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Would you mind sharing your conclusions? Though I don't know of any studies about algebra in particular, kids show greater neuroplasticity in general than adu
by beej71 5y ago
Would you mind sharing your conclusions?
Though I don't know of any studies about algebra in particular, kids show greater neuroplasticity in general than adults. So learning anything as an adult tends to be more difficult.
But I live with an American who reasonably fluent in Norwegian after 2 years of study in their 30s. It's certainly not impossible.
I have no doubt that math, like virtually everything, is more difficult for adults to pick up from scratch.
- syops 5y agoWhat is theorized to be impossible is learning a language as an adult if you did not learn a language as a child. That is, if at age 20 you know 0 languages then you’ll never be able really learn a language. For obvious reasons experiments in this regard are few. My conclusion is that some people simply can’t learn algebra. Be it genetic, environmental, lack of intellectual fortitude, lack of “intelligence”, or any combination thereof it is simply the case that some people can’t learn algebra.
- bawolff 5y agoEnvironmental covers a lot. A mal-nourished homeless person probably cannot learn algebra - they would have much more immediate concerns to deal with. However that feels really different from saying a not insignificant portion of the population, inherently cannot.
- antocv 5y agoYes everybody can learn to code and get rich if they just put their will into it.
- wintermutestwin 5y agoI wonder if you are equating "can't" and "lack of intellectual fortitude" with "aren't truly motivated to do so." Considering that a small percentage of careers require more than basic algebra/geometry/statistics, it's not hard to see that math has a "why should I learn this?" problem more than a "am I able to learn this?" problem.