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That's because math is harder for most people. There is no difference between learning a name in history or in biology, or some workflow. But math reasoning r

That's because math is harder for most people. There is no difference between learning a name in history or in biology, or some workflow. But math reasoning really filters out people in a way nothing else does. All other topics just require memory and basic reasoning. Even physics mostly is hard because of math. And philosophy, mostly because of jargon and references. Otherwise, if you break it down, it's not that complicated. But you can break down a math problem as much as you want, some of them are beyond what you can do comfortably. And a lot of students reach this limit early in their life. I see this when I play board games with people: there is a threshold of rules and calculation power above which I lose 90% of the players. They just can't enjoy it, because it requires too much effort to play. It's similar for me and sport. I've been doing exercise all my life, but my brother will always do more, and harder, because there is a barrier after which it's just too painful for me. Math and athleticism can be trained, but there is a hard ceiling. And even before you reach that ceiling, closing the gap gets more and more expensive for some people, so much the ROI is difficult to justify.

constantcrying 3y ago
What I specifically dislike is the question "what am I ever going to use this for" or versions of it. Which I only ever hear about mathematics, but which can be asked about every other subject as well. Yes, math is hard and definitely not for everyone, which I think is perfectly fine. But arguing that something has no use to you, because the first time in your life you actually have to engage in complex logical thinking is just lazy. The value of mathematics is independent of how hard it is.
- butterNaN 3y ago
  I feel your complaint is valid, but I your ire should be directed towards people who are supposed to answer this question, not the people who are asking it. My guess is that answering "what am I ever going to use this for" is easier for other subjects, sometimes almost intuitive. For Maths, it needs to be defined as soon as it starts getting abstract. "what am I ever going to use this for" is a perfectly valid question. People who are supposed to answer it should do a better job of doing so, writing good curriculum, and overall communication.
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    >My guess is that answering "what am I ever going to use this for" is easier for other subjects, sometimes almost intuitive. How so? What am I ever going to use my skills in analysing 20th century literature for. What am I ever going to use my knowledge about Roman history for? What am I ever going to use my knowledge about the structure of our government for? Certainly no employeer of mine ever cared, my University didn't care, nobody seems to have ever cared, except my teachers. The question is bad because: - People ask it, but only of mathematics - People answer it, as if mathematics alone has to face that challenge If school is about job training the answer is simply "because it contains the broadest possible techniques to understand the world and is vital in basically any data-based scientific pursuit and a basic understanding is needed for any trade which uses measurements". Somehow I think ancient history does not have such an answer...
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > What am I ever going to use my skills in analysing 20th century literature for. You can use the same skills to spot when a news article is trying to manipulate you. > What am I ever going to use my knowledge about Roman history for? You can see how empires fall, and vote against those things. > What am I ever going to use my knowledge about the structure of our government for? Understanding why things happen around you is the first thing you need if you ever want to try and change something you don't like. > Certainly no employeer of mine ever cared, my University didn't care, nobody seems to have ever cared, except my teachers. You might care, though. Or you might not know what you know now without them. Thankfully you did all those things, so now you can write a well-written letter to the correct person in government, citing the parallel problems with the current education system and the fall of Rome, and stop children being taught this stuff (-:
      - constantcrying 3y ago
        You are completely missing the point here. If you know "why empires fall" (nobody does) then you could just teach that, the historical context would be almost irrelevant and even the premise of a cyclical history, which can be broken by voting, seems completely insane. >Thankfully you did all those things, so now you can write a well-written letter to the correct person in government, citing the parallel problems with the current education system and the fall of Rome, and stop children being taught this stuff (-: Okay, that was funny. I think what you are trying to articulate is education as a hollistic system, not with the goal of expertese, but with the goal of offering some moral foundation and grounding in the world and society. But if you believe in that the utilitarian stance of education immediately becomes irrelevant and "when am I ever going to use this" becomes a non-sensical question, which misses the point.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  Math is abstract. Very few to no other school level subjects are abstract. That’s why you hear discussions about pushing algebra out, but not about pushing arithmetic out. That’s why some schools replaced algebra with “data science”. Abstraction isn’t easy. But that’s precisely why math, especially algebra and the like, is so essential. It’s the only path to building abstract reasoning among students.
  - derangedHorse 3y ago
    I don’t think it’s the abstraction, I think it’s the perceived lack of usefulness. I’ve known many individuals who are bad at math but can understand the abstraction of most programming constructs. I think it’s mainly because the pay off of learning programming has a higher immediate value (it can be used for a variety of tasks and can even help score a high paying job).
- TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
  > What I specifically dislike is the question "what am I ever going to use this for" or versions of it. Which I only ever hear about mathematics. I've often heard it asked of languages, specifically Irish.
  - Sodman 3y ago
    I always disliked Irish (and languages, in general) in school. However, now that I'm over a decade out of college I find it to be one of the few subjects I wish I'd paid more attention to when I'd had the chance... Sure, it's not particularly useful in adult life, but neither is organic chemistry, for most folks. The main difference for me is that it's relatively easy to "fill in the gaps" for any other subject we learned from the ages of 12-18. Irish however, is niche enough - and learning resources generally technologically behind - that it's still quite tricky to self-teach or "quickly google" answers to things. That makes it unique from most other primary/secondary school subjects which are more universally taught across the world.
    - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
      I asked that question in school (strange to look back on, as I'm now fascinated by languages), and the only answer the teacher could give was that doing well in Irish would give extra Leaving Cert points. That struck me at the time as depressing.
DC-3 3y ago
> math reasoning really filter out people in a way nothing else does. I have known many people, to whom mathematical reasoning comes as easily and naturally as flight does to a swallow, be defeated by literature. Every technical university in the world is brimming with bright young people who could effortlessly describe a Jacobian but would rather gnaw off their own hand than produce a response to a story or sonnet. > And philosophy, mostly because of jargon and reference. Otherwise, if you break it down, it's not that complicated. Quite the claim.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  They are not defeated by literature, they are just not that interested in it, and therefore never practiced, and dislike working on it. It's not a matter of the field being too difficult. It's a matter of personality. > Quite the claim. Yes. I've discussed this claim with people defending the opposite idea, and I've yet to find anybody making a good demonstration that philosophy is hard in itself. They point that there is a lot to know. So reference and memory. Like most expertise in the world. That texts are hard to read. So style, vocabulary. Well, not different than programming or the law on that point. They are easier than higher level math. They say few people get novel ideas. Yes, creativity is rare, yet it's not particularly linked to the field. You need creativity to find new theorems too. So they try to bring complicated topics again and again. Once we are done mapping the references, the vocabulary and cleaned out the awful style a lot of writers use to obfuscate their reasoning, the ideas behind are quite straightforward to grasp. I've stopped doing it now, it takes a very long time, and it's always disappointing. It feels like debugging a program, only to realize it could have been 10 times shorter and easier to read.
  - DC-3 3y ago
    As I read it, your argument boils down to: > When a student who likes literature does poorly in mathematics, it is because he is not clever enough. > When a student who likes mathematics does poorly in literature, it is because it is boring. If you truly believe this I have nothing more to say to you. I will not respond to your comments on philosophy, though I think they are wrongheaded, because I think your position to discuss such things is made untenable by the obvious contempt in which you hold the humanities.
DarkNova6 3y ago
> math reasoning really filter out people in a way nothing else does. Disagree. I say: Bad math teachers really filter out people in a way nothing else does. "Here is a list of rules which can be used in specific circumstances. I am not going to tell you why you would need them and the exam will feature several corner cases. Also, I will not provide any examples or detailed explanations because what would other people think of me, then?" This is over the top, but boils down my experience starting from highschool. I was in love with math when I was in primary and middle school. I really did. But Highschool and university killed every last bit of enjoyment I used to have. Okay, I did really like the first 2 semesters of math. I found an amazing online class which covered the same topics we did. Finally I understood and doing the exercises with such ease felt like cheating.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  True. But even with the best teachers for every field, math or sport will filter out people way more harshly, and sooner, than any other field. You can smooth things out with quality teaching, but there is a human hardware limit, and you reach it sooner with those two. Many people don't like to hear it because their ego is bruised or because it goes against the idea that "everybody can do anything". This is wrong. Birds fly, fishes swim. There is nothing bad about either.
  - CodeSgt 3y ago
    > This is wrong. Birds fly, fishes swim. There is nothing bad about either. I have a hard time with this mentality. I would have agreed a few years ago perhaps, and do still agree that we all have our own aptitudes, but the level of absolution in a statement like this just isn’t really quite as applicable to humans in my opinion. There are things I never thought I’d be capable of that I’ve recently begun to excel at. What I thought was a hardware limit turned out to just bug in my psycho-software that needed a patch. Obviously at the extreme end’s of the spectrum, the human hardware limit is very real. But for most (healthy) people, engaging in most activities, I believe that any perceived immutable barriers or obstacles are almost entirely psychological.
trinovantes 3y ago
Math as a field of study might be hard but in my experience math pre grad-school is just memorization as much as any other subject. I studied for my exams by simply doing countless exercises and memorizing every problem pattern to the point where I'm just plugging numbers into a series of formulas, even if I don't fully know why I'm doing so.
- foofoo4u 3y ago
  This is my experience as well. And unfortunately, many of my teachers feed into this. "Ok kids, today we're going to learn this new formula. You put a number in, do some arithmetic, and you get an answer out. I am not going to bother explaining the importance of this formula, how it came into existence, nor its practical application — likely because even I don't know. But what I do know is it's important because everyone says it is and it will be on the exam. Now get cracking." A parody of course, but I say captures the sentiment which completely drained my desire to learn math. I got good grades, but only after I learned to accept that it is futile to learn the importance of what I am learning and instead simply focus on rote memorization of solving the problem, even if I don't know why it works.
  - Izkata 3y ago
    > Ok kids, today we're going to learn this new formula. You put a number in, do some arithmetic, and you get an answer out. I am not going to bother explaining the importance of this formula, how it came into existence Short story time: I never could memorize various geometry equations, like surface area or volume of basic shapes. Then one day while bored at my part time job, I found a paper and pencil and decided to use what I'd just learned in calculus to see if I could derive one of those equations, by leaving variables in instead of using concrete numbers. It totally worked, I reinvented the volume of a sphere equation and ever since that day I've never forgotten it because now every part of the equation has meaning. I know why it is the way it is, and it makes sense.
    - foofoo4u 3y ago
      This gets to the heart of what math class needs. Which is a process of learning how to re-invent formulas, constants, and other concepts. Through this, students will come to appreciate why such things exist. And they will appreciate it further if students are first challenged to solve such problems in the absence of it.
kamaal 3y ago
>>But math reasoning really filters out people in a way nothing else does. Learning Math is just like learning a language, the issue is the script/alphabet/symbols used to communicate, its dictionary, its grammar are all complicated its hard for common people to get a grip on it. Almost all people can follow logical sequence of arguments provided they understand the language in which they are described. This language so far is the greatest barrier to bringing Math to public. Probably a new teaching method is needed.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  The language is the least relevant thing about learning mathematics. It is arbitrary and rooted in historical circumstance. Saying math is about the language is like saying programming is about learning syntax. It is entirely irrelevant, the meaning is what is important.
  - kamaal 3y ago
    >>programming is about learning syntax. It indeed is, how do you communicate meaning without words/symbols? Make an attempt to reply to this very comment by any means apart from using words/symbols.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  > Almost all people can follow logical sequence of arguments provided they understand the language in which they are described. No. I know people that have been explained repeatedly with absolute patience and love that correlation was not causality, with simple examples. They agree on the moment, but wait a week and they still mix it up again and again. That's one of the smallest and easiest logical concept to grasp, and they never integrate it. Practically, in day to day life, mixing correlation and causality served them very well. It's actually often true. But as soon as it's on the news or a graph on the internet, it's over. Because it's abstract. And the persons are not dumb either: they are very competent in other fields.
  - kamaal 3y ago
lolinder 3y ago
There's a major chicken and egg problem here—is math hard and therefore it has to justify itself, or is it hard because people don't think it's relevant and so they care less to try?
- constantcrying 3y ago
  Why would something being hard mean it has to justify itself?
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Because why put in the effort if it isn't going to bring any benefit? An easy subject can be swallowed even if you don't see the purpose because it doesn't cost you much. That said, I lean towards the other option: it's considered a waste of time, so no one puts in the effort, so it seems harder than it really should be.
zer8k 3y ago
I can second that. I was an pretty good programmer as a kid. I'd go home and write whatever I could imagine on the old 286 box my parents had. I spent time in "gifted" programs at school, etc. However, I hated math. HATED it. Did so poorly in it through high school I ended up in college in basic algebra. It wasn't until college I found out I loved math and it was only because I got lucky and had a string of amazing professors. I suspect this is true for other subjects as well. I also hated exercise until I discovered what I liked doing. PE teachers ruined it for me. Runs were terrible because there was no cadence. Push ups were terrible because no one checked form. The entire exercise of pre-college education is a box checking effort to get you ready for the factory. Perhaps we simply need to stop having the unmotivated teach the motivated. This goes true for research professors forced to teach as well.
Dwelve 3y ago
Can you elaborate how you and your brother compare in sports?

constantcrying 3y ago

What I specifically dislike is the question "what am I ever going to use this for" or versions of it. Which I only ever hear about mathematics, but which can be asked about every other subject as well. Yes, math is hard and definitely not for everyone, which I think is perfectly fine. But arguing that something has no use to you, because the first time in your life you actually have to engage in complex logical thinking is just lazy. The value of mathematics is independent of how hard it is.

butterNaN 3y ago
I feel your complaint is valid, but I your ire should be directed towards people who are supposed to answer this question, not the people who are asking it. My guess is that answering "what am I ever going to use this for" is easier for other subjects, sometimes almost intuitive. For Maths, it needs to be defined as soon as it starts getting abstract. "what am I ever going to use this for" is a perfectly valid question. People who are supposed to answer it should do a better job of doing so, writing good curriculum, and overall communication.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >My guess is that answering "what am I ever going to use this for" is easier for other subjects, sometimes almost intuitive. How so? What am I ever going to use my skills in analysing 20th century literature for. What am I ever going to use my knowledge about Roman history for? What am I ever going to use my knowledge about the structure of our government for? Certainly no employeer of mine ever cared, my University didn't care, nobody seems to have ever cared, except my teachers. The question is bad because: - People ask it, but only of mathematics - People answer it, as if mathematics alone has to face that challenge If school is about job training the answer is simply "because it contains the broadest possible techniques to understand the world and is vital in basically any data-based scientific pursuit and a basic understanding is needed for any trade which uses measurements". Somehow I think ancient history does not have such an answer...
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > What am I ever going to use my skills in analysing 20th century literature for. You can use the same skills to spot when a news article is trying to manipulate you. > What am I ever going to use my knowledge about Roman history for? You can see how empires fall, and vote against those things. > What am I ever going to use my knowledge about the structure of our government for? Understanding why things happen around you is the first thing you need if you ever want to try and change something you don't like. > Certainly no employeer of mine ever cared, my University didn't care, nobody seems to have ever cared, except my teachers. You might care, though. Or you might not know what you know now without them. Thankfully you did all those things, so now you can write a well-written letter to the correct person in government, citing the parallel problems with the current education system and the fall of Rome, and stop children being taught this stuff (-:
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      You are completely missing the point here. If you know "why empires fall" (nobody does) then you could just teach that, the historical context would be almost irrelevant and even the premise of a cyclical history, which can be broken by voting, seems completely insane. >Thankfully you did all those things, so now you can write a well-written letter to the correct person in government, citing the parallel problems with the current education system and the fall of Rome, and stop children being taught this stuff (-: Okay, that was funny. I think what you are trying to articulate is education as a hollistic system, not with the goal of expertese, but with the goal of offering some moral foundation and grounding in the world and society. But if you believe in that the utilitarian stance of education immediately becomes irrelevant and "when am I ever going to use this" becomes a non-sensical question, which misses the point.
rhaway84773 3y ago
Math is abstract. Very few to no other school level subjects are abstract. That’s why you hear discussions about pushing algebra out, but not about pushing arithmetic out. That’s why some schools replaced algebra with “data science”. Abstraction isn’t easy. But that’s precisely why math, especially algebra and the like, is so essential. It’s the only path to building abstract reasoning among students.
- derangedHorse 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s the abstraction, I think it’s the perceived lack of usefulness. I’ve known many individuals who are bad at math but can understand the abstraction of most programming constructs. I think it’s mainly because the pay off of learning programming has a higher immediate value (it can be used for a variety of tasks and can even help score a high paying job).
TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
> What I specifically dislike is the question "what am I ever going to use this for" or versions of it. Which I only ever hear about mathematics. I've often heard it asked of languages, specifically Irish.
- Sodman 3y ago
  I always disliked Irish (and languages, in general) in school. However, now that I'm over a decade out of college I find it to be one of the few subjects I wish I'd paid more attention to when I'd had the chance... Sure, it's not particularly useful in adult life, but neither is organic chemistry, for most folks. The main difference for me is that it's relatively easy to "fill in the gaps" for any other subject we learned from the ages of 12-18. Irish however, is niche enough - and learning resources generally technologically behind - that it's still quite tricky to self-teach or "quickly google" answers to things. That makes it unique from most other primary/secondary school subjects which are more universally taught across the world.
  - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
    I asked that question in school (strange to look back on, as I'm now fascinated by languages), and the only answer the teacher could give was that doing well in Irish would give extra Leaving Cert points. That struck me at the time as depressing.

DC-3 3y ago

> math reasoning really filter out people in a way nothing else does. I have known many people, to whom mathematical reasoning comes as easily and naturally as flight does to a swallow, be defeated by literature. Every technical university in the world is brimming with bright young people who could effortlessly describe a Jacobian but would rather gnaw off their own hand than produce a response to a story or sonnet. > And philosophy, mostly because of jargon and reference. Otherwise, if you break it down, it's not that complicated. Quite the claim.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
They are not defeated by literature, they are just not that interested in it, and therefore never practiced, and dislike working on it. It's not a matter of the field being too difficult. It's a matter of personality. > Quite the claim. Yes. I've discussed this claim with people defending the opposite idea, and I've yet to find anybody making a good demonstration that philosophy is hard in itself. They point that there is a lot to know. So reference and memory. Like most expertise in the world. That texts are hard to read. So style, vocabulary. Well, not different than programming or the law on that point. They are easier than higher level math. They say few people get novel ideas. Yes, creativity is rare, yet it's not particularly linked to the field. You need creativity to find new theorems too. So they try to bring complicated topics again and again. Once we are done mapping the references, the vocabulary and cleaned out the awful style a lot of writers use to obfuscate their reasoning, the ideas behind are quite straightforward to grasp. I've stopped doing it now, it takes a very long time, and it's always disappointing. It feels like debugging a program, only to realize it could have been 10 times shorter and easier to read.
- DC-3 3y ago
  As I read it, your argument boils down to: > When a student who likes literature does poorly in mathematics, it is because he is not clever enough. > When a student who likes mathematics does poorly in literature, it is because it is boring. If you truly believe this I have nothing more to say to you. I will not respond to your comments on philosophy, though I think they are wrongheaded, because I think your position to discuss such things is made untenable by the obvious contempt in which you hold the humanities.

DarkNova6 3y ago

> math reasoning really filter out people in a way nothing else does. Disagree. I say: Bad math teachers really filter out people in a way nothing else does. "Here is a list of rules which can be used in specific circumstances. I am not going to tell you why you would need them and the exam will feature several corner cases. Also, I will not provide any examples or detailed explanations because what would other people think of me, then?" This is over the top, but boils down my experience starting from highschool. I was in love with math when I was in primary and middle school. I really did. But Highschool and university killed every last bit of enjoyment I used to have. Okay, I did really like the first 2 semesters of math. I found an amazing online class which covered the same topics we did. Finally I understood and doing the exercises with such ease felt like cheating.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago
True. But even with the best teachers for every field, math or sport will filter out people way more harshly, and sooner, than any other field. You can smooth things out with quality teaching, but there is a human hardware limit, and you reach it sooner with those two. Many people don't like to hear it because their ego is bruised or because it goes against the idea that "everybody can do anything". This is wrong. Birds fly, fishes swim. There is nothing bad about either.
- CodeSgt 3y ago
  > This is wrong. Birds fly, fishes swim. There is nothing bad about either. I have a hard time with this mentality. I would have agreed a few years ago perhaps, and do still agree that we all have our own aptitudes, but the level of absolution in a statement like this just isn’t really quite as applicable to humans in my opinion. There are things I never thought I’d be capable of that I’ve recently begun to excel at. What I thought was a hardware limit turned out to just bug in my psycho-software that needed a patch. Obviously at the extreme end’s of the spectrum, the human hardware limit is very real. But for most (healthy) people, engaging in most activities, I believe that any perceived immutable barriers or obstacles are almost entirely psychological.

trinovantes 3y ago

Math as a field of study might be hard but in my experience math pre grad-school is just memorization as much as any other subject. I studied for my exams by simply doing countless exercises and memorizing every problem pattern to the point where I'm just plugging numbers into a series of formulas, even if I don't fully know why I'm doing so.

foofoo4u 3y ago
This is my experience as well. And unfortunately, many of my teachers feed into this. "Ok kids, today we're going to learn this new formula. You put a number in, do some arithmetic, and you get an answer out. I am not going to bother explaining the importance of this formula, how it came into existence, nor its practical application — likely because even I don't know. But what I do know is it's important because everyone says it is and it will be on the exam. Now get cracking." A parody of course, but I say captures the sentiment which completely drained my desire to learn math. I got good grades, but only after I learned to accept that it is futile to learn the importance of what I am learning and instead simply focus on rote memorization of solving the problem, even if I don't know why it works.
- Izkata 3y ago
  > Ok kids, today we're going to learn this new formula. You put a number in, do some arithmetic, and you get an answer out. I am not going to bother explaining the importance of this formula, how it came into existence Short story time: I never could memorize various geometry equations, like surface area or volume of basic shapes. Then one day while bored at my part time job, I found a paper and pencil and decided to use what I'd just learned in calculus to see if I could derive one of those equations, by leaving variables in instead of using concrete numbers. It totally worked, I reinvented the volume of a sphere equation and ever since that day I've never forgotten it because now every part of the equation has meaning. I know why it is the way it is, and it makes sense.
  - foofoo4u 3y ago
    This gets to the heart of what math class needs. Which is a process of learning how to re-invent formulas, constants, and other concepts. Through this, students will come to appreciate why such things exist. And they will appreciate it further if students are first challenged to solve such problems in the absence of it.

kamaal 3y ago

>>But math reasoning really filters out people in a way nothing else does. Learning Math is just like learning a language, the issue is the script/alphabet/symbols used to communicate, its dictionary, its grammar are all complicated its hard for common people to get a grip on it. Almost all people can follow logical sequence of arguments provided they understand the language in which they are described. This language so far is the greatest barrier to bringing Math to public. Probably a new teaching method is needed.

constantcrying 3y ago
The language is the least relevant thing about learning mathematics. It is arbitrary and rooted in historical circumstance. Saying math is about the language is like saying programming is about learning syntax. It is entirely irrelevant, the meaning is what is important.
- kamaal 3y ago
  >>programming is about learning syntax. It indeed is, how do you communicate meaning without words/symbols? Make an attempt to reply to this very comment by any means apart from using words/symbols.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
> Almost all people can follow logical sequence of arguments provided they understand the language in which they are described. No. I know people that have been explained repeatedly with absolute patience and love that correlation was not causality, with simple examples. They agree on the moment, but wait a week and they still mix it up again and again. That's one of the smallest and easiest logical concept to grasp, and they never integrate it. Practically, in day to day life, mixing correlation and causality served them very well. It's actually often true. But as soon as it's on the news or a graph on the internet, it's over. Because it's abstract. And the persons are not dumb either: they are very competent in other fields.
- kamaal 3y ago

lolinder 3y ago

There's a major chicken and egg problem here—is math hard and therefore it has to justify itself, or is it hard because people don't think it's relevant and so they care less to try?

constantcrying 3y ago
Why would something being hard mean it has to justify itself?
- lolinder 3y ago
  Because why put in the effort if it isn't going to bring any benefit? An easy subject can be swallowed even if you don't see the purpose because it doesn't cost you much. That said, I lean towards the other option: it's considered a waste of time, so no one puts in the effort, so it seems harder than it really should be.

zer8k 3y ago

I can second that. I was an pretty good programmer as a kid. I'd go home and write whatever I could imagine on the old 286 box my parents had. I spent time in "gifted" programs at school, etc. However, I hated math. HATED it. Did so poorly in it through high school I ended up in college in basic algebra. It wasn't until college I found out I loved math and it was only because I got lucky and had a string of amazing professors. I suspect this is true for other subjects as well. I also hated exercise until I discovered what I liked doing. PE teachers ruined it for me. Runs were terrible because there was no cadence. Push ups were terrible because no one checked form. The entire exercise of pre-college education is a box checking effort to get you ready for the factory. Perhaps we simply need to stop having the unmotivated teach the motivated. This goes true for research professors forced to teach as well.

Dwelve 3y ago

Can you elaborate how you and your brother compare in sports?