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I had exactly this problem as a student -- it turns out I need to really grok the WHY before I am able to grok the what (and it only took me about 30 years to f
by nlh 3y ago
I had exactly this problem as a student -- it turns out I need to really grok the WHY before I am able to grok the what (and it only took me about 30 years to figure that out ;).
So my best STEM subjects were always physics and geometry (they 'why' is built-in) and my worst ones were calculus et al. The absolute worst I ever did in a class was my first linear algebra class because it was taught in a purely 'what' sort of way (this is a matrix, this is how you multiply a matrix, etc.) and nobody ever explained why you'd need a matrix or what practical applications any of it involved. So it just never clicked and the class to me was a series of memorization and mechanical calculation steps. And THEN, years later....I discovered 3D rendering....:)
The challenge is that there are often kids for whom this just doesn't matter, and often enough of them that teachers and educators in general don't feel a particularly strong need to modify the traditional way of teaching.
- the_only_law 3y agoCalculus is unfortunate because I knew it had “practical uses” I just didn’t think those practical uses were for me and couldn’t describe what they were outside of vague references to “engineering”. Fast forwards during Covid, I was doing a lot of work on the side with retro telecom projects and for the first time in my life I wished I had paid much attention to calculus or at the very least anything before it.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoWith most STEM you're getting the API reference with no useful sample code or applications. Some people love the abstractions as puzzles. I was fine with calculus and matrix algebra at that level, but I was doing an EE course and the gap between abstraction and real world problems was not huge. But I had a mental block at school about the moment of inertia, because I had no idea what it was for. At some point the penny dropped and I worked out that it was basically the m in F=ma but for spinny things. Until that happened it was a mess of confusing diagrams with no obvious meaning or application, in an uncanny valley between pure abstraction and physical relevance. After it happened it became much easier to do the math.
- alistairSH 3y agoYeah, I didn’t really “get” basic calculus until I started taking economics courses where there was an application.