This is true. I wrote a brief anecdote[1] about this. I was in the advanced math program as an undergraduate and one of the other students was telling me abou

This is true. I wrote a brief anecdote[1] about this. I was in the advanced math program as an undergraduate and one of the other students was telling me about how he always struggled with math throughout high school. Until one day, near the end of high school, he came to understand that the equal sign wasn't a symbol that is sometime written between steps of problem solving, but rather it meant that the values of the expressions on the two sides were equal to each other! This realization changed everything for him. He ended up placing within the top Canada-wide in the Sir Issac Netwon high school physics contest, and ended up in the advanced mathematics classes with me. [1] http://r6.ca/blog/20031202T032200Z.html http://r6.ca/blog/20031202T032200Z.html P.S. Today I'm doubtful that simply replacing an equal sign with an arrow like I suggested in 2003 would help all that much.