order * wrap my head around limits, d/dx, L'Hopital's rule, etc. before understanding factoring, trigonometric functions, etc. In fact, any of these would have put me far ahead in my education. "Traditional" education requires a student to be lazy, or hold [him/her]self behind academically. To make matters worse, it requires that student to be a specific, quantified amount of lazy/held back. For me personally, I struggled to keep up with the obscene amount of expected rote homework, while also feeling miles ahead of lectures, even though the homework and lectures were from the same class. When I started learning about programming on my own, I suddenly had the freedom to do all of the things I mentioned above. Programming, as a subject, is especially applicable: There are abstractions, paradigms, languages, etc. You can jump into any aspect headfirst, and still get your bearings.

brogrammernot 9y ago

I think that negative cultural conditioning is an interesting point. The same thing can be said towards statistics. However, once your own personal lens is shifted to show practical application it makes the basics easier to understand.

stephengillie 9y ago

The negative impact of a bad teacher is overwhelming. It really reflects our species' dependence on a (recently often-recorded) oral history, even in the sciences.

jackmott 9y ago

congratulations on believing a thing without rigorous evidence?

d-sc 9y ago

I would agree with this. If only by a personal anecdote: I got through calc 1 & 2 by the end of 8th grade. This was though an online class while at a smaller rural school in Montana. Being 'smarter' than my classmates had little to do with it, instead the immense bureaucracy of public school my parents fought made it happen.

jpamata 9y ago

It's amazing how much this cultural conditioning can affect one's aptitude towards math. When I used to help my brother with his maths, he would oftentimes complain about not being smart enough. Shortly after, he would give up on the problem and come up with a rudimentary solution just to have an output. On these occasions, I'd prod him to solve the problem, ask him about his approach, probe his mental process, and most of the time, he'd tell me the correct steps to solve the problem. Had he not given up sooner, he would've succeeded. I think that an interest in maths, is the fuel to help one cross from problems to solutions. With how mathematics is taught nowadays, mechanical rather than analytical, I can imagine how easy it is for kids to develop a negative sentiment towards math especially when they get dozens of rote problems every day.

chii 9y ago
I think kids see those exercise problems as arbitrary and therefore unmotivated to do them. I dunno if there's any way of making then interesting and or relevant to motivate kids to do em. I suspect curiosity is of paramount importance, and that curiosity is not fostered in school about math.
- fspear 9y ago
  >I think kids see those exercise problems as arbitrary and therefore unmotivated to do them. This is exactly how I felt growing up. It wasn't until actually looking at the practical applications of math that I got it. Doing equations for the sake of it without any actual context constantly frustrated me to no end and made me hate math and physics because it made me feel incompetent and stupid, it's been a struggle getting rid of this feeling even to date.

roceasta 9y ago

The fact that school math is thought to be 'scary' and 'hard' is not the issue. Plenty of video games are known to be scary and hard. For instance, they contain monsters and are difficult to complete. They even have objective grades (scores). What makes the difference is that video games aren't compulsory. So they represent true play. Which is what makes them educational, unlike a school curriculum, however much it is tweaked. Well, until something more fun than video games arrives on the scene...

chii 9y ago
There are some aspects of doing math that isn't fun, because it is grinding. Learning the time tables for example - you just have to do lots of exercises to get used to multiplying. No way around that. Just like in sports, where you must also do a lot of basic practise to get good. Making the practise like a game can be done to done degree, but ultimately, a kid is going to see through that after a while, since it gets boring.
- Micoloth 9y ago
  Maybe they could present kids with timetable After showing them more variate and interesting concepts, so that at that point they have both the spark of interest and the maturity to understand multiplication is important and the attitude at learning that makes it not a torture. I'm just making things up tho
- zaptheimpaler 9y ago
  Thats the kind of BS math they shouldn't bother teaching. Most of math is about concepts, and if 5 year olds can grapple with super-basic calculus how about teaching 10 year olds proof-based math and concepts (closer to college level) than memorization? Its kind of dumb how arithmetic is seen as a precursor to math when its really not. You could do an ENTIRE college-level course in linear algebra or calculus or graph theory or even combinatorics perfectly well even if you have no idea what 11*15 is off the top of your head and have to look it up every time. Its just a ridiculously backwards approach to teaching. We don't teach CS by testing people on memorizing syntax and API calls - they are rightly relegated to "google it when you need it, eventually you'll remember it". Of course algorithms are more interesting and building things is more fun so we focus on that. Current way of teaching math is just a historical accident IMO. No real reason it couldn't be conceptual and interesting from the start if there wasn't so much inertia around current systems.

pishpash 9y ago

They bypass conditioning because they are smarter and are good at it. Who do you think are the people who espouse anti-intellectual drivel like "math is scary" or "math is uncool"? Hint: not the smart people.

erispoe 9y ago
There's plenty of research on the "entity theory" bias, mostly applied to gender. I.e. if you tell girls that they're bad at math, on average, they will act as if they are. Unfortunately, framing math as hard or scary only serves to reinforce stereotypes and bar people who do not have the keys to defuse that framing from advancing. It's not the rich male kids who are told math is hard and scary.
- ehecatl 9y ago
  Do you now of any research on the potential downsides of the opposite of this? I have a pre-teen son whose confidence with-- and enjoyment in-- maths outstrips his ability (although this might change in either direction). He's not cocky about it; he is more like "Damn. Only got a C. Oh well, next time..." I can't see him hurting himself with maths, but if he decided he's gonna fix something electrical in a few years time, well that could be very bad indeed.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Does the "if you tell girls they're bad at maths ..." work differently with boys? In UK girls get the better results on average. In part I think this might be because they're taught as they are generally quieter and less desirous of rough-and-tumble (in primary school, by the predominantly female teachers, say) that girls are more studious. Generalising further: boys are thus modelled as either boring swots or good for manual labour (they don't sit still, which for some reason seems to make many female teachers think means they're not intelligent). [I'm pressing the point probably a bit much I know].
- ctlby 9y ago
  > There's plenty of research on the "entity theory" bias, mostly applied to gender. Junk science if there ever was any. The effect sizes for these treatments are tiny, if they even replicate it all. It seems like every day now there's a new rebuttal of stereotype threat, implicit association tests, priming, etc. Just from today: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2017.1359245?journalCode=cphp20 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09515089.2017.135... http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~acimpian/reprints/jussim_BBS.pdf http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~acimpian/reprints/j...

hyperpallium 9y ago

One thing that's difficult about math is all the "mathematical maturity" required, much of which is notation and... abuse of notation. Math seems like an Arts subject, where you must learn all the cultural background, as in English Literature. I'm not sure it's necessary, given it's not logical nor self-contained, but is arbitary and historical. Then again, I'm not absolutely convinced it's not necessary...

nogbit 9y ago
It is necessary but could be improved. If all we had was roman numerals we would still be in the dark ages.
- eberkund 9y ago
  Is it really necessary? I have so many memories of sitting in math classes and the teacher simply starts writing letters on the board and I am thinking to myself: what the hell does that symbol or letter represent? Before we even get around to the concept that the equation represents.
  - lingua 9y ago
    What you are describing is not unique to math. It is required in any discipline. In fact, it is required in any social interaction. People are constant;y building common vocabularies. The words and phrases you use at work are different than the ones you use at the neighborhood block party. Even among different friends you have different vocabularies. "Elbow" means something different to plumbers, fishers, basketball coaches, and musicians. "Panama" means something different to a very small subset of your friends. Humans are constantly building common vocabulary, and everyone maintains several different vocabularies simultaneously. To complain about the effort to build a common vocabulary is to complain about the effort of participating in any society.

jamesrcole 9y ago

> cultural conditioning I suspect that mathematics being poorly taught is also a major contributor.

g00gler 9y ago
Right. My sister is always having a hard time with math and it seems like the teachers are always focusing on solving equations rather than explaining the reasoning behind it. It's pretty simple when you realize it's (mostly) all about lines.
rockostrich 9y ago
This is the biggest contributor. Teachers focus on making sure they follow precise steps whenever trying to work through a problem. While that's helpful for certain things, if the student can explain why they are doing what they are doing then they won't be able to apply what they've learned to solving new problems. It's definitely not an easy problem to solve and I certainly don't envy elementary/middle school teachers.

5040 9y ago

Imagine repeatedly telling those who truly struggle with mathematics that math is soothing, math is easy, even dumb people should be able to do math, etc.

headcanon 9y ago

Its the same for programming. Most of programming isn't rocket science (unless it is :P) and anyone with the ability to apply basic logic can figure out what most programs do. However the language, the text itself, gets in the way, and people throw up their hands immediately once they see something unfamiliar. The difference between literacy and illiteracy in this case, IMO, is almost an emotional one - its the ability to say to yourself, "ok, I may not know what this keyword means, but I know what is in front of me is not magic, that it can be understood, and I can understand it with some research and patience" It helps a lot for ones future if someone is able to be taught this skill early on.

thomastjeffery 9y ago

In my opinion, the biggest problem is the focus on learning math subjects as dependencies for learning the next math subjects. This problem is exasperated by tying a subject to semester or school year. If I'm not supposed to learn Calculus until I learn Algebra, that must mean I can't learn Calculus until I learn Algebra. If my Algebra class lasts for a year, that means it must take an entire year to learn Algebra. If I am supposed to learn Algebra first, then I must not be able to sufficiently wrap my head around anything related to Calculus. That means that whenever I hear about "limits", "d/dx", I should immediately lose attention; after all, those are Calculus-related things, and my underdeveloped brain will not be able to comprehend such subjects for another year, and I shouldn't even try. Of course, none of those are true. If I wanted, I could * learn at my own pace * learn in the wrong order * wrap my head around limits, d/dx, L'Hopital's rule, etc. before understanding factoring, trigonometric functions, etc. In fact, any of these would have put me far ahead in my education. "Traditional" education requires a student to be lazy, or hold [him/her]self behind academically. To make matters worse, it requires that student to be a specific, quantified amount of lazy/held back. For me personally, I struggled to keep up with the obscene amount of expected rote homework, while also feeling miles ahead of lectures, even though the homework and lectures were from the same class. When I started learning about programming on my own, I suddenly had the freedom to do all of the things I mentioned above. Programming, as a subject, is especially applicable: There are abstractions, paradigms, languages, etc. You can jump into any aspect headfirst, and still get your bearings.