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If Terence Tao admits that doing mathematics is hard, then I am extremely leery of anyone who thinks otherwise.

• Barrin92 8y ago
  Five years of university math here and I can only mirror the author's experience. If having the feeling that math is hard ought to disqualify you then everybody will probably be disqualified. Maths is hard for everybody, including the people who excel at it. I've never met anybody who has spent serious time on a math education suggest anything else. If you get a sadistic pleasure out of torturing your mind with numbing puzzles and like the reward of finally figuring something out that you had to ponder for days (or longer) then you have a good chance of doing maths at the university level. But it never really comes naturally to anybody, it's not the kind of thing we're build for.
• romwell 8y ago
  I think here's what the parent wanted to say: math is hard, but it shouldn't be painful. Mathematicians, contrary to the opinion of the article writer, anre't masochists. We do math because it's rewarding and fun. Being hard doesn't make it necessarily painful. An analogy: to some, going to a gym is a painful experience. But a lot of people do enjoy it! Of course lifting weights is never easy - but that doesn't mean going to gym is inherently a masochistic experience. Only if one makes it so.