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I left with the certainty that I would never take a math class again, and a lack of desire to explore other scientific fields for fear that I would have a simil

I left with the certainty that I would never take a math class again, and a lack of desire to explore other scientific fields for fear that I would have a similar experience. That is one of the most tragic things I can imagine reading. A student who really, genuinely wants to study Maths, just for its own sake... and is dissuaded from doing so by myopic, short-sighted, inane policies. It makes you wonder "could you fuck up education any worse, if you were intentionally trying?" On the other hand though... I believe a student with enough self motivation can overcome those inane department policies and learn the Maths by pulling in outside resources. Yes, it's more work, and yes maybe it's not "fair" that you have to do that in addition to attending (and paying for!) a class. But it's possible. Consider the availability of free resources like Khan Academy, Paul's Online Math Notes, hours and hours of Youtube videos from people like Professor Leonard, Gibert Strang, etc. One can also often find problem sets with solutions by just Googling around and finding previous years course websites for various courses that have been taught at universities all around the world. There are also online forums where you can go to get your answers validated, or get additional explanations about Maths problems. They vary in the extent to which they accept "do my homework for me" style questions, but almost any site will acknowledge somebody who has put in some work, come up with an (possibly incorrect) answer and says "Can somebody help me understand what's going on here?" Examples: * https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmath/ https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmath/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/cheatatmathhomework/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cheatatmathhomework/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/MathHelp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MathHelp/ * https://www.physicsforums.com/ https://www.physicsforums.com/ * https://math.stackexchange.com https://math.stackexchange.com (note: but not so much Mathoverflow, which is more for research level Maths and is not a good place for straight up "do my homework" style questions at all) And if one is willing to pay a bit, the Schaum's Outlines books and similar books provide a huge catalog of worked problems, along with problems and solutions. There's also Brilliant.org and other paid educational resources for Maths that can supplement ones university course(s). One can also look into hiring a personal tutor as an option. Many (most? all?) universities also have something like a "math lab" or "learning center" or something where students can go for individual tutoring and additional support. My experience (albeit dated now) leads me to believe that these are probably drastically under-utilized. Should universities do a better job with introductory Maths courses? Almost certainly. But I'd encourage anybody dealing with this to dig in and try to overcomes such shortcomings by using other available resources as well. EDIT: inspired by @skywardavocado's answer, I also wanted to add that old-fashioned "study groups" are another valuable arrow in the ole quiver. If you join up with 2, 3, 5, whatever, of your peers to study together, chances are that somebody in the group will understand the thing that the others are struggling with, and can explain it. I didn't do a lot of this in college myself, probably to my detriment. But to the extent that I did occasionally join a study group, I'd say they can be wildly helpful.

zozbot234 5y ago
> It makes you wonder "could you fuck up education any worse, if you were intentionally trying?" Of course you could. Take a look at K-12 schooling some time, where the prevailing educational theory is that "students must learn the math by themselves", and are expected to devise "their own methods" to do so, including "guessing" and doing calculations in their heads, not on paper. Is it any wonder that even "getting the right answer" has been de-emphasized, never mind "show your work"? This is what passes for math education these days, courtesy of "educators" who have never gotten a proper education at the college level in the actual subject.
- GrinningFool 5y ago
  Have you experienced this personally? I ask because this hasn't been my experience as a parent of a K-12 student. They are expected to show and be able to explain their work, and the teachers use that work to gauge the student's understanding of the material.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    It seems to be an issue in some school districts and because it's such a weird thing (to most of us) it ends up getting a lot of "air time", so to speak. Outliers doing bizarre things become representative when they get the majority of coverage.
  - jerf 5y ago
    The school district my children were in fiddled with it. One of my kids got actively in trouble for the fact he could do the "real" math problem in his head and wasn't "estimating", despite also being able to estimate correctly on larger problems. It is the direction math education is going in the public school system, and it is the direction it has had for a while so it's not like this is really some sort of surprise. Standards will be lowered until all students pass. There are political currents in that direction, plus there's the ever-present fact that the easiest way to make a given school's performance go up is to lower the standards, and there are many entities with incentive to do that. If your local school still has standards, they may currently be the mountains still standing above the rising seas, but the seas are still rising. In some ways I wish they'd just get on with it and leap straight to the logical conclusion of just officially eliminated the standards and passing all students guaranteed, so we can all get on with the task of dealing with the fact that such a credential would be worthless, instead of this long, drawn-out process of lowering standards while trying to pretend the standards aren't being lowered. (I think the second derivative of this process has turned away from dumbing down. Pushback is really coming up in earnest. But it'll be a while before it so much as turns the first derivative back in the correct direction, let alone get to the point where the problem is largely fixed.)

zozbot234 5y ago

> It makes you wonder "could you fuck up education any worse, if you were intentionally trying?" Of course you could. Take a look at K-12 schooling some time, where the prevailing educational theory is that "students must learn the math by themselves", and are expected to devise "their own methods" to do so, including "guessing" and doing calculations in their heads, not on paper. Is it any wonder that even "getting the right answer" has been de-emphasized, never mind "show your work"? This is what passes for math education these days, courtesy of "educators" who have never gotten a proper education at the college level in the actual subject.

GrinningFool 5y ago
Have you experienced this personally? I ask because this hasn't been my experience as a parent of a K-12 student. They are expected to show and be able to explain their work, and the teachers use that work to gauge the student's understanding of the material.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  It seems to be an issue in some school districts and because it's such a weird thing (to most of us) it ends up getting a lot of "air time", so to speak. Outliers doing bizarre things become representative when they get the majority of coverage.
- jerf 5y ago
  The school district my children were in fiddled with it. One of my kids got actively in trouble for the fact he could do the "real" math problem in his head and wasn't "estimating", despite also being able to estimate correctly on larger problems. It is the direction math education is going in the public school system, and it is the direction it has had for a while so it's not like this is really some sort of surprise. Standards will be lowered until all students pass. There are political currents in that direction, plus there's the ever-present fact that the easiest way to make a given school's performance go up is to lower the standards, and there are many entities with incentive to do that. If your local school still has standards, they may currently be the mountains still standing above the rising seas, but the seas are still rising. In some ways I wish they'd just get on with it and leap straight to the logical conclusion of just officially eliminated the standards and passing all students guaranteed, so we can all get on with the task of dealing with the fact that such a credential would be worthless, instead of this long, drawn-out process of lowering standards while trying to pretend the standards aren't being lowered. (I think the second derivative of this process has turned away from dumbing down. Pushback is really coming up in earnest. But it'll be a while before it so much as turns the first derivative back in the correct direction, let alone get to the point where the problem is largely fixed.)